Trade Ideas vs TC2000: Is Holly AI Worth Five Times the Price?

Trade Ideas and TC2000 are both real-time scanners for US equities, and there the similarity stops. Trade Ideas sells you an AI that generates trade ideas; TC2000 sells you a fast engine for finding your own. The price gap between them is the largest in this category — Trade Ideas Premium costs roughly five times TC2000 Premium — so the question is not which is better but whether what the extra money buys is something you will actually use.

Disclosure: we are a TC2000 affiliate and earn a commission if you subscribe through our links. We are not affiliated with Trade Ideas. The arithmetic below is unflattering to the more expensive product, so it is worth knowing which side we have an interest in — check the figures yourself.

The short answer

Pick Trade Ideas if you want a system to hand you entries and exits, you trade actively enough that a subscription in the hundreds is a rounding error against your P&L, and you specifically want Holly's AI-generated signals or automated execution. Pick TC2000 if you want to define your own criteria, you chart as much as you scan, you trade options, or the cost has to be proportionate to a normal retail account.

For most retail traders, the honest answer is TC2000 — not because Trade Ideas is bad, but because of the arithmetic below.

Pricing: the gap is the story

The numbers deserve a moment. TC2000 Premium is $49.99/month. Trade Ideas Premium is $254/month — $2,136 even on annual billing. That is a difference of roughly $2,450 a year at monthly rates.

Put in trading terms: on a $25,000 account, Trade Ideas Premium has to generate about 12% a year in additional return before it has paid for itself, on top of whatever you would have made without it. On a $10,000 account it needs about 30%. That is not a rhetorical point — it is the actual hurdle rate, and it is the first thing to work out before comparing features.

Trade Ideas does have a genuinely free tier, which TC2000 does not. It is limited to a single chart with no trade execution, so it functions as a permanent demo rather than a workable free product — but it does let you look before spending anything.

What Holly AI actually is

Holly is the reason to consider Trade Ideas, so it deserves a fair description. It is a set of AI-driven strategies that run overnight against the previous session, select the ones that performed best under current conditions, and produce a curated list of trade signals with entries, exits and risk levels for the coming day. Premium adds automated execution through a connected broker, so the signals can be traded without you clicking.

That is a real product, and it has no equivalent in TC2000. If your problem is "I do not know what to trade," Holly is a direct answer to it.

The caveats are equally real. Holly is Premium-only, so the $127 Basic tier does not include the thing most people are buying Trade Ideas for. The strategies are selected on recent performance, which is a form of curve-fitting that works until the regime changes. And handing entry and exit decisions to a system you cannot inspect is a meaningful thing to do with your money — you cannot debug a signal you do not understand.

What TC2000 gives you instead

TC2000's answer to the same problem is the opposite: EasyScan and Personal Criteria Formulas, a scan builder that will express almost any condition you can define, running in real time on Premium and auto-refreshing on Premium Plus. You get no signals. You get an engine, and the criteria are yours.

That is more work and it is also the point — a rule you wrote is a rule you can inspect, adjust, and stop trusting when it stops working. Our EasyScan setups guide and the Qullamaggie scan settings show what building that looks like in practice, and the full TC2000 review covers the charting side.

TC2000 also does things Trade Ideas is not really for: deep charting with drawing tools and multi-monitor layouts, options screening, TSX coverage alongside the US exchanges, and integrated trading with up to $300/year in commission discounts.

Backtesting: neither is the answer

Trade Ideas Premium includes OddsMaker, which tests a strategy's historical performance — a genuine advantage over TC2000, which has no built-in backtesting at all. If you are choosing between the two purely on this, Trade Ideas wins it.

But you should not pay $254/month for backtesting, because backtesting is the one thing in this comparison that is properly free. Our strategy backtester runs a rule set against real daily prices with fees applied and no signup, and it will compare the result against buy-and-hold, a monthly drip-feed, or cash. Start with the golden cross if you want to see the format — the most famous buy signal in technical analysis, and what it actually did.

Which should you pick?

Choose Trade Ideas if you want signals rather than a scanner, you will use Holly and the automated execution, and your account is large enough that $2,136–$3,048 a year is a sensible cost of doing business. Note that means Premium — Basic at $127 has no Holly, which makes it hard to justify against TC2000 Premium at a fifth the price.

Choose TC2000 if you want to build and own your criteria, you chart seriously, you trade options, you need TSX coverage, you are a student, or you simply want a capable real-time scanner without a four-figure annual commitment. The current plans are here, and there is a no-credit-card trial.

Start cheaper, if four figures a year is not on the table yet. Finviz has a free screener that neither of these offers — TC2000 vs Finviz covers that comparison.

Neither, if what you are actually missing is a way to test whether an idea works before you fund it, or a way to know what your existing portfolio has really returned. The first is our free backtester; the second is Pulse. Both cost nothing, and the five kinds of analysis tool explains why a scanner solves neither problem.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Trade Ideas cost compared with TC2000?

Trade Ideas is $127/month for Basic and $254/month for Premium ($1,068 and $2,136 billed annually). TC2000 is $24.99 for Basic, $49.99 for Premium and $99.99 for Premium Plus. Trade Ideas Premium is roughly five times TC2000 Premium.

Do I need Trade Ideas Premium to get Holly AI?

Yes. Holly's AI signals, OddsMaker backtesting and automated execution are Premium-only. The $127 Basic plan is a real-time scanner with charts and in-app trading, but no AI signals — which is what most people are buying Trade Ideas for.

Does TC2000 have anything like Holly?

No. TC2000 produces no signals of its own. It gives you EasyScan and Personal Criteria Formulas to define your own conditions, which is more work and more control. If you want a system to tell you what to buy, TC2000 is not that product.

Is there a free version of either?

Trade Ideas has a permanently free tier limited to one chart with no trade execution. TC2000 has no free tier, but its trial requires no credit card and Worden publishes a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid subscriptions.

Which is better for options traders?

TC2000. It charts and screens options with an optional $9.99/month real-time options feed. Trade Ideas is built around equities scanning and AI signals rather than options analysis.

Bottom line

Trade Ideas is a signal service with a scanner attached; TC2000 is a scanner and charting platform with no opinions. Both are legitimate, and the choice is really about whether you want to buy someone else's process or build your own.

The price makes the decision less balanced than it sounds. At $254/month, Holly has to beat your own judgement by a wide and consistent margin before it clears its own cost — and if you are early enough in your trading to want a system to tell you what to buy, you are probably also early enough that a four-figure annual subscription is the wrong first purchase. TC2000 Premium at $49.99 does the scanning, adds the charting, and leaves the difference in your account. Test your rules for free before you commit to either.