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Best Dividend Screeners

The best dividend screeners help investors find sustainable income, avoid yield traps, and monitor dividend changes efficiently.

Dividends

Table of Contents

A good dividend screener helps you do three things fast: filter for income (yield, payout ratio, dividend growth), avoid landmines (unsafe payouts, shrinking cash flow), and build a watchlist you can keep updating without starting over.


Below are five of the strongest dividend screeners for U.S. stocks—each built for a different type of dividend investor.

1. Stock Rover

Stock Rover is one of the most comprehensive dividend screening platforms for investors who prioritize fundamentals over headline yield. It allows users to screen deeply into the financial drivers behind dividends, including free cash flow, payout ratios, margins, balance sheet strength, and long-term performance history.

Where Stock Rover excels is flexibility. Investors can layer dividend metrics with profitability, valuation, and growth filters, then rank and compare candidates across dozens of variables. This makes it especially useful for building and maintaining a long-term dividend watchlist rather than chasing short-term yield spikes.

For dividend investors who focus on quality, sustainability, and growth consistency, Stock Rover functions as an all-in-one research and screening environment, reducing the need to jump between multiple tools.

Stock Rover: Free tier; paid plans ~$8–$28/mo (billed annually).

2. Simply Safe Dividends

Simply Safe Dividends is built specifically for investors whose primary concern is dividend safety. Its core value proposition is helping users avoid dividend cuts by monitoring payout risk, earnings coverage, and financial stress indicators over time.

Instead of offering endless filters, the platform centers its workflow around safety scores and ongoing monitoring. This makes it less about discovering new names and more about protecting existing income streams from unexpected deterioration.

For investors who rely on dividends for income—and want early warning signals rather than surprises—Simply Safe Dividends is one of the most focused tools available.

Simply Safe Dividends: ~$39/mo (annual billing).

3. Dividend.com

Dividend.com is designed for investors who want a dividend-first research experience. The platform emphasizes dividend yield, consistency, ratings, and income-oriented lists, making it easy to screen and compare dividend-paying stocks, REITs, and funds.

Its Premium tier unlocks deeper screening capabilities, model portfolios, dividend calendars, and proprietary ratings that keep the research process centered on income rather than broader market metrics.

If your strategy revolves around building and managing a dividend-focused portfolio—and you prefer a workflow that stays tightly aligned with income selection—Dividend.com offers a purpose-built experience compared to general market screeners.

Dividend.com: Typically ~$30–$60+/mo for premium features.

4. FINVIZ

FINVIZ is best known for speed. It’s one of the fastest ways to generate a dividend stock list using yield, payout ratio, valuation, and performance filters—especially for investors who want a capable free option.

While FINVIZ includes dividend metrics, it functions primarily as a filtering engine, not a dividend research platform. It does not assess dividend safety or provide income-specific monitoring, but it excels at quickly narrowing a universe when you already know your criteria.

For experienced investors who want rapid list-building and technical or fundamental cross-filtering, FINVIZ remains a highly efficient tool.

FINVIZ Elite: ~$39/mo or ~$299/yr.

Bottom Line

The best dividend screener depends on what you’re optimizing for:

  • Stock Rover is best for deep fundamental screening and long-term dividend research.

  • Simply Safe Dividends is best if assessing dividend safety and cut risk is your top priority.

  • Dividend.com works well for dividend-focused lists, ratings, and income-oriented screening.

  • FINVIZ is excellent for fast filtering—especially if you want a strong free option with flexible criteria.


Tracking Dividend Increases & Changes in Real-time

Screeners help you find dividend stocks, but once you have a list, another challenge begins: staying aware of dividend changes.

That’s where an event-aware layer can add value. Tools like LevelFields don’t replace traditional screeners; they help supplement them by tracking real-time, market-moving developments tied to dividend behavior:

  • dividend increases 
  • special dividends
  • dividend cuts or dividend freezes
  • earnings outcomes that affect coverage
  • other catalysts that often precede sustained price moves

For investors who want to combine traditional screening with proactive signals, this kind of event context can help you spot risks and opportunities before they show up on price screens again — without having to re-run manual filters every day.

Often, dividend growth is more important than the dividend itself. For that, LevelFields is exceptional at tracking thousands of dividend changes. Users can set alerts and filter by sector, industry, company financials, and dividend event type. They can also set dividend alerts for existing holdings to monitor dividend changes without effort and without having to read any news.

See the Biggest Dividend Increases Last Month

FAQs about Dividend Screeners

What is the most successful stock screener?

There is no single “most successful” stock screener—success depends on what you’re screening for.

  • Fundamental investors tend to succeed with screeners that focus on cash flow, balance sheet strength, and earnings durability.

  • Dividend investors need tools that screen for payout safety, dividend growth history, and consistency, not just yield.

  • Short-term traders benefit most from screeners that surface market-moving events, not just static ratios.

The screeners that perform best over time are the ones that narrow the opportunity to high-probability setups, rather than dumping hundreds of tickers into a watchlist. That’s why many investors pair traditional screeners with event-driven tools that highlight why a stock is moving and what typically happens after similar situations.

What is the best dividend tracker?

The best dividend tracker is one that does more than log payments.

A strong dividend tracker should:

  • Track announcements, not just payments

  • Flag dividend increases, cuts, and suspensions

  • Show historical dividend growth, not just current yield

  • Connect dividend changes to price behavior

Most basic trackers only update after dividends are paid. More advanced tools track dividend changes at announcement, when stocks often react first—giving investors both the price move and the higher payout.

How do you check dividend details?

Dividend details can be checked through:

  • Company investor relations pages

  • SEC filings (10-Ks, 10-Qs, 8-Ks)

  • Brokerage dividend calendars

  • Dividend tracking platforms

Key details to review:

  • Dividend amount

  • Payment frequency

  • Ex-dividend date

  • Payout ratio

  • Dividend growth history

For active investors, the most important moment is the announcement, not the payment date. That’s when markets reprice expectations—especially after dividend increases or unexpected changes.

How do you screen high-dividend stocks?

Screening high-dividend stocks starts with avoiding yield traps.

Core filters typically include:

  • Sustainable payout ratio

  • Positive free cash flow

  • Stable or growing earnings

  • Consistent dividend history

High yield alone is not a signal—it’s often a warning. Many experienced investors screen for dividend growth and balance-sheet strength first, then look at yield second. Others layer in event-based filters, such as recent dividend increases, which historically attract incremental buying interest.

What is the 4% dividend rule?

The 4% dividend rule is a retirement income guideline, not a stock-picking strategy.

It suggests that retirees can withdraw roughly 4% of their portfolio annually without a high risk of running out of money over a long retirement. The rule is based on long-term market data and assumes diversified assets—not individual dividend stocks.

Importantly, the 4% rule does not mean you should only buy stocks yielding 4%. Many dividend strategies combine lower-yield, high-growth dividends with capital appreciation and reinvestment.

What is the 10-11-12 dividend strategy?

The “10-11-12” dividend strategy refers to a rule-based income screen, often used by dividend growth investors.

While definitions vary, it generally targets combinations of:

  • 10%+ dividend growth

  • 11+ years of dividend payments

  • 12%+ total return or payout consistency benchmarks

The core idea is simple: prioritize growth, reliability, and sustainability over headline yield. Investors using this framework often focus on dividend increases as confirmation of financial strength—especially when increases are announced during uncertain market conditions.

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