OpenInsider finds the insider's buy. The work is finding who agrees. Ask a room of traders where they check insider buying and most will say OpenInsider — a free Form 4 screener that has served cluster buys, $25K+ CEO purchases, and per-insider histories for years, no account required. HoldingsIntel treats that same Form 4 record as testimony to be corroborated: its Alignment view finds the quarters where insider buying and accumulation by the 551 largest institutional managers land on the same stock, and its per-stock verdict weighs both against activist and congressional filings.
We build HoldingsIntel. Every number below is sourced and dated so you can check it — and where OpenInsider is the better tool, the table says so.
HoldingsIntel vs. OpenInsider
OpenInsider finds the insider's buy. The work is finding who agrees.
Ask a room of traders where they check insider buying and most will say OpenInsider — a free Form 4 screener that has served cluster buys, $25K+ CEO purchases, and per-insider histories for years, no account required. HoldingsIntel treats that same Form 4 record as testimony to be corroborated: its Alignment view finds the quarters where insider buying and accumulation by the 551 largest institutional managers land on the same stock, and its per-stock verdict weighs both against activist and congressional filings.
| Dimension | HoldingsIntel | OpenInsider |
|---|---|---|
| Form 4 insider trades | buys and sells, streamed from EDGAR as filed | real-time Form 4 data, comprehensively covered |
| Screener depth | feed with search and date filters | the category's deepest free screener, from cluster buys to per-insider drill-downs |
| Price | free tier; $19–49/mo for the full suite | free, no account required |
| Prebuilt views | a small set of curated feeds | a long menu of one-click screens maintained for years |
| Insider buys meeting institutional buys | Alignment view: same-quarter overlap of Form 4 buying and 13F accumulation1 | not covered — Form 4 is the whole dataset, by design |
| The institutional record itself | 11 years of 13F history across the 551 largest managers, every position conviction-rated | not covered |
| Activist and congressional context | 13D/13G stakes and STOCK Act trades on the same stock page | not offered |
1Alignment pairs Form 4 purchases with 13F accumulation reported for the same calendar quarter; both come from SEC filings, so the overlap is checkable line by line.
An insider buy is one witness
A CEO writing a personal check for company stock is testimony worth hearing — insiders know things. But one witness can be wrong, early, or simply rebalancing. The buys that deserve the most attention are corroborated ones: the same quarter the CFO bought, disciplined funds were adding, or an activist crossed 5%. OpenInsider gives you the first witness in full detail — the others file different forms, outside its scope. HoldingsIntel's Alignment view runs the corroboration automatically — every stock where Form 4 buying and institutional accumulation landed together — and the per-stock verdict adds activist and congressional filings to the record.
Where OpenInsider is the better tool
As a pure Form 4 instrument, OpenInsider is close to unimprovable for the price of nothing: real-time data, a screener with genuine depth, prebuilt views that encode years of insider-trading craft — cluster buys, big officer purchases, top buys of the week — and drill-downs by sector, ticker, and individual insider. If your process begins and ends with insider filings, it is the sharper tool and it is free.
Bottom line
Choose OpenInsider
Insider filings are your dataset, and you want the deepest free screener on them — filters, prebuilt views, per-insider history.
Choose HoldingsIntel
Insider buys are evidence you want corroborated — checked against institutional accumulation, activist stakes, and congressional trades before you act.
References
- SEC EDGAR Form 4 filings — primary source for all insider-trade data
- SEC EDGAR full-text 13F filing system — primary source for institutional holdings
- OpenInsider public site — free, no-account access confirmed, July 2026
Questions traders actually ask
Can HoldingsIntel replace OpenInsider as an insider-trading screener?
Not row for row. OpenInsider's screener is deeper — more filters, more prebuilt views, per-insider pages — and it is free. HoldingsIntel's insider feed covers the same Form 4 filings but is built for a different job: putting each buy next to the institutional, activist, and congressional record on the same stock. A common pattern: screen there, check the context here.
What is HoldingsIntel's Alignment view, and does OpenInsider offer anything like it?
Alignment surfaces stocks where insider buying and institutional accumulation landed in the same quarter — two independent groups with disclosure obligations moving the same direction. OpenInsider doesn't attempt it, because it would need the 13F dataset, which sits outside a Form 4 screener's scope. It is the main thing you'd come here for that a free insider tool can't do.
OpenInsider is free — what am I paying HoldingsIntel for?
The corroboration layer, not the insider data. Form 4 filings are public and free everywhere, including here. The paid tiers ($19–49/mo) buy the 13F engine around them: conviction ratings on 551 managers' positions, the Alignment view, multi-quarter history, and the four-source verdict per stock.
More comparisons
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