The 6 Best Options Trading Alert Services in 2026
There's no shortage of option alert services to choose from, but they're not all created equal.
Some are run by seasoned traders with years of experience and real track records. Others are nothing but bold promises and flashy marketing.
Because of this, your first filter should be credibility. Has the service been around for a while? Is the person behind it a legit trader?
After verifying their credibility, you can ask questions like:
- How profitable are the trades?
- What's the trading strategy or investing style?
- How expensive is the service, and what size account do you need?
Credibility, profitability, investing style, and cost — those are the things that matter when choosing between these services.
With those in mind, here are the 6 best options-picking services in 2026.
Summary view
- Best overall: Stock Market Guides
- Best for beginners: Mindful Trader
- Best for selling options: Motley Fool Options
- Best for large options portfolios: Delta Options
- Best for advanced options traders: Market Chameleon
- Best for high-leverage, long-term trades: The Speculator
Disclosure: These are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you take action through them.
Keep reading for more details about each service.
Disclaimer: Ratings are my opinion. Actual results may vary, and past performance does not guarantee future results. All investors should do their own due diligence.
1. Best overall: Stock Market Guides
- Overall rating:
- Strategy: Buying calls for swing and longer-term trades
- Cost: $69/month or $575/year
Stock Market Guides does two things really well, earning it the top spot on this list.
First, it sends frequent and easily implementable trade alerts. The format of each alert is simple and easy to understand for anyone who's new to options trading — it's just the strike price, expiration date, and how long you can expect to hold the trade.
You'll receive 1-3 of these trade alerts most days, and you can choose to get them via email or text.
For the second thing that makes it stand out, take another look at the trade alert above. You can see:
- The strategy being used ("Blue Chips at a Discount")
- The historic win rate of that strategy (58.7%)
- The historic annualized return of that stock in that strategy (214.6%)
What you're seeing here is the result of the backtested research that went into building Stock Market Guides.
The SMG team ran hundreds of thousands of simulations to build a rules-based trading system, identifying the stock and pattern combinations with the highest historical win rates and returns.
Whenever one of those setups appears in real-time, the system sends an alert. And every trade alert comes with its backtested performance results.
Of course, historical price action isn't a perfect predictor of future movement. But stocks often trade in similar patterns, and knowing those patterns ahead of time can be a big advantage.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
2. Best for beginners: Mindful Trader
- Overall rating:
- Strategy: Swing trading with calls
- Cost: $47/month or $397/year
Mindful Trader is run by Eric Ferguson, a Stanford graduate who spent years researching and analyzing stock price tendencies.
He took those results and built a trading system that he uses daily. Whenever he takes a new trade, he posts it on his website and sends an alert to subscribers.
Eric swing trades simple call options, a very beginner-friendly way of trading. He usually sends 1-3 trade alerts per day, sometimes more sometimes less. Each of the trade alerts is clear and easy to follow.
As far as returns go, one particularly good 18-month stretch led to returns of over 200%:
Like other swing trading services, Mindful Trader's win rate is just above 50%. But, because its average win is larger than its average loss, the service can be quite profitable.
Eric is transparent about his results and doesn't make false promises. He also genuinely cares about his members, which isn't the case for many services in this space.
Altogether, Mindful Trader is an excellent alert service for beginner options traders.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
3. Best for selling options: Motley Fool Options
- Overall rating:
- Strategy: Selling OTM puts
- Cost: $1,999/year (via Epic Plus)
Motley Fool Options — which is available through its Epic Plus subscription level — has one simple strategy: it sells out-of-the-money put options.
This is a high-probability trading strategy, which allows traders to regularly generate extra income. Of note, 86% of its trades make money. The service sends 2–3 new trade alerts per month.
However, because Motley Fool Options is only available through The Motley Fool's Epic Plus, the service is quite expensive. It costs $1,999 per year ($1,399 for new members' first year).
That said, the service also comes with several other products, including Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers — two of The Motley Fool's most popular services.
In all, Epic Plus subscribers get 9 new trade alerts per month, spread across stocks and options picks.
If you're also in the market for a stock recommendation service, Epic Plus might be exactly what you're looking for.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
4. Best for large options portfolios: Delta Options
- Overall rating:
- Strategy: Momentum trading
- Cost: $119/month or $949/year
Delta Options is a momentum-based options picking service that takes a unique approach.
The team follows a typical momentum strategy by finding stocks that are outperforming their industries and seeing if their stock price increases are justified by improving fundamentals.
But unlike typical momentum services — which simply buy stocks — Delta Options buys deep-in-the-money call options on these stocks.
Each option has an expiration date at least one year in the future. These contracts simulate owning regular shares but require significantly less capital.
For example, in June 2025, AAPL was trading at $210 per share in mid-2025 while the $180 call expiring January 2027 was trading for $59.30.
With a delta of 0.85, buying this call is similar to owning 85 shares of Apple, which would cost $17,850 if you were to buy its stock. The call option costs just $5,930.
The built-in leverage of options can increase the returns, assuming the right stocks are selected. The website boasts returns of over 8x the S&P 500 since the service's inception:
On the flip side, the built-in leverage can also create quite a bit of volatility. Plus, most of the call options the team buys are between $1,000–$2,000 per contract, meaning this is not a strategy for small accounts.*
*This is especially true if you plan to buy at least 10 of these positions and want to allocate no more than 10% of your total portfolio to the strategy (which is what the traders who run the service do).
Delta Options sends 2 new trade alerts per month. The team typically holds positions for 1–3 years, depending on how the underlying stock is performing relative to its peer group.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
5. Best for very advanced options traders: Market Chameleon
- Overall rating:
- Strategy: Many different options strategies to choose from
- Cost: $99/month
Market Chameleon isn't an alert service — it's a platform for analyzing options trades.
The reason it's still on this list is that the software generates a ton of trade ideas, and you can set it to notify you of trades to take based on your custom criteria. It's a bit more hands-on, but the end result is the same as an alert service.
Note: Stock Market Guides recently released its scanner technology that powers its trade alerts, so its members can also take a more hands-on approach.
Its screener allows you to find trade ideas by stock or by strategy. You can also add stocks or strategies to your watchlist and receive alerts when it finds trades matching your criteria.
The main benefit of using Market Chameleon over a traditional options picking service is that you can develop your own trading style and strategies which you can use to generate hundreds of trade ideas per year and become an independent trader.
6. Best for high-leverage, long-term trades: The Speculator
- Overall rating:
- Strategy: Buying LEAPs
- Cost: $3,000/year
If you're an aggressive investor and are looking for options alerts with a lot of upside, The Speculator may be the service for you.
The Speculator is run by Eric Fry, a fairly well-known stock picker. In this service, Fry tries to identify stocks with a lot of upside and then buys them using options.
A LEAPs option is an options contract with an expiration date more than one year in the future. By buying out-of-the-money LEAPs, Fry can make small bets that could result in large payoffs.
Subscribers should expect a win rate of less than 50%, but winning trades should more than offset the smaller losing trades.
The downside? It's expensive.
Fry makes 2-4 new trades per month, meaning the cost of the service is around $83 per pick. And since most of the recommended options contracts are quite expensive, it's not a good option for small accounts.
How we chose the best options alert services
When evaluating investing products and services, we take the following into consideration:
- Credibility: Track record, quality of advice, and brand reputation.
- Profitability: How profitable are the alerts? How much money will a new member make in their first year and beyond?
- Audience: Who the product is for, whether it actually works for its target audience, if it's the best option available, and any limitations therein.
- Usability: How easy is the service to follow? Are the trade alerts simple to read and implement?
- Cost: Overall price, value for money, average cost per month, and how that compares to competitors.
Final verdict
The right options trading service for you is the one that fits your investment style and consistently makes profitable trades.
That said, it's hard to know for sure whether a service is a good fit for you without getting firsthand experience.
Hopefully, this list gives you a good jumping off point. If there's a service that caught your eye, you're best bet now is to try it out for yourself.
