MarketBeat vs. Seeking Alpha Comparison

MarketBeat and Seeking Alpha are two of the well-known websites that give individual investors access to stock research and analysis. Both sites provide a significant amount of many of free content. But with many similar features, it can be hard to distinguish between the two sites.

That’s why we’ve provided this article that compares MarketBeat to Seeking Alpha. The purpose of this comparison is for you to better understand what each service provides, particularly if investors choose to access one or more of the company’s premium services. Here are the topics this article will cover:

MarketBeat Overview

Seeking Alpha Overview

How Are MarketBeat and Seeking Alpha Alike?

How are MarketBeat and Seeking Alpha Different?

Review of Premium Services

Conclusion

MarketBeat Overview

MarketBeat was founded in 2011 with the mission of creating high-quality stock research tools and making them available to investors at all levels. The site uses the latest technology to provide proprietary, comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-the-minute financial data including information about analyst recommendations, dividend declarations, and earnings announcements.

All of this information, and more, was made available for free on the company’s website and via the company’s daily newsletters. MarketBeat aims to be a go-to resource for both retail and institutional investors. Currently over 15 million individuals visit MarketBeat.com every month.

Seeking Alpha Overview

Seeking Alpha was founded in 2004 as a platform to provide news and analysis of individual stocks with a particular emphasis on small-cap companies that were not covered by Wall Street analysts. Seeking Alpha was originally founded by David Jackson and has since grown to feature hundreds of contributors. The site uses a crowdsourcing model to draw short news headlines and longer articles from around the Internet, typically featuring experienced Wall Street investors and analysts. Content on Seeking Alpha is seen on several mainstream financial news sites including CNBC, Yahoo! Finance, Marketwatch, MSNBS, NASDAQ, and The Street and, by way of full disclosure, MarketBeat.

How Are MarketBeat and Seeking Alpha Alike?

MarketBeat and Seeking Alpha are similar in that they both focus on giving their readers insight and analysis about individual stocks. Both sites are suitable for the self-directed investor who wants insights and tools that will help them discover good investments.

Additionally, both sites provide curated content. That is, they look to cover stocks that are trending. Sometimes this is because a company is making news for one of many reasons (i.e. an upcoming earnings report, a new analyst rating, etc.).  Other times, it may be because a fundamental or technical indicator is signaling a significant price movement is likely to happen.

Also, neither site is a stock-picking service as such. Although Seeking Alpha does offer premium subscribers a list of the site’s Top-Rated Stocks based on Seeking Alpha authors, Wall Street analysts, and the platform’s proprietary Quant System.

Also, in many cases, contributors on both sites offer their own perspectives to their analysis. And while their opinions are based on facts about the stock, it’s up to an individual investor as to whether they agree with the writer’s perspective.

Market Insight & Stock Picks

MarketBeat provides subscribers with the Early Bird which is delivered every morning before the market opens as well as the Night Owl which is delivered every evening.

• These newsletters give readers insight on stocks that MarketBeat analysts are tracking as well as a curated selection of investment articles from other financial outlets.
• These newsletters do not directly make stock picks.
• In addition to these newsletters, the MarketBeat site is refreshed every day in real-time with Top Stories including Most Read Stories and the Most Recent Stories. Many of these articles provide exclusive content from MarketBeat analysts.

Seeking Alpha delivers a free newsletter, Wall Street Breakfast, every morning. In addition, the site sends investors a reader of articles curated by the writers they follow or by a particular sector of interest. However, free users have a limited amount of articles available to them in a month. And they do not have access to articles over 10 days old.

Portfolio Services

Both sites offer free portfolio tracker tools. Subscribers receive daily email alerts, earnings estimate revisions, analyst recommendation changes, and more. The MarketBeat site provides real-time updates for subscribers. .

Ticker Search

Both sites have an easy-to-use search tool that allows subscribers to get more information on the holdings in your portfolio, or to look at new trades. Both sites give you earnings data, analyst ratings, and other features. And both sites make it easy to quickly add those stocks to your portfolio.

Stock and ETF Screeners

Both sites offer stock screening tools. However, at this time only MarketBeat gives investors the ability to compare stocks on the screener. Both sites make their stock screeners available to premium subscribers. Additionally, both sites include an ETF screening tool. This is a bit unusual for Seeking Alpha because very few articles focus on ETFs.

Investment Ideas

MarketBeat provides subscribers with access to information such as Research Tools, Stock Screeners, Top-Rated Analysts, Stock Lists, Trending Stocks and Premium Reports. These can be accessed under the My MarketBeat tab.

Seeking Alpha uses the stock ratings curated by its contributors and editors to make stock recommendations and help develop investing ideas. However, investors who are using the free platform will find this information to be limited. However, those subscribers do receive quant ratings, Seeking Alpha author ratings, and Wall Street analyst ratings for stocks.

How are MarketBeat and Seeking Alpha Different?

One way to contrast Seeking Alpha with MarketBeat is to use the marketing analogy of the shotgun approach versus the rifle approach. Here’s what we mean:

Seeking Alpha crowdsources their writing. The benefit is that investors have access to a generous amount of content from the platform’s network of writers. Many of these writers have experience with market analysis or investment management. A potential drawback is that investors will frequently get multiple articles about a stock in a very short timeframe. Sometimes those articles may contradict each other. This is another reason that some relatively new investors may find it difficult to digest.

The writers on Seeking Alpha tend to focus on specific fundamentals or technical indicators to support their position. More experienced investors and traders may appreciate this content as they may use one or more of these indicators as a basis for their analysis.

However, some of this analysis may not be as accessible for some new investors who may have to take a few steps back to get a broader picture of what is happening with a company. Also, not all of this content is available as part of the company’s Essential (free) service.

That’s one advantage of MarketBeat which takes a more holistic approach to stock analysis. By that we mean, you get a range of perspectives that present insights into why a stock may be moving the way it is. This isn’t to say that MarketBeat does not provide fundamental or technical analysis. But that is only one perspective that is provided.

MarketBeat has a dedicated team of writers that makes every effort to space out content as it relates to a specific stock. For example, during earnings season, investors will usually get only get one article about a particular company.  In some cases, where sentiment about a stock is genuinely divided, the site may publish a bullish and bearish article that will allow readers to decide.

Also, whereas the content on Seeking Alpha is not designed for day traders, there are several articles on MarketBeat that provide actionable content for day traders and other short-term traders.

Review of Premium Services

For buy-and-hold investors who simply want to have instant information regarding the equities in their portfolio, these free services may be adequate. However active traders will typically need access to more detailed insights. For that, both companies offer several premium services. For the purpose of this article, premium services are defined as services for which customers have to pay to access.

MarketBeat Premium Services

MarketBeat Momentum Alerts - $97 per year

• This service provides short-term trading opportunities identified by MarketBeat editors using trading momentum, market sentiment, and specific financial triggers.
• Subscribers receive approximately 3 to 5 new ideas each month through MarketBeat Momentum Alerts.

MarketBeat Daily Premium – $199 per year/$19.97 monthly

• MarketBeat Daily Premium is delivered 30 minutes before the market opens and provides actionable news, analyst upgrades and downgrades, dividend payout changes, insider buying and selling disclosures, earnings reports and technical data.
• Subscribers get information that is personalized to their My MarketBeat stock portfolio and watchlist, giving them the latest information for the stocks they care about the most.
• Investors can also choose to receive email or SMS alerts for their stocks so they don't miss major shifts in the market.
• Their daily newsletter contains a summary of key analyst ratings, earnings and dividend announcements, insider transactions of the day.

MarketBeat All Access – $399 per year/$39.97 monthly

• MarketBeat All Access is the company’s premier research platform.
• Subscribers receive all the information included in MarketBeat Daily Premium, plus a Sunday market preview, advanced portfolio monitoring tools (via My MarketBeat), access to MarketBeat’s full suite of research tools and stock screeners, a real-time news feed including email and SMS alerts.
• Subscribers also get access to the MarketBeat Idea Engine, trending stock lists, proprietary brokerage rankings, extended data export tools, and more.

Seeking Alpha Premium Services

Seeking Alpha offers two types of paid services. Investors should take care to note that Seeking Alpha facilitates a Marketplace of premium investing services from individual investors and companies. For the purposes of this article, we are only looking at the premium services offered by the company itself.

Seeking Alpha Premium - $239.88 per year/$39.99 month

• This service provides unlimited access to the sites content with fewer ads. This includes, in some cases, more in-depth analysis
• View of the author’s stock ratings from Very Bullish to Very Bearish
• Access to individual stock pages with detailed fundamental and earnings tracking and ratings from bearish analysts
• Wall Street consensus and price targets on the stock
• Quant ratings based on over 100 metrics

Seeking Alpha Pro - $2,399.88 per year/$299.99 month

• All the benefits of the Premium plan plus:
• Early access (one week) to top long and short ideas from the site’s editors
• Access to a stock filter that includes fields that are based on Seeking Alpha’s proprietary ratings

Conclusion

While we’re confident in the amount and the quality of the information you receive with your MarketBeat subscription, we want to let you understand what the other services are providing.

As you can see, both MarketBeat and Seeking Alpha offer many tools for investors of all types. What may be right for you will depend on a combination of factors. Objectively, MarketBeat’s premium services cost less and may satisfy the information needs of most traders. The site is a one-stop resource that will provide most investors with the information they need to execute a trade.

If you have the time and inclination to organize and digest a lot of content, Seeking Alpha may be a good choice. The free plan offers a significant amount of content. However, some of the information on articles, including the author’s rating for a particular stock and the author’s historical performance require a paid subscription. Also, free users cannot access content older than about 10 days.