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Being a successful stock picker isnโ€™t impossible, but it sure ainโ€™t easy.

Professional stock picking and portfolio management are like many other professions: You donโ€™t pick it up in a day. It takes years of education, practice, and experience to become competent at itโ€”and even after all that, you still need to put in the time to keep your skills sharp.

Only a handful of people have the time, aptitude, and interest to become skilled and utterly independent stock pickers. But most of us simply donโ€™tโ€”we either need a helping hand, or a lot more. And thatโ€™s why many investors gravitate toward the likes of Seeking Alpha and The Motley Fool.

Seeking Alpha and The Motley Fool are two of the best-known investing resources youโ€™ll come across. They offer a wealth of information for freeโ€”but at their hearts are powerful paid subscription products that scores of investors rely on when building their portfolios.

And if youโ€™re here spending a little time with me, that means youโ€™re wondering which of the two services makes the most sense for you.

Today, Iโ€™ll pit The Motley Fool vs. Seeking Alpha. Iโ€™ll explain what each companyโ€™s core services provide to investors, how much they cost, where they fall shortโ€”and most importantly, who can get the most out of them. You see, all of the services Iโ€™m about to discuss are rated extremely well in my book, but you wonโ€™t maximize their value unless you pick the best fit for you.

What Is Seeking Alpha?


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Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha is a crowdsourced platform for investors, by investors. Rather than just reading opinions from โ€œsell-sideโ€ analysts, the Seeking Alpha website provides access to a variety of views from thousands of professional and amateur contributors alike. It also contains a wealth of other vital information for investors, including fundamental data, stock screeners, breaking news, corporate conference call transcripts, and more.

Seeking Alpha does have a free Basic tier that simply requires an email registration. With that, you get a few perksโ€”the ability to look up stock prices and Seeking Alpha charts, email alerts for stocks, Wall Street equity ratings, and even limited access to some of SAโ€™s contributor content.

Iโ€™ve used the free side of Seeking Alpha several times, and if you have no money, itโ€™s better than nothing. But to get the most of Seeking Alpha, you need to dive into one of its core paid plans: Seeking Alpha Premium and Seeking Alpha Pro.

  • Seeking Alpha Premium is an economically priced plan that offers just about everything that intermediate and advanced investors could want, whether they prefer to do their own research or receive stock recommendations. If you navigate across our site, youโ€™ll see that Seeking Alpha Premium is among our top choices in several investing service categories.
  • Seeking Alpha Pro is a costlier and higher-end product, primarily geared toward advanced investors, that includes everything within Premium, as well as exclusive content and trading ideas.

Letโ€™s dive further into what you get with these two foundational Seeking Alpha plans:

What Comes With a Seeking Alpha Paid Plan?


Hereโ€™s what you get from each of Seeking Alphaโ€™s two core plans: Premium and Pro.

Seeking Alpha Premium


seeking alpha signup
Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha Premium naturally comes with all the features of the Basic plan, while unlocking all Premium content and adding in a host of other benefits.

With a subscription to Seeking Alpha Premium, you can expect the following:

  • Unlimited access to Premium content
    • Recordings and transcripts of earnings and other event conference calls
    • Financial statements (with multiple views) going back up to 10 years
    • Performance tracking
    • Alerts about upgrades and downgrades on stocks in your portfolio
    • Premium investing ideas
    • And more
  • Stock Quant Ratings
    • Compare a stockโ€™s value, growth, profitability, and more to its peers
  • Seeking Alpha Author Ratings
    • See what SA contributors think about potential stock picks
  • Factor Scorecards for stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and ETFs
    • Enjoy easy-to-understand grades (A+ through F) detailing value, profitability, growth, momentum, and EPS (earnings per share) revisions.
    • Iโ€™ve worked with a number of data providers that only provide net income and EPS figures for REITs, and those figures donโ€™t tell the whole profitability story for real estate stocks. But Seeking Alpha provides data and ratings for funds from operations (FFO) and adjusted funds from operations (AFFO), which are much more appropriate metrics.
  • Exclusive stock and ETF Dividend Grades
    • Dividend Growth Grade
    • Dividend Safety Grade
    • Dividend Yield Grade
    • Dividend Consistency Grade
  • Seeking Alpha author and article performance
    • See which authors tend to make the most accurate predictions
  • Ad-light experience
  • Personalized alerts
  • Synchronize with brokerage accounts (Basic members have to manually enter individual stocks to track)
    • View holdings across several brokerages to track your total account value and gain useful insights

A Seeking Alpha Premium account has much deeper research capabilities than a Basic account. For instance, Basic members might be able to read the same article as a Premium memberโ€”but they might not be able to see how the author rated the stock, nor could they see how dependable the author really is. (Also, that same article will become unavailable after 10 days if youโ€™re a Basic member, whereas Premium members can continue to view them.)

Moreover, if you want to use Seeking Alpha for stock recommendation purposes, you have to go with Seeking Alpha Premium, which includes ratings and grades.

Seeking Alpha Pro


Seeking Alpha Premium Pro
Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha Pro doesnโ€™t just give you moreโ€”it also helps you sort through the best of whatโ€™s already there. So it includes not only Seeking Alpha Premium features, but also:

  • Exclusive access to Top Ideas
    • Top Ideas are โ€œhigh-convictionโ€ theses by some of Seeking Alphaโ€™s top in-house experts
  • 4-6 hand-picked investing ideas delivered daily
  • Exclusive email alerts, newsletters, and interviews
  • Seeking Alpha Pro Idea screener to save you time
    • Search by industry, theme, company size, investment style, country, and more
  • Top-shelf customer service
  • Exclusive access to short-selling ideas
  • Ad-free experience

Seeking Alpha Pro is a powerful subscription productโ€”one ideal for active, high-net-worth (HNW) investors. If youโ€™re a more casual investor, Seeking Alpha Premium is likely the better fit for you. Thatโ€™s especially evident when it comes to the cost.

How Much Do Seeking Alpha’s Paid Plans Cost?


As mentioned before, Seeking Alpha has a free Basic plan that gives you limited access to their resourcesโ€”all you need to do is register with an email address.

For Seeking Alpha Premium and Pro alike, you get a 7-day free trial, and youโ€™ll receive a reminder email a few days before the free trial is set to end. After that, annual pricing looks like this:

  • Seeking Alpha Premium: $269 per year for your first year, $299 per year thereafter
  • Seeking Alpha Pro: $2,400 per year

Again, most investors can get more than enough bang out of their buck with Seeking Alpha Premium. However, if youโ€™re looking to put more time in the markets and become a more active investor, consider a Seeking Alpha Pro account.

Related: Seeking Alpha Premium + Pro Review

What Is The Motley Fool?


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Motely Fool

The Motley Fool has helped millions of investors outperform the stock market with a variety of investment recommendation services.

The Motley Fool has a long and sterling history within the investment recommendations community. It started out as an investment newsletter in 1993, and a year later, the founders brokered an online content deal with AOL, where The Foolโ€™s content lived until moving to its own site in 1997.

The company has since gained acclaim through Fool.com, its Motley Fool stock picking services (which include Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor and Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers), and even its CAPS Communityโ€”a popular message board where people go to share investment ideas.

What Is Motley Fool Stock Advisor?


motley fool stock advisor signup no price
Motley Fool

Motley Fool Stock Advisor, started in 2002, is the companyโ€™s flagship stock picking service. It does the grunt work of researching stocks for you. The serviceโ€™s advisors usually lean on well-known, not-too-volatile companies that they believe can beat the stock market. Each pick has a long term bent, with an expected holding period of at least five years.

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service provides monthly stock picks from two investing teams: Team Everlasting and Team Rule Breakers. Per Motley Fool, Team Everlasting looks for:

  • โ€œHigh-quality companies that have the sustained potential to keep growing and beat the overall market over extremely long periodsโ€
  • โ€œFounder-led companiesโ€
  • โ€œCompanies employing a strong corporate cultureโ€
  • โ€œBusinesses that have built a strong enough bond with their customers that they command substantial pricing power and have identifiable proprietary advantagesโ€
  • โ€œCash-rich, low-debt companiesโ€

And Team Rule Breakers looks for:

  • โ€œFirst-mover companies in emerging, but important industries that have become the top dogs in their nichesโ€
  • โ€œCompanies with sustainable competitive advantagesโ€
  • โ€œSizable past increases in share pricesโ€
  • โ€œCompanies with good management teamsโ€
  • โ€œBusinesses with strong consumer appeal that have built up brand awarenessโ€
  • โ€œStocks that are grossly overvalued according to mainstream financial media sourcesโ€

What Comes With a Motley Fool Stock Advisor Subscription?


The Motley Foolโ€™s Stock Advisor service offers much more than stock picksโ€”it also provides community and investment resources. The whole package includes:

  1. โ€œStarter Stocksโ€ recommendations to serve as a foundation to your portfolio for new and experienced investors
  2. Two new stock picks each month
  3. 10 โ€œBest Buys Nowโ€ chosen from over 300 stocks the service watches
  4. Investing resources, including the stock picking serviceโ€™s library of stock recommendations
  5. Access to a community of investors engaged in outperforming the market and talking shop

How Much Does Motley Fool Stock Advisor Cost?


The Stock Advisor stock picking service offers discounted introductory rates to new users. That discount has varied over time, but typically, itโ€™s substantially lower than what current members paid when they renewed their membership.

Currently, Stock Advisorโ€™s discounted new-member rate is $99 per year. That shifts to $199 annually after the first year.

Also worth noting: All annual Motley Fool Stock Advisor subscriptions come with a full membership-fee-back guarantee.

Related: Motley Fool Review: Is Stock Advisor Worth It? [Our Take]

Do you want to get serious about saving and planning for retirement? Sign up for Retire With Riley, Young and the Invested’s free retirement planning newsletter.

What Is Motley Fool Rule Breakers?


motley fool rule breakers sign up 1
Motley Fool

Remember โ€œTeam Rule Breakersโ€ mentioned above? Well, Motley Fool Rule Breakers only draws from that teamโ€™s recommendations, preferring stocks that have massive growth potential. In some cases, these companies are at the forefront of emerging industriesโ€”in others, theyโ€™re disrupting the status quo in long-established industries.

This stock subscription service doesnโ€™t fixate on whatโ€™s currently popular, but instead always looks for the next big stock ahead. That means these Motley Fool picks have the potential to be nauseatingly volatile โ€ฆ but also the potential to rocket higher exponentially.

For example, Rule Breakers delivered several stock picks that tapped the power of e-commerce long before many other outlets did. Nowadays, Rule Breakersโ€™ emerging industries of focus include the likes of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

What Comes With a Motley Fool Rule Breakers Subscription?


Like with Stock Advisor, a Motley Fool Rule Breakers subscription does include stock picksโ€”but also other important resources. All told, you can expect:

  • A list of Starter Stocksโ€”including their โ€œessential Rule Breakersโ€โ€”to begin your investing journey
  • Top-10 rankings of timely buys from the entire Rule Breakers portfolio
  • Two new stock picks each month
  • Investing resources, including the stock picking serviceโ€™s library of stock recommendations
  • Access to a community of investors engaged in outperforming the market and talking shop

How Much Does Motley Fool Rule Breakers Cost?


Similarly to Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers offers a discounted introductory rate to new users.

Currently, you can subscribe to Rule Breakers for $99 for the first year. After that, youโ€™ll renew at the regular $299 annual rate.

And all annual Rule Breakers subscriptions come with a 30-day full membership-fee-back guarantee.

Related: Motley Fool Rule Breakers Review [Picking Growth Stocks]

How Have Seeking Alpha’s Stock Picks Performed?


Seeking Alphaโ€™s Premium and Pro services lean much more toward research than stock recommendations. However, Strong Buy picks from its quant ratingsโ€”which factor in value, growth, momentum, profitability, and EPS revisionsโ€”have greatly outperformed the market over time.

According to Seeking Alpha, $10,000 invested in Top Quant Rating stocks at the start of 2010 would have grown to $222,058 by early Januaryโ€”roughly five times better than the $45,181 sum that wouldโ€™ve resulted from the S&P 500โ€™s performance.

All told, that comes to an average annualized return of more than 25%!

seeking alpha premium pro quant performance jan2024
Seeking Alpha

How Have The Motley Fool Stock Advisor Stock Ideas Performed?


According to Motley Fool, 175 Motley Fool Stock Advisor stock recommendations have historically delivered 100%-plus returns. And since inception in February 2002, the service has returned 671% through April 8, 2024, when you calculate the average return of all its stock recommendations over the past 22 years.

Comparatively, the S&P 500 only had a 152% return during that same timeframe.

stock advisor vs sp500 apr 8 2024
Motley Fool

Examples of Stock Advisor recommendations include Disney (DIS, +6,123%), Amazon (AMZN, +23,539%), and Netflix (+30,073%). (All returns are from their original recommendation through April 8, 2024.)

How Have The Motley Fool Rule Breakers Stock Recommendations Performed?


Rule Breakers, since the productโ€™s inception in 2004, has delivered a 245% return through Dec. 7, 2023, more than doubling the S&P 500โ€™s performance since thenโ€”and beating many leading money managers on Wall Street. And impressively, 141 of their recommendations have gone on to at least double in value.

rule breakers vs sp500 dec 7 2023
Motley Fool

Examples of Rule Breakers picks that have taken off include Shopify (SHOP, +3,317%), MercadoLibre (MELI, +10,517%), and Tesla (TSLA, +11,273%). (All returns are from their original recommendation through Dec. 7, 2023.)

And one note about the data for all of these subscription products: Past performance doesnโ€™t guarantee future gains. While Motley Fool and Seeking Alpha both have laudable track records, relying on these or any other stock advisory services ultimately involves some level of risk.

Do you want to get serious about saving and planning for retirement? Sign up for Retire With Riley, Young and the Invested’s free retirement planning newsletter.

Is Seeking Alpha Worth the Money?


A Seeking Alpha Premium subscription is absolutely worth the money as long as you have even a modest nest egg to invest.

What do I mean? Well, letโ€™s say you have just $500 to invest. If Seeking Alpha costs $167 a year* ($239 a year thereafter), nearly half your investment funds are going to what Iโ€™d call โ€œresearch and managementโ€ costs. Thatโ€™s simply too high as a percentage.

But if youโ€™re at least dealing with a few thousand dollarsโ€”and especially if you already have more or plan to contribute more in the futureโ€”Seeking Alpha offers a compelling value proposition, on multiple fronts.

Thatโ€™s because Seeking Alpha Premium makes it simple to find, evaluate, and monitor stocks in your portfolioโ€”it can do virtually everything except execute trades, which youโ€™ll need a stock app to do. It also has a leg up on many other data platforms in that it includes more REIT-specific data, and you can even evaluate ETF fundamentals through the platform.

But if youโ€™d prefer to just lean on stock recommendations, you can always just screen for Seeking Alphaโ€™s Strong Buy quant picks and rely on them instead. Itโ€™s not quite the same as a traditional stock picking serviceโ€”where one advisor or advisor team explains in narrative form why theyโ€™re recommending certain stocksโ€”but Seeking Alphaโ€™s picks still have an admirable track record.

I think intermediate and advanced traders can get the most out of Seeking Alphaโ€™s Premium tools. While Seeking Alphaโ€™s Pro benefits are alluring, most everyday investors canโ€™t foot that billโ€”itโ€™s only worth it if you have tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest with and want to take a very active role in your portfolio management.

Is The Motley Fool Legitimate?


In a word: Yes. The Motley Fool is a legitimate business, and both Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers are successful, long-running investment services boasting scores of satisfied subscribers.

In fact, I can tell you a little about Stock Advisor firsthand.

In grad school, I turned roughly $10,000 worth of contributions into $25,000 by investing in stocks either recommended by Stock Advisor, or that I learned about through the Motley Fool’s CAPS Community discussion boardโ€”one of the benefits of subscribing to one of the Foolโ€™s services.

I followed the stocks regularly, and I always looked forward to reading the stock analysis for each recommendation. The Foolโ€™s analysts laid out a compelling buy caseโ€”and clearly, the market agreed.

Simply subscribing to The Motley Fool kept me more interested in the financial markets more broadly. Even that aspect helped turn me into a more educated, informed investor.

Just note that The Motley Foolโ€™s Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers services are fundamentally different from what youโ€™re getting with Seeking Alpha Premium + Pro. Which brings us to our conclusion โ€ฆ

Which Service Should You Consider for Picking Investments in the Stock Market?


Seeking Alpha and The Motley Fool are both highly respected, trustworthy stock subscription services. And they both offer an abundance of resources to help you choose the best individual stocks to invest in.

Fortunately, theyโ€™re also fundamentally different productsโ€”making a decision pitting The Motley Fool vs. Seeking Alpha a lot easier than youโ€™d think.

Seeking Alpha Premium and Pro are more geared toward discovering stock ideas on your own and conducting your own due diligence through robust stock research and analysis. While you can use its rankings and grades like recommendations, thereโ€™s no single analyst or analyst team providing the theses for these stocksโ€”youโ€™re provided with quantitative grades, and you can read research about these stocks from the Seeking Alpha contributor community. That research, by the way, can include not just bull cases, but bear cases, too, which can be a valuable perspective to have when youโ€™re trying to figure out what kind of risks youโ€™re taking on.

The Motley Foolโ€™s Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, on the other hand, are recommendation-focused. You are paying primarily for stock picks, which include detailed analyses of the companies that are mentioned. While you do have access to some outside commentaryโ€”via The Motley Foolโ€™s CAPS Communityโ€”itโ€™s not quite as extensive as the Seeking Alpha network. And most importantly, youโ€™re not buying tools that can help you discover opportunities or conduct research on stocks outside of the Foolโ€™s recommendations.

In a nutshell, Seeking Alpha is a better fit for more self-starting intermediate and advanced investors who want to explore the investment universe and find their own opportunities. The Motley Fool, on the other hand, is better for beginning to intermediate investors who simply want to learn about stocks with market-beating potential so they can put them to use in their own portfolios.

Seeking Alpha offers a true 7-day free trial, whereas you have to pay for The Motley Fool up front but get a 30-day membership-fee-back window to request a refund. Still, both offer a way to sample what each service has to offer before fully committing your money.

Whichever side you choose, though, rest well knowing youโ€™re receiving an honest-to-goodness value.

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About the Author

Riley Adams is the Founder and CEO of WealthUpdate and Young and the Invested. He is a licensed CPA who worked at Google as a Senior Financial Analyst overseeing advertising incentive programs for the company’s largest advertising partners and agencies. Previously, he worked as a utility regulatory strategy analyst at Entergy Corporation for six years in New Orleans.

His work has appeared in major publications like Kiplinger, MarketWatch, MSN, TurboTax, Nasdaq, Yahoo! Finance, The Globe and Mail, and CNBC’s Acorns. Riley currently holds areas of expertise in investing, taxes, real estate, cryptocurrencies and personal finance where he has been cited as an authoritative source in outlets like CNBC, Time, NBC News, APM’s Marketplace, HuffPost, Business Insider, Slate, NerdWallet, Investopedia, The Balance and Fast Company.

Riley holds a Masters of Science in Applied Economics and Demography from Pennsylvania State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Finance from Centenary College of Louisiana.