Best Financial Research Software
Financial research software helps portfolio managers and other investment professionals locate, sort, and analyze relevant data to help shape the investment decision-making process. These solutions contain search functionality, access to the latest financial market information, and other tools to aid financial services professionals in their research and analysis.
The main function of financial research software is to provide financial analysts and investors with easy access to key documents, estimates, market news, and financial statements. Solutions in this category also may offer custom reporting, contain risk analytics features, perform stock screens, and include charting tools. Financial research software helps investment professionals manage the analytics and market evaluation critical to portfolio selection by offering them access to massive data sets and the tools to analyze that data. Analysts and other finance professionals use these solutions to keep up to date on the markets, issue market predictions, offer investment advice, and shape their own investing process.
Financial research software is typically offered as a standalone solution, but one that integrates with trading software and other financial services software.
To qualify for inclusion in the Financial Research category, a product must:
Best Financial Research Software At A Glance
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- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Founded in 2007 and acquired by Morningstar in 2016, PitchBook provides comprehensive data on the private and public markets to help business professionals discover and execute top opportunities. Pitc
- Associate
- Analyst
- Financial Services
- Venture Capital & Private Equity
- 41% Small-Business
- 34% Enterprise
46,626 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Morningstar Advisor Workstation is a connected suite of tools spanning proposal creation, investment research, investment planning, and more that empowers great advice helps drive success for advisory
- Financial Advisor
- Financial Planner
- Financial Services
- Investment Management
- 53% Small-Business
- 33% Enterprise
228,510 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Morningstar Direct can help you research markets, position products, analyze the competition, and share their insights quickly, clearly, and concisely. Direct meets your workflow needs in one place
- Financial Services
- Investment Management
- 39% Small-Business
- 35% Enterprise
228,510 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Meet AlphaSense: the world's leading market intelligence and search platform. AlphaSense is a market intelligence platform used by the world’s top companies and financial institutions to help profess
- Analyst
- Associate
- Financial Services
- Pharmaceuticals
- 49% Enterprise
- 33% Small-Business
21,428 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Koyfin is a modern and cost-effective financial analytics platform used by over 30,000 financial advisors and wealth managers. It provides tools to create model portfolios, analyze client portfolios,
- Financial Services
- Investment Management
- 89% Small-Business
- 6% Mid-Market
62,114 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Acquire.com is the best online marketplace to buy and sell SaaS startups. Join 500k+ SaaS entrepreneurs closing life-changing deals. Buy and sell startups in as little as 30 days with help from exper
- Founder
- CEO
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 95% Small-Business
- 1% Mid-Market
97,874 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Bloomberg Terminal is at the cutting edge of innovation, delivering fast access to indispensible news, data and trading tools from any internet-connected PC or mobile device, and helping its subsc
- Financial Services
- Investment Management
- 41% Enterprise
- 30% Small-Business
20,044 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Grata is the leading business development solution for M&A. Grata unifies the dealmaking workflow into an all in one solution that helps you find, research, and engage with middle market companies
- Associate
- Managing Partner
- Venture Capital & Private Equity
- Financial Services
- 76% Small-Business
- 15% Mid-Market
174 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The “Investment Research” market leader in the 2023 Kitces Report and the #1 Investment data/analytics AND Economic analysis/stress-testing software respondents plan to add in the 2024 T3 Report, YCha
- Financial Services
- Investment Management
- 81% Small-Business
- 10% Enterprise
38,205 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Ideagen Audit Analytics is the only insights database for the audit industry. It is a rich source of data for audit firms and consultants who want to grow their business, policy developers, and academ
- Accounting
- Higher Education
- 50% Enterprise
- 30% Mid-Market
2,216 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
FactSet (NYSE:FDS | NASDAQ:FDS) delivers superior content, analytics, and flexible technology to help more than 122,000 users see and seize opportunity sooner. We give investment professionals the edg
- Financial Services
- Investment Management
- 43% Enterprise
- 39% Small-Business
118,287 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The S&P Capital IQ Pro platform combines fundamental data with sector-specific metrics and analytics that are relevant to the industries we cover, plus key asset data, mapping tools, regulatory in
- Associate
- Financial Services
- Investment Banking
- 36% Enterprise
- 33% Mid-Market
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Dealroom is a global data intelligence platform to discover the most promising companies and tech ecosystems around the world. As an API-first company with 100+ data points on over 2M+ startups and sc
- 57% Small-Business
- 39% Mid-Market
8,365 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The S&P Capital IQ platform is your single source for a powerful array of financial data, analytics, and research. Our web-based platform combines deep information on companies, markets, and peopl
- Financial Services
- 39% Enterprise
- 36% Mid-Market
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Access an incredible depth and breadth of financial analysis data to make smarter decisions. Eikon is a flexible, open platform that’s purpose-built for trade innovation and lets you connect with the
- Financial Services
- Investment Banking
- 38% Mid-Market
- 32% Enterprise
26,093 Twitter followers
Learn More About Financial Research Software
What is Financial Research Software?
Financial research software is vital for investment sector professionals that need to access up-to-date financial market information. They use products in this category to carry out in-depth research and analysis to make informed investment decisions. Financial services professionals use financial research software to conduct research to fuel strategic decisions, carry out analysis on potential mergers and acquisitions, and stay informed on market movements. Many financial research platforms are now AI-enabled, which augments their ability to conduct detailed analysis of potential investments to improve decision-making.
Key Benefits of Financial Research Software
- Up-to-date market information
- Investment analysis
- Historical market data
- Visualization tools
Why Use Financial Research Software?
Financial research software is extremely useful for investment professionals looking to obtain a solid understanding of potential investments.
Research potential investments — One of the main uses for financial research software is diving into potential investments. Investors use these platforms to stay updated on company news and examine the details of specific earnings calls, market moves, and more.
Stay current on market news — Staying current in the financial services world is vital to success, and financial research platforms make this possible. Financial research software gathers market data and news from various sources and compiles it into a searchable format, allowing users to digest relevant news items and craft narratives that support their investment choices.
Craft comprehensive financial strategy — In addition to driving investment choices in individual companies, financial research software helps investors develop comprehensive investment strategies across industries. This may include identifying potential mergers and acquisitions, opportunities, and pitfalls across various industries.
Who Uses Financial Research Software?
Financial services professionals, specifically investment advisors and fund managers, use financial research software most often. Business and market analysts will also use the software to predict trends and create compelling content based on accurate market data.
Investment advisors — Investment advisors are the most avid users of financial research software. They rely on these applications to fuel their decision-making, basing their investments on a sound base of information and reasonable assumptions made from historical data patterns they observe.
Analysts — Industry analysts use financial research software to conduct detailed trend analysis on the environment within certain sectors. The segmenting and reporting capabilities that financial research software provides allow analysts to write accurate predictions and analyze trends.
Consultants — Consultants leverage the insights gleaned from financial research software to give their clients comprehensive, data-grounded recommendations. These recommendations can include everything from investment advice to merger and acquisition strategy. The comprehensive information provided by financial research platforms can be used as a solid starting point for research into specific companies’ readiness for acquisition or to accrue information on potential acquisitions to consider. Analysis of the financial health of a company, rumors about potential company moves, product pipeline, and more, can all be of great value when making important decisions regarding who to acquire.
Financial Research Software Features
Financial research software often includes, but is not limited to, the following features:
Real-time alerts — Users receive real-time notifications based on keyword alerts the user inputs. This can be used to track a multitude of updates on many types of information, from regulatory actions to stock screening.
Document comparison — Documents are shared and compared with old versions, highlighting changes. This feature is useful for quick analysis on updated documents.
Team collaboration — This functionality allows teammates to engage in document sharing, note taking, annotations, and highlighting directly within relevant documents.
Financial data — It’s important for users to have direct access to financial data of multiple types, including: earnings call transcripts, SEC and global filings, broker research, etc.
Data comparison — Users can use this feature to compare different types of data in multiple fields.
Analytics — Some solutions include predictive analytical tools, which digest historical data and make informed predictions about future movements.
Integrations — Many users have other software. These solutions integrate with other financial services software.
Data visualization — This software often contains tools that create visual representations of data gathered by the system.
Reporting — Users can access prebuilt reporting templates, which craft reports according to user input. Investors can use these reports to help build out strategy based on historical data.
Potential Issues with Financial Research Software
Data newness — A key component of financial research software is the inclusion of updated market news and information. Investment decisions are made in real time, and any delay in information acquisition could lead to a poor investment choice. It is imperative that the data sources and the means by which the data is gathered work without issue.
Overabundance of data — The more data there is, the more difficult it is to make sense of. Financial research software provides access to so much information that it may be difficult to parse and extract relevant information. Users should be wary of getting lost in the sheer volume of information available and leverage the increasing number of financial research tools that are good at slicing relevant news to help users make sense of those large amounts of data.
