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Research tools

Income screeners

One screener per income structure, each with the filters and columns that actually decide something for that structure — not one generic stock screen pointed at everything.

Each screener below covers one income structure and uses the yield measurement that is correct for it. Start with the structure you are researching rather than with a yield number, because a yield only means something once you know what is behind it.

A research screen, not a recommendation
This is a research screen, not a recommendation and not a ranking of quality. A filter describes what a security is; the sort order is a filter too, not an opinion. A security at the top of a yield sort is the one paying the most relative to its price today, which is as often a market judgement about risk as it is an opportunity.

The screeners

One per income structure, each with its own filters, columns and curated lists.

Each block below names three things. The universe is the set of securities the screen can ever return, so a security outside it is absent rather than rejected. The filters are the questions you can ask of that set. The chips at the foot of a block are curated lists — the same screen with the filters already set, useful when you want to see a cut without learning the controls first.

Preferred series and baby bond screener

Fixed-rate hybrids: preferred series and $25 exchange-traded notes, with the yield basis shown per row because a contractual coupon and a forward estimate co-exist here.

Universe: This screen covers exchange-listed preferred series and exchange-traded debt only — the instruments the database classifies as kind 'preferred' or 'baby_bond'. Common shares, funds that hold baskets of preferreds, and institutional bonds that do not trade on an exchange are not in it. Funds holding preferred baskets are on the preferred stocks page; common equity is in the dividend stock screener.

Filters: Current yield at least, Current yield at most, Price against the $25 issue price, Structure, Issuer sector, Yield basis, Only issuers with more than one live series.

Income fund screener

Funds measured on trailing distributions — the cash actually paid — because a fund's payment moves with its holdings and annualising the last one invents a rate.

Universe: This screen covers the funds in the site's curated fund catalog: index and dividend ETFs, bond ETFs, covered-call funds and closed-end funds. It is not every listed fund — it is the set this site tracks, chosen because each one exists to distribute income. Individual shares, preferred series and BDC shares have their own screeners.

Filters: Fund type, Distribution yield (trailing 12m) at least, Distribution yield (trailing 12m) at most, Payment schedule, What the fund holds, Years of distributions in our history at least.

Private credit (BDC) screener

Listed BDCs — the public window on private middle-market lending — screened on yield, size and payment record, with an honest account of what the payout ratio can and cannot measure here.

Universe: This screen covers listed business development companies from the site's curated BDC catalog. Non-traded and private BDCs, interval funds, and direct-lending partnerships are not listed securities and are not in this database at all. Funds that hold baskets of BDCs sit in the income fund screener instead.

Filters: Distribution yield at least, Distribution yield at most, Payout ratio at most, Rising years within our history at least, Years of payments in our history at least, Minimum market cap, Payment schedule.

Real asset income screener

Rent, tariffs and royalties — REITs, MLPs, net-lease landlords and royalty vehicles, with the structure named on every row because it decides the tax form you receive.

Universe: This screen covers equity and mortgage REITs, master limited partnerships, and the royalty trusts and minerals companies in the site's curated catalog. It is drawn by structure rather than by sector, so a company that owns property but is not organised as a REIT will not appear, and a mortgage REIT — which owns loans against property rather than property — will. Funds holding baskets of these are in the income fund screener.

Filters: Distribution yield at least, Distribution yield at most, Structure, Sector, Exclude partnerships that issue a K-1, Minimum market cap, Payment schedule.

In the Dividend Stocks section

Dividend stock screener

US-listed common stocks and REITs by forward or trailing yield, size, sector, payment schedule, rising years and payout ratio.

Universe: Common stocks and REITs. It is kept in its own section rather than duplicated here, so no two screeners on this site cover the same securities.

Why one screener per structure

A generic stock screener asks questions about companies: how big, how profitable, how cheap, how much of a dividend. Those fields are the same whatever you point them at, which is why every finance site can ship the same screen. They are also the wrong fields for most income, because the thing that decides whether a payment repeats is different for every structure.

A preferred series is decided by its coupon, its price against par and its call terms. A fund is decided by what its distribution is made of and what it costs to run. A BDC is decided by whether its borrowers keep paying. A royalty vehicle is decided by production and depletion. So this site runs a separate screener for each of them, each one naming the yield basis it uses, and each one stating in plain language what it cannot see.

All five screeners read the same stored data: prices from the daily quote job, individual payments from the dividend history job, and the derived yields, cadences and streaks computed from those. Nothing is fetched while you are reading, and nothing is estimated to fill a gap.

Worth reading before you use any of them: a screen is only as complete as the database behind it, and parts of every universe are deliberately held back — a security that has stopped trading, one with no stored price, one whose payments are too irregular for a rate to describe. Each screener prints those counts above its own table, so the number of rows on screen always sits next to the size of the set it was drawn from.

What every screener excludes, and says so

Nothing on this page is a live quote. Prices are the most recent stored observation from the daily quote job, and every yield is computed against that stored price. Securities that have stopped trading — redeemed, matured, delisted or acquired — keep their history in the database but are excluded from every screen, because a vendor keeps quoting the last trade that ever happened and annualising against it invents a yield.

Securities whose last twelve months are dominated by a one-off payment, or that have too few payments on record to establish a rate, are marked 'irregular' by the compute job and are excluded from every screen here. The figure they would produce describes a single event rather than an income stream.

Each screener prints those counts above its table, so the number of rows you are looking at is always set against the size of the universe it was drawn from.

Data as of Aug 25, 2026.

Questions about these screeners

Why are there five screeners instead of one?
Because a single screen would have to pick one yield definition and apply it to instruments that do not share one. Annualising a baby bond's first stub payment understates it; annualising a covered-call fund's last distribution overstates it; annualising a royalty trust's variable monthly payment describes recent oil prices rather than a rate. Splitting by structure lets each screen use the measurement that is correct for it and say which one it is using.
Do these screeners rank securities by quality?
No. Every table is a research screen. A filter describes what a security is, and the sort order is a filter as well, not an opinion. Nothing on this site recommends buying, selling or holding anything.
How current are the numbers?
Prices are the most recent stored observation from the daily quote job, and every yield is computed against that stored price by the compute job that runs after it. Each page carries its own as-of stamp, and if either job has missed its schedule the page says so instead of presenting the figures as current.
Why does a security I expected to see not appear?
Four reasons account for almost all of it, and each screener prints the counts. The security may no longer trade — redeemed, matured, delisted or acquired — in which case it is excluded from every live table. There may be no stored price. Its payments may be too irregular for any rate to be computed, which happens when a one-off distribution dominates the last twelve months. Or it may simply belong to a different structure and therefore to a different screener.

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