Covered Call Screener vs Covered Call Alerts: What Is the Difference?

Published Oct 26, 2026

People who sell covered calls or cash-secured puts often look for two kinds of tools: an options screener and options alerts. They use the same ingredients, strikes, expirations and returns, but they answer different questions. This article explains the difference, and where OpScout sits.

A screener answers "what matches now?"

A screener takes a set of filters, for example calls out of the money by at least some distance, expiring within a range of days, with at least some return, and lists every contract that matches at the moment you run it. Many screeners scan many stocks at once and let you sort the results.

A screener is useful when you want to look around:

• to see what is available across many stocks;
• to compare strikes and expirations side by side;
• to get a feel for how premiums vary.

What a screener does not do is keep watching. Its results describe one moment. If nothing matches when you look, you have to come back and run it again, and a contract that matched for an hour while you were away is never seen.

An alert answers "tell me when it matches"

An alert starts from rules you have already decided on, for a stock you have already chosen, and keeps checking them. When the rules are met, it tells you.

An alert is useful when you know what you are waiting for:

• a call on a stock you hold, at a strike and expiration you would accept, once it pays at least your minimum return;
• a put on a stock you would be willing to own, far enough below the price, once the premium is worth it to you;
• many such rules at once, on many stocks, without opening a chain for each one every day.

What an alert does not do is show you the whole market. It looks only where you told it to look.

Using both

The two fit together. A screener can help you decide which stocks, strikes and expirations interest you; alerts then keep watching those rules, so you do not need to come back to the screener every day. Neither tool decides for you. Each only applies the rules it is given.

How OpScout's alerts work

OpScout is an alerts service. A Covered Call or Cash-Secured Put Monitor holds one stock and your rules: a strike rule, an expiration rule, a minimum annualized return and, optionally, implied volatility, in-the-money probability and stock filters. Covered Call alerts · Cash-Secured Put alerts.

On each check, OpScout:

1. sends your rules to an options-screening service operated by a licensed data source, which returns the contracts that match;
2. reads each returned contract's current bid and ask;
3. works out each contract's premium and returns itself, at the bid, and applies your minimum annualized return again to its own figure;
4. ranks the matches, the highest annualized return at the bid first, and records an Alert naming the first and counting the rest.

So each check is a screen run for you, with OpScout's own return calculation on top, repeated on a schedule.

The limits, honestly

An alert inherits the limits of the screens behind it, and adds one of its own: timing.

• Checks run on a schedule. OpScout checks about every 15 minutes during the U.S. regular trading session, not continuously, and not outside the session. A contract that matched only between two checks may never be seen. When Monitors are evaluated.
• A screen can cover only part of a chain. Each screen returns at most 1,000 contracts, ordered by the screening service's own annualized figure. On a large chain with broad rules, contracts beyond the limit are never seen. Result limits.
• Values are estimates. Bids, asks and other figures can be delayed and can reflect slightly different moments. No displayed value is a quote you can trade on; confirm with your broker. Timing and data limitations.
• The named contract is first by a sorting rule. It is not a recommendation, and the ranking does not consider your situation.

Which one you need

If you are still deciding what to look for, a screener helps you explore. If you already know your rules and want to stop checking by hand, alerts do the checking. Many people use both: one to decide, the other to wait.

Set up Covered Call alerts · What is a covered call?