Frequently asked questions

Before an earnings report, implied volatility (IV) is usually higher, so the same put pays more premium, and at the same delta the strike sits further below the stock price. Both lift the ranking. The screen does not exclude a contract just because earnings falls inside its life; it looks at how many days before expiration the report lands. A report within 3 days of expiration, including expiration day itself, sets the contract’s score to 0, so it never enters the daily Top 10. A report 4 to 14 days before expiration reduces its score, more the closer it is. A report more than 14 days before expiration, or after expiration, changes nothing. Every contract whose life includes a known earnings date is marked with an amber ⚠, the date and “before exp”. Until a company announces its date, the date on file is an estimate and can change. ETFs have no earnings check. Whether to hold a position through earnings is your decision.

Settled records from June 2026 through November 6, 2026 show: contracts whose earnings came soon after they were listed did no worse at expiration than contracts with no earnings, but more often showed an interim loss after the report. Contracts with earnings within 3 days of expiration did clearly worse; their score is set to 0, so they never enter the daily Top 10. The table assumes each contract was sold on the day it was listed and held to expiration.

• Earnings soon: the report came within 3 days of listing, more than two weeks before expiration.
• Earnings near expiry: the report came within 3 days of expiration. Their score is set to 0, so they never enter the daily Top 10.
• Average return and win rate: the result held to expiration.
• * Contracts with no earnings before expiration have no report, so they are measured at the same point in the holding period.
• The sample is small and mostly from the July–August and October earnings seasons. Past records do not predict future results.

The ranking is built from regular-session option quotes, and quotes are at their widest in the first minutes after the open. So the daily run starts 30 minutes after the 9:30 ET open, at 10:00 ET. It then reads the option chains for every stock on the list and scores each eligible contract, and the list goes live when that finishes. It is updated again in the early afternoon, around 14:50 ET, more than an hour before the close. Free accounts can view the morning update after the market closes.

The Top 10 ranks every eligible contract by score and shows one contract per stock, its highest-scoring one. There is no limit per sector. When one industry’s options carry higher implied volatility (IV), its stocks pay more premium for the risk taken, and several of them can rank near the top at once; in September and October 2026 most rows came from semiconductor and software stocks. The inputs behind a stock’s score usually change gradually, so the same names can stay on the list for weeks. Stocks in one industry often move together, so a list concentrated in one sector spreads risk less than ten unrelated stocks would. How to diversify is your decision.

Common cases: the symbol is not a US ticker as typed, for example a company name or a typo such as APPLE or APPL instead of AAPL, and the page suggests close matches where it can; the stock has options, but none expire in the range being analyzed; contracts exist, but none currently pass the eligibility checks (liquidity, delta range, days to expiration), and where a contract came close the result shows what it missed; or the stock is too newly listed to have enough trading history. A result that shows no contract does not use your analysis allowance.

Without Plus, during US market hours the daily list shows the previous list, labelled with its date. After the market closes, free accounts can view that day’s morning update. Upgrade to Plus to see each update as soon as it goes live, during market hours.

Signal services tell you what to trade. PutFinder does not: it ranks cash-secured put setups every day (with per-ticker covered call analysis alongside) and shows the inputs behind each row, so you can judge it yourself. No alerts, no “trade now” — a ranking you can inspect and disagree with. See how the method works, or the comparison with Option Samurai.

No. PutFinder is a relative ranking heuristic — not a recommendation, return predictor, or win-rate machine. A high score means “ranks near the top of today’s pool,” nothing more. You make every decision.

A tool that scans the option chain across many stocks, applies filters — liquidity, time to expiration, premium, downside buffer, and an earnings check — and ranks the contracts that pass into a shortlist. It narrows thousands of possible put contracts down to a handful worth researching. A research aid, not a signals service or investment advice.

No. PutFinder ranks and documents setups on a premium-vs-risk basis; the decision stays with you.

It is fully cash-secured, so there is no leverage or margin call — but the underlying stock can still fall well below your breakeven, and you can be assigned shares at a loss. It is a defined-capital strategy, not a risk-free one.

Neither is universally better; they sit on opposite sides of a position and are often combined in the wheel. This is descriptive, not a recommendation.

No. The score is a relative ranking heuristic, not a return predictor, valuation, or recommendation. It says a contract sits high in today's pool on a premium-vs-risk basis — it does not forecast a profit. Annualized yield is arithmetic on the current premium, and delta is a model estimate of the option's sensitivity to the stock, not a forecast.

No. We explain what the screen is trying to find and what kinds of things it looks at, but not the exact weights and cut-offs, which are tuned over time. What we do show with every result are the eligibility checks a contract has to pass and the figures behind each row.

Start from a universe of liquid stocks, exclude contracts that fail eligibility checks (too far or too near expiration, illiquid, or stale data), look at each remaining contract on premium-versus-risk grounds — what it pays for the capital and risk involved — and rank them relative to one another. A screener automates that funnel so the same rules run over the full chain every day — the research decision stays with you.

Liquidity. The universe is deliberately limited to liquid US names where bid-ask spreads are tight and fills are realistic — screening illiquid options produces ranks you can’t actually act on.

PutFinder runs every trading day across a curated universe of liquid US stocks and evaluates every eligible cash-secured put contract in those option chains — many hundreds of contracts across strikes and expirations — before ranking the ones that clear the filters into a shortlist.

Six steps, with a screenshot of each one.

Cancelling stops your next renewal — it does not end your access right away, and this page makes no claim about the product's performance.

1. Sign in and open Account

   Sign in at app.putfinder.com, then open Account — either from the account menu, or by going directly to app.putfinder.com/account.

2. Find Cancel my subscription in the Subscription card

   On the Account page, find the Subscription card. Its last row has two buttons: Change plan, update card or view invoices, and Cancel my subscription (during a free trial it reads Cancel trial). Click the cancel button. Change plan, update card or view invoices opens Stripe's billing portal for those tasks only; it does not include cancelling. (During a free trial, or if a payment didn't go through, the first button reads Update card or view invoices.)

   

   The Subscription card on your Account page. Cancel my subscription is the second button at the bottom.

3. Read the short note, if one appears

   A short panel opens below the card. During a free trial it says that cancelling now means you won't be charged and that Plus stays available until the trial's end date; if the last payment didn't go through, it says how to update your card. Choose Continue to cancel to go on. Most paid subscriptions skip this step.

4. Tell us why you're leaving

   We ask why you're leaving. Tap a reason, or choose Skip this question. Some accounts then see a one-time offer; Continue to cancel goes on without it.

5. Confirm on Stripe's page

   You'll go to a secure page hosted by Stripe, our payment provider (billing.stripe.com). Click Cancel subscription to confirm. Your subscription ends at the close of the current billing period — not immediately.

6. Confirm it worked, back on Account

   Return to app.putfinder.com/account. The two buttons are replaced by Manage subscription — that's normal. What changes is the first line of the Subscription card: it now reads "This subscription has been cancelled. Access continues until <date> and will not renew." That sentence is how you know it worked.

   

   After cancelling, the Subscription card's first line confirms it and shows the date access ends.

Cancellation policy: see Pricing → Frequently asked questions.

Last updated October 21, 2026.

Option chains from a market-data provider, with every figure derived from stored raw inputs and a recorded Black–Scholes estimate where a delta is missing. Nothing is fabricated.

Yes — an early one. The /performance page is live now and shows how each day’s ranked picks actually resolved, including a cohort comparison against a zero-skill baseline, updated daily. It’s still a small, early, all-hypothetical sample (marked at the close mid, not real fills) — described honestly, with no performance claims beyond what the settled data shows. A fuller, forward-validated record keeps accumulating.