RadarPulse: an OptionStrat alternative for scored options flow

Two different jobs: building strategies vs. reading flow

It helps to be clear up front. OptionStrat's specialty is constructing and visualizing options strategies, modelling the payoff of a spread, condor or calendar, and showing where it makes or loses money. That's a builder's lens, valuable when you've already chosen a name and want to structure the trade.

RadarPulse's specialty is the step before that: discovering which names are seeing unusual flow, scoring how unusual each print is on a transparent 0–100 scale, and showing whether smart money is involved. If your question is "how do I structure this spread," a strategy builder is purpose-built for it. If your question is "what unusual activity is hitting the tape and who's behind it," that's what RadarPulse answers. Many traders use both. If you're newer to the flow side, our primer on unusual options flow covers the underlying signal.

What RadarPulse delivers

• A 0–100 unusualness score on every trade. Volume/OI ratio, dollar premium, days-to-expiry and aggressor side, four disclosed factors, visible per print, so the ranking reflects what flow readers actually weigh.
• A daily Top 25 with clear flags. The day's most unusual activity, ranked and tagged EXTREME, ELEVATED or NOTABLE so you scan severity first.
• Whale detection. Block and sweep orders moving real size are surfaced with the aggressor side flagged.
• Congress, Trump and 13F trackers. See congressional stock trades, the Trump trades tracker, and 13F institutional holdings alongside the flow.
• Radar (AI chat) + Vera (AI equity research). Built-in AI explains any print in plain English and runs fundamental research on any name.
• Free $100K paper trading + Academy. Practise acting on flow signals at zero cost, no card required, with an anonymous leaderboard.

A factual feature comparison

The table describes RadarPulse's capabilities in detail. OptionStrat and RadarPulse focus on different problems, so for the OptionStrat column we only note what's widely and publicly known and otherwise defer to their site.

"See their site" means we're deliberately not stating another company's specifics, verify current OptionStrat features and pricing on their own site.

RadarPulse pricing

• Basic: $12/mo, with a 14-day free trial. Scored scanner, daily Top 25, whale detection, Congress and 13F trackers on 15-minute-delayed flow. Radar AI chat and Vera AI equity research included.
• Pro, $29/mo. More headroom for active users, saved filters, more alerts, cross-device sync.
• Elite, $59/mo. Adds the real-time tape for traders reacting inside the same minute.
• Free forever: $100K paper trading + Academy + leaderboard. No card required.

Flow is 15-minute delayed on every tier except Elite. Full breakdown at the pricing page.

Which should you pick?

If building and visualizing multi-leg strategy payoffs is central to your process, OptionStrat is purpose-built for that, compare it on its own terms. RadarPulse is the better fit if you want transparently-scored unusual flow, a ranked daily Top 25, Congress and institutional context in the same view, and AI chat plus equity research built in, at a low entry price with a real trial, plus its own real flow so you don't need a second data feed. Pairing a flow scanner with a strategy builder is common; if you mainly need the flow side, start at the Learn hub, or our guide to the best free options flow scanner.

OptionStrat in depth: strategy modeling done well

OptionStrat has built a genuine reputation in the retail options community as a strategy visualization and modeling tool. Its strengths are well-defined and worth understanding clearly, because they explain why it occupies a different lane from a flow scanner rather than a competing one.

The core of OptionStrat is its payoff-diagram engine. Enter any options position, a single call or put, a vertical spread, an iron condor, a calendar, a straddle, a strangle, and the tool renders a real-time profit-and-loss diagram that shows how the position performs at different price levels and times to expiration. Greeks (delta, gamma, theta, vega) update as you adjust the legs, giving you a dynamic picture of how your risk profile changes. That combination of visual payoff and live Greeks makes it genuinely useful during the trade-construction phase, when you're trying to decide between a debit spread and a ratio spread on the same underlying thesis.

OptionStrat also includes a multi-leg strategy builder, which lets you construct complex positions by adding legs individually and seeing the aggregate risk profile in real time. It has an options screener for filtering by various criteria, and it provides educational content on how different strategy mechanics work, which makes it accessible to traders who are still learning how condors and diagonals differ in their profit zones.

Where OptionStrat is not designed to go: it is not built to detect, score, or rank unusual institutional options activity across the full tape. It does not apply a quantitative unusualness score to each print. It does not generate a daily ranked leaderboard of the highest-conviction flow of the session. It does not cross-reference options activity against congressional stock trades or 13F institutional holdings. These are different problems at a different stage of the trading process, and they require a different tool.

The practical framing: OptionStrat answers "given that I want to trade this ticker in this direction, what structure should I use?" RadarPulse answers "which tickers and directions have unusual institutional conviction behind them right now?" These are complementary questions, not competing ones. The combination of both tools covers a more complete options-trading workflow than either covers alone.

Flow discovery vs. strategy construction: a two-phase workflow

Most experienced options traders, whether they're following unusual activity, reacting to earnings setups, or tracking political disclosures, work through two distinct phases before placing a trade. Understanding this two-phase structure makes the division of labor between a flow scanner and a strategy builder intuitive.

Phase 1: Discovery. The question is: which names deserve attention right now? Discovery means scanning the market for signals that suggest unusual institutional conviction, a large sweep order against the grain, an options cluster in a normally quiet name, a volume spike that far exceeds open interest. Without a systematic discovery process, you are effectively guessing which names to analyze, which means you might be applying rigorous strategy-construction tools to names with no real signal behind them. This is where RadarPulse operates: the 0–100 score on every print, the daily Top 25, and the EXTREME/ELEVATED/NOTABLE flags are all discovery tools designed to surface the highest-conviction names before you open a strategy builder.

Phase 2: Construction. Once you have a name and a directional thesis, the question shifts: what is the optimal options structure for this thesis? A long call might capture the move but cost more premium than the expected move justifies. A bull call spread might cap the upside but cost a fraction of the long call and offer a better risk/reward for the specific DTE and strike selection. A calendar spread might be the right structure if implied volatility is elevated. These construction-phase decisions require a P&L diagram, Greek visibility, and the ability to model multiple legs simultaneously, which is what a dedicated strategy builder provides.

A practical combined workflow looks like this: RadarPulse surfaces an EXTREME call sweep in a biotech name, score 91, $2.2M in premium, 18 days to expiration (discovery). You open OptionStrat and model the underlying ticker. The P&L diagram shows that a bull call spread offers a 3:1 risk/reward ratio for the expected range of outcomes, while an outright call would require a larger-than-expected move to break even (construction). You execute via your brokerage. Each tool did the job it was built for; neither substituted for the other.

Without the discovery phase, you're picking names to model without flow-signal context, you might build a perfectly structured spread on a name where there is no institutional conviction at all. Without the construction phase, you're entering directional options positions without optimizing the structure for your specific risk appetite and target move. The two phases are not just complementary; each makes the other more valuable.

It is worth noting that this two-phase framing applies beyond just unusual flow. Traders who follow congressional disclosures, 13F filings, or earnings-based setups are all working through a similar logic: first identify the name and direction with high conviction (discovery), then determine the optimal vehicle and structure (construction). RadarPulse integrates multiple discovery sources, scored flow, congressional data, whale detection, AI research, so that the construction phase in a strategy builder begins from the richest possible information foundation. The cleaner the discovery process, the more focused and purposeful the construction decisions become.

RadarPulse's scoring system: finding the right names

The 0–100 unusualness score is the core of what RadarPulse does, and it's worth explaining in enough detail to understand why a scored approach changes the quality of the discovery process versus an unscored feed.

Every options print that crosses the tape is scored against six disclosed factors:

• Volume / Open Interest ratio (40% weight). This is the primary signal. A print where volume is 10x open interest on a normally quiet contract is far more unusual than a print where volume is in line with daily averages. The Vol/OI ratio captures whether this print represents genuinely unexpected activity relative to the contract's baseline liquidity.
• Dollar premium size (30% weight). Large premium outright is one of the clearest signals of institutional involvement. A $50,000 sweep means something different from a $2 million sweep, even if both are unusual relative to their open interest. Premium size captures the absolute conviction the trader is expressing.
• Execution type: sweep vs. block (10% weight). A sweep, where the order is filled across multiple exchanges at the ask to get filled quickly, suggests urgency. The trader is paying up for speed, which often signals informational conviction. A block can also be significant but has different execution dynamics. RadarPulse flags the execution type per print.
• Aggressor side (10% weight). Whether the order hit the ask (aggressive buyer) or the bid (aggressive seller) is a directional signal. Aggressive buying at the ask, particularly in out-of-the-money calls, is a classic pattern in high-conviction bullish flow.
• Days to expiration (5% weight). Short-dated unusual activity (under 30 DTE) often signals a near-term catalyst thesis, the trader believes something is happening soon. Longer-dated unusual activity suggests a longer-horizon institutional position. Both are significant; DTE contextualizes the time horizon.
• Time of day (5% weight). Activity in the first and last hour of the session, and in particular the opening sweep, carries different significance from mid-session prints. Time-of-day scoring adds this context.

The result is a score from 0 to 100, with clear tier labels: EXTREME (85 and above), ELEVATED (65–84), and NOTABLE (45–64). The daily Top 25 leaderboard takes the 5,000+ prints a typical session generates and reduces them to the 25 highest-conviction signals of the day, ranked by score.

All six scoring components are visible per print. This transparency matters because it lets you understand why a trade scored the way it did, not just that it scored high. A score of 89 driven primarily by a very high Vol/OI ratio on a low-premium contract tells a different story from a score of 89 driven by a combination of large premium and sweep execution. Both are EXTREME by label, but the character of the signal differs, and understanding the breakdown helps you decide whether the print fits the kind of setup you are looking for.

Why does this matter for the construction phase? Because knowing that a name has an EXTREME score before you open a strategy builder changes the starting quality of the decision. You are not guessing which names might be worth analyzing. You are starting from a ranked, scored list of names where the data itself suggests institutional conviction. The strategy modeling you then do in a tool like OptionStrat is applied to a name that has already cleared a rigorous quantitative filter, not a name you happened to notice because it appeared in an unranked feed or was mentioned on social media. Systematic, scored discovery leads to more purposeful, better-researched construction.

Congressional and political flow: the RadarPulse exclusive

One of the most distinctive data layers in RadarPulse, and one with no equivalent in a strategy-modeling tool, is the congressional and political trading tracker. This is not a feature that overlaps with anything OptionStrat does; it represents a different data domain entirely.

RadarPulse includes STOCK Act disclosures from all House and Senate members, updated as filings come in, with late-filing flags. The STOCK Act requires members of Congress to disclose personal stock trades within 45 days of the transaction. Because congressional members often sit on committees with oversight over specific industries, defense, healthcare, financial services, energy, telecommunications, their disclosed trades can carry informational significance in policy-sensitive sectors. RadarPulse also includes a Trump trade tracker that covers OGE (Office of Government Ethics) disclosures for the policy-relevant trading basket, given the breadth of executive policy influence over multiple sectors.

For traders who focus on policy-sensitive sectors, the cross-domain confluence of unusual options flow plus congressional positioning represents a conviction layer that no strategy-modeling tool can provide. Two concrete examples illustrate how this changes the analysis:

OptionStrat is not designed to ingest or display this kind of data. It operates on the strategy-construction side of the workflow, after the name and thesis have been established. Congressional tracking is a discovery-phase and context-phase tool, it belongs on the same side of the workflow as the flow scanner, which is why RadarPulse integrates them together.

Radar: AI research in the flow-to-strategy pipeline

Between discovering a high-scoring flow print and opening a strategy builder to model the trade, there is a critical intermediate step: understanding the underlying company well enough to assess whether the flow signal is worth acting on at all. This is where RadarPulse's built-in AI research capabilities fit into the workflow.

Radar is RadarPulse's conversational AI market assistant. After spotting an EXTREME or ELEVATED print in the daily Top 25, you can ask Radar directly about the underlying company: recent earnings, analyst price targets and their range, near-term catalysts (PDUFA dates, earnings dates, regulatory decisions), recent news developments, and how the current options activity compares to the company's historical patterns. Radar has access to live data and can provide context that is directly relevant to interpreting the flow signal.

This research step matters because options flow without context can mislead. An EXTREME call sweep in a pharmaceutical name looks very different depending on whether there is a PDUFA date in 18 days (high-conviction binary-event positioning) versus nothing on the calendar (potentially hedging activity or a roll). Without knowing the context, you might model an elaborate spread structure in OptionStrat on a name where the flow is unrelated to any identifiable catalyst, or you might dismiss a genuine setup because the score alone did not tell the full story.

Vera, available on the Elite tier, provides a more structured multi-lens AI equity research workflow. Where Radar answers conversational questions about a name, Vera runs a more thorough analysis across multiple dimensions, fundamental valuation context, earnings trajectory, institutional ownership trends, and how the options activity fits into the broader picture of the company's situation. For traders who want to do serious pre-trade research before committing to a structured options position, Vera is designed for exactly that workflow.

Both Radar and Vera are brand characters with specific visual identities. Radar is represented by a two-ring radar face mark. Vera is represented by a cyan V monogram. Neither is represented by an emoji or a generic AI icon, they are distinct product identities within the RadarPulse platform.

A complete flow-to-strategy pipeline, with AI research included, looks like this: RadarPulse surfaces the signal (scored flow), Radar explains the company context (catalyst, news, analyst positioning), OptionStrat models the optimal strategy structure (P&L, Greeks, leg selection), and the trader executes via their brokerage. Each step adds a distinct layer of information that the other steps cannot provide.

The research step also acts as a filter against false positives. Not every EXTREME print represents a high-quality setup. Some represent hedges against existing institutional positions; some are the result of large block trades tied to employee equity plans; some are simply unusual without being informative. Radar helps surface the contextual clues, earnings timing, outstanding catalysts, analyst sentiment shifts, recent news, that let you make a more informed judgment about whether a given EXTREME print is worth taking to the construction phase at all. The AI research layer does not guarantee that you'll correctly interpret every signal, but it does mean that you begin strategy modeling with significantly more context than the raw print data alone provides.

Case studies: discovery + construction in practice

The following case studies illustrate how the discovery and construction phases work together in realistic, representative scenarios. These are structured examples of the workflow rather than specific historical trades.

Pricing: strategy tool vs. flow intelligence, and using both

Understanding the pricing of both tools helps traders think about the combined cost of covering the full signal-to-execution workflow.

OptionStrat offers a free tier with basic functionality and paid plans for additional features; verify current pricing and what each plan includes on their site, as this changes over time.

RadarPulse at launch is structured as follows:

• Basic: $12/mo, with a 14-day free trial. Scored scanner, daily Top 25 with EXTREME/ELEVATED/NOTABLE flags, whale and sweep detection, Congress and 13F trackers on 15-minute-delayed flow, Radar AI chat, and Vera AI equity research included.
• Pro: $29/mo. Expanded capacity for active users, saved filters, more alerts, cross-device sync, Pro-tier congressional data access via the API.
• Elite: $59/mo. Adds the real-time tape for traders who need to react within the same minute the print crosses. Also includes the full developer console with API key and webhook management.
• Free forever: $100K paper trading wallet + Academy + anonymous leaderboard. No credit card required. The paper wallet and Academy are free at every tier and always will be.

For a trader who uses both tools, RadarPulse for flow-driven discovery and congressional context, OptionStrat for strategy selection and payoff modeling, the combined monthly cost covers the complete signal-to-execution workflow. The two tools together handle everything from "which names have institutional conviction behind them today" to "what is the optimal structure for the thesis I now have." For a trader who places even a single profitable structured options trade per month, the combined subscription cost is a small fraction of that return.

The free-forever paper wallet means you can test the discovery workflow, spotting EXTREME and ELEVATED signals, running Radar research, modeling structures in OptionStrat, without committing real capital, and without committing to a subscription. The 14-day free trial on Basic means you can also try the full scored-flow experience before paying anything. And because the paper wallet tracks your decisions against real delayed flow data, the results you see reflect how the strategy would have performed under real market conditions, not a back-test or simulation.

For traders building a disciplined options practice, starting with the paper wallet, using it alongside a strategy builder, and only moving to live capital once the workflow is consistent is a low-cost, high-learning path. Join the waitlist to get early access to RadarPulse and lock in launch pricing.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good alternative to OptionStrat for options flow?

OptionStrat is best known as an options strategy builder and payoff visualizer that also surfaces unusual options activity. RadarPulse is an alternative focused specifically on the flow side: a 0-100 unusualness score on every trade, a daily Top 25 with EXTREME/ELEVATED/NOTABLE flags, whale detection, and Congress, Trump and 13F trackers, plus AI chat and AI equity research. Many traders use a strategy builder alongside it.

How does RadarPulse rank unusual options activity?

RadarPulse computes a 0-100 unusualness score using four disclosed factors: volume relative to open interest, dollar premium, days to expiry, and aggressor side. All four components are visible per print. The highest-scoring prints of the day are collected into a daily Top 25 with EXTREME, ELEVATED, and NOTABLE severity tags.

How much does RadarPulse cost?

RadarPulse Basic is $12/mo with a 14-day free trial. Pro is $29/mo, Elite is $59/mo. The $100K paper-trading wallet, leaderboard, and Academy are free forever with no card required. Flow is 15-minute delayed on every tier except Elite, which adds the real-time tape.

Does RadarPulse include a strategy builder?

RadarPulse focuses on discovering and ranking unusual options flow, whale activity, and smart-money positioning rather than building and visualizing multi-leg strategy payoffs. It includes AI chat and AI equity research to analyze any name you find, plus a free $100K paper-trading wallet. If a dedicated strategy-payoff builder is central to your workflow, you may pair RadarPulse with one.

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