RadarPulse: options flow research for tastytrade users

What flow scanning adds to any brokerage platform

Your brokerage shows you the options chain on a ticker you're already watching. A flow scanner shows you which tickers are seeing unusual positioning before you've thought to look. The two aren't in competition, they complement each other. The workflow is simple: the scanner surfaces names with outsized prints, you research them with AI and fundamental data, you execute in your existing account.

If you're still new to the concept, our guide on unusual options flow explains the underlying signal and how traders interpret it.

What RadarPulse adds to your tastytrade workflow

RadarPulse is built around a scoring engine and a small set of trackers designed to surface exceptional activity fast:

• A 0–100 unusualness score on every trade. RadarPulse rates each options print on volume-to-open-interest, premium size, days-to-expiry and aggressor side, so the ranking reflects the factors flow readers actually weigh, not a black box. You don't wade through thousands of routine prints; high-score trades float to the top.
• A daily Top 25 with clear flags. The day's most unusual activity is collected into a ranked Top 25, each print tagged EXTREME, ELEVATED or NOTABLE so you scan labels first and drill into the strongest signals.
• Whale detection. Block and sweep orders moving real size are surfaced, with the aggressor side flagged, so you know whether a whale was buying or selling, and at what aggression.
• Congress, Trump and 13F trackers. See congressional stock trades, the Trump trades tracker, and institutional 13F holdings alongside the flow: smart-money context beyond the options tape.
• Radar (AI chat). A built-in AI markets assistant explains any ticker or print in plain English, ask about the company, the position, what the flow might be signalling, and what risk looks like.
• Vera (AI equity research). An AI equity-research desk that generates a structured fundamental analysis on any stock. Pair it with the flow reading for the full picture.
• Free $100K paper trading + Academy. Practise options strategies in a $100K virtual wallet with real-time prices, free forever, no card required. The built-in leaderboard lets you compare returns against other traders anonymously.
• Breaking news banner. A real-time banner surfaces market-moving headlines and synthesises live index conditions into a plain-English market reading, so you're not switching to another tab for context.

A factual feature comparison

The table below describes RadarPulse's capabilities in detail. Note that RadarPulse is a research tool, not a brokerage, it doesn't hold positions or execute orders. For the tastytrade column we only note what's widely and publicly known rather than risk stating outdated details; check their site for the current, authoritative feature list and pricing.

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

RadarPulse pricing

Clear and flat. Two things are free forever; the scored scanner sits on paid tiers with a trial so you can test it first.

• 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.
• 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, practise, learn, and compete at zero cost.

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

Who should use RadarPulse alongside tastytrade

If you're an active options trader on tastytrade who spends time manually hunting for unusual prints, scrolling flow aggregators, piecing together context from multiple tools, RadarPulse streamlines that research into one place. You spot the unusual activity in RadarPulse's scored scanner, read the Radar AI analysis and Vera fundamental research, and then execute in tastytrade with a clearer thesis. The goal is to spend less time searching and more time trading on conviction.

If you're newer to flow trading, the free paper-trading wallet and the Academy let you practise reading flow and acting on it without any capital at risk. Graduate to live flow once you've built a repeatable process.

tastytrade in depth: the options strategy specialist

tastytrade is a brokerage platform purpose-built for options traders, specifically those who follow a probabilistic, income-generation approach to the market. The platform and its associated media channel, tastylive, were founded on the philosophy that selling options premium in liquid underlyings, using defined-risk spreads, iron condors, strangles, and similar structures, gives retail traders a statistical edge when managed correctly over a large sample of trades. Understanding exactly what tastytrade does well helps clarify where RadarPulse adds something genuinely different.

tastytrade's core strengths are built around this income-generation framework:

• Probability-of-profit framework. The platform centers on a probability-of-profit (POP) metric that shows traders the statistical likelihood of a position expiring profitable based on the options chain's pricing. This is the foundation of the Liz and Jenny approach: enter trades with a positive expected value, size small, manage early, and let the law of large numbers work in your favor over many trades.
• tastylive community and education. The tastylive media network provides an extensive library of live and recorded shows, research, and educational content specifically focused on the mechanics and psychology of options selling. For traders learning a systematic premium-selling approach, this is a genuine resource that no flow scanner provides.
• Quick-roll and quick-close features. tastytrade's interface is optimized for rolling positions and closing at 50% of max profit, workflows that are central to the systematic income-generation approach. The platform reduces the friction of these routine management actions.
• P&L vs. probability visualization. The platform displays both the expected P&L curve and the probability distribution of an options position simultaneously, giving traders a clear picture of risk/reward in probabilistic terms rather than just dollar amounts.
• Options-focused charting and analytics. The platform's charting is designed around options traders' needs: IV rank and IV percentile are front-and-center, the options chain is fast and readable, and the analytics focus on the metrics that matter for premium selling.
• Commission structure favoring frequent traders. tastytrade's commission pricing is structured to be relatively favorable for high-volume options traders who open and close a large number of positions, as is common with a systematic premium-selling approach.
• Tastyworks mobile app. The mobile application provides a capable interface for managing options positions on the go, including the quick-roll and quick-close functionality that the platform is known for.

What tastytrade is designed to do, and does well, is help a trader systematically sell premium in liquid underlyings based on IV rank, probability of profit, and disciplined position sizing. That is a complete and coherent trading approach that many traders execute profitably over long time horizons.

What tastytrade does not provide is a real-time unusual options flow detection layer. The platform does not score every options print on the tape for unusualness, does not surface a ranked leaderboard of institutional conviction signals, and does not include congressional trading disclosure data. tastytrade's philosophy is focused on the seller's edge in liquid, well-understood underlyings, a fundamentally different orientation from reading where institutional money is placing aggressive directional bets.

Neither approach is universally better. They are different tools for different philosophies, and understanding that distinction is the foundation for understanding why the two can work together rather than against each other.

Options income vs. options flow: two different trading philosophies

The distinction between options income trading and options flow trading is worth spelling out clearly, because conflating them leads to confusion about what any given tool is actually useful for.

The options income approach centers on selling options premium based on statistical probability. A trader using this approach asks: what is the IV rank of this underlying? Is implied volatility elevated relative to historical volatility, making options appear overpriced on a statistical basis? What is the probability of profit on this iron condor if I define my risk correctly and close at 50% of max profit? The goal is to enter a large number of trades with positive expected value, knowing that any individual trade can lose, and let the statistics accumulate in the trader's favor over time.

This approach deliberately does not rely on predicting the direction of the underlying or reading institutional order flow. In fact, many systematic premium sellers view directional prediction as noise, a distraction from the disciplined, repeatable process of selling IV when it is rich and closing winners early. tastytrade was built to support this philosophy, and it does so effectively.

The options flow approach centers on detecting where large institutional traders are placing directional bets in the options market. A flow scanner identifies prints that are unusual relative to a name's typical options volume: high-premium sweeps crossing the ask in large size, aggressive multi-leg fills in out-of-the-money contracts, new positioning with high Vol/OI ratios indicating fresh interest rather than closing of existing positions. The inference, never certain, always probabilistic, is that institutional traders placing very large directional bets may have information, conviction, or positioning logic that smaller traders don't have direct access to. Following unusual flow is not a guarantee of anything, but it provides a different kind of signal from the statistical edge of selling IV.

RadarPulse is built around this second approach. The scoring engine evaluates every options print on Vol/OI ratio (40% of the score), premium size (30%), execution type (10%), aggressor side (10%), days to expiry (5%), and time of day (5%). Prints scoring 85 or above are tagged EXTREME, 65 to 84 are ELEVATED, and 45 to 64 are NOTABLE. The daily Top 25 surfaces the highest-scoring prints from across the entire tape, giving a trader a ranked view of where the most unusual institutional activity appeared that session.

These are genuinely different trading philosophies. The trader who sells iron condors based on IV rank and probability of profit is doing something fundamentally different from the trader who enters directional positions based on unusual flow signals. Both approaches are valid; both have risk; neither is universally superior. The relevant question for any individual trader is: which approach matches your own strategy and decision-making process?

Many experienced options traders use elements of both, and that is precisely where the two-tool workflow becomes useful. A systematic premium seller who also reads flow as a filter has access to both a statistical edge and an institutional signal layer. The challenge has been that the tools for these two approaches lived in entirely different places. RadarPulse's role in the combined workflow is to deliver the flow and institutional signal layer without requiring a trader to leave their brokerage or replace any of the strategy analytics they already rely on.

How flow signals can inform a tastytrade-style workflow

Even a systematic premium seller who primarily uses tastytrade's probability analytics can benefit from flow intelligence in specific, targeted ways. This is not about replacing the income-generation approach, it is about adding a filtering and timing layer that the probability tools do not provide.

There are several concrete ways a premium seller can use flow data without abandoning their core approach:

• Avoiding against-the-flow premium selling. If RadarPulse shows EXTREME call sweeps in a name, institutional money aggressively buying large call positions, that is a signal that a large player has strong directional conviction to the upside. Selling a short strangle or iron condor on that same name places the premium seller directly in opposition to that institutional positioning. The flow signal does not make the position wrong, but it adds a meaningful risk factor that IV rank and probability of profit do not capture. Knowing about the flow allows the trader to either avoid the position or size down.
• Identifying IV expansion candidates before it happens. EXTREME call or put sweeps in a name frequently precede significant IV expansion as the market prices in the uncertainty that the unusual activity may represent. A premium seller watching for IV rank to reach premium-selling levels can use RadarPulse's flow alerts to identify names where IV may be about to spike, allowing them to prepare a position entry rather than react after the spike has already been fully priced in.
• Timing entries in directional markets. When multi-session flow accumulation appears in a name, consistent call buying across multiple sessions, it can signal that a name is entering a directional phase. A premium seller who would normally use a delta-neutral structure might adjust toward a slightly directional structure (a bull put spread rather than an iron condor, for instance) to align with the flow signal while still collecting premium.
• Filtering the watchlist. RadarPulse's Top 25 leaderboard surfaces names with EXTREME and ELEVATED activity across the whole tape. A premium seller can use this as a screener: names with significant unusual activity are either worth investigating for a trade or worth putting on a watch list to monitor IV development in the coming sessions.
• Post-earnings flow as a structure guide. After earnings, when IV typically collapses and the income approach looks for the next opportunity, flow signals in the same name can indicate whether institutional money is repositioning directionally. This can inform whether a post-earnings premium-selling structure is appropriate or whether a directional position would better match the signal.

The underlying principle is that a systematic premium seller's edge comes from the statistics of selling overpriced implied volatility across a large number of trades. Flow intelligence does not replace that edge, it adds a directional awareness filter that helps avoid positions where the statistical advantage is most likely to be overwhelmed by a single large directional move driven by institutional conviction.

Congressional and political flow: the RadarPulse exclusive

One capability that RadarPulse includes which has no equivalent in any brokerage platform is real-time tracking of congressional trading disclosures and political positioning data. tastytrade is a brokerage, it does not include political disclosure data, nor would it be appropriate for a brokerage to do so. RadarPulse, as a research tool, is built to combine multiple signal layers in one interface.

The STOCK Act requires members of Congress, both House and Senate, to disclose stock and options trades within 45 days of execution. RadarPulse aggregates these disclosures in real time as they are filed, with late-filing flags to indicate when a member is reporting outside the required window. The Trump trade tracker adds OGE financial disclosure data covering the policy basket of names with direct White House exposure.

For a trader who combines premium selling with directional awareness of macro political catalysts, defense, energy, healthcare, financial regulation, this disclosure layer adds a signal that no probability metric provides. Congressional members sit on committees that oversee regulation of specific industries, and their trading activity around legislative events is a form of institutional positioning with a unique informational dimension.

Two concrete examples illustrate how political positioning data can create actionable context for options traders:

The congressional and political disclosure layer is available on every paid RadarPulse tier. It requires no additional subscriptions or data feeds, it is part of the RadarPulse research platform. For traders who operate in sectors where political and regulatory catalysts are significant, which, in the current environment, includes defense, energy, healthcare, financial services, and technology, this layer adds a dimension of context that no probability-based analytics tool provides.

Radar and Vera: AI research for flow-driven decisions

When an EXTREME flow print surfaces on the RadarPulse leaderboard, the next question is always: why does this matter, and what do I need to know before I do anything with this signal? That research step, understanding what the company does, what earnings and analyst targets look like, why the activity might be occurring, what the risk profile of the position looks like, is where most flow traders lose time switching between tools.

RadarPulse includes two AI research capabilities designed to close that gap.

Radar is a conversational AI market assistant with live data access. When an unusual flow print appears, an EXTREME call sweep in a mid-cap biotech, for instance, a trader can ask Radar directly about the company: what does this company do, what are the current analyst targets, when is the next catalyst, what does the flow potentially signal, and what does the risk look like if the position moves against the directional read. Radar provides grounded, context-aware answers because it has access to live market data rather than operating from a static knowledge base. The goal is to reduce the number of browser tabs required to develop a thesis on a flow print from five or six to one.

Radar is represented by its two-ring radar face mark throughout the RadarPulse interface. It is a brand character, not an AI product in a generic sense, the research quality comes from the grounding in live data combined with the conversational interface that lets a trader ask follow-up questions rather than re-running a static screener.

Vera is RadarPulse's structured AI equity research capability, available on the Elite tier. Where Radar is conversational and immediate, Vera generates a structured multi-lens analysis of a specific equity: business model and competitive position, financial strength and earnings trajectory, technical setup, and flow context, combined into a single research document a trader can read in two to three minutes. For flow prints in names a trader is less familiar with, Vera provides the fundamental research layer that makes the flow signal actionable rather than just interesting. Vera is represented by the cyan V monogram throughout the platform.

tastytrade has an extensive education library and the tastylive media network provides live and recorded shows with commentary on specific names and strategies. This is a genuine strength of the platform, particularly for traders learning the income-generation approach. What tastylive does not provide is a conversational AI assistant grounded in live market data that responds to questions about a specific options print that appeared in the last fifteen minutes. The use cases are different: tastylive builds understanding of approach and methodology over time; Radar and Vera answer specific, time-sensitive research questions in real time.

For a tastytrade user who has already developed a systematic approach to premium selling, Radar and Vera provide the research layer for the flow signals they were not previously looking at, converting an interesting data point into a thesis they can act on, or rule out, in the time it takes to close a position in tastytrade's interface.

Case studies: tastytrade and RadarPulse in a combined workflow

The following examples illustrate how a trader using both tastytrade and RadarPulse might encounter a flow signal and integrate it with their existing premium-selling workflow. These are illustrative scenarios, not historical trades or performance claims.

Pricing and the combined monthly cost

tastytrade charges commissions per options contract with no monthly platform fee, making it a low-friction brokerage for active options traders. The commission structure is transparent and positions tastytrade as a cost-effective execution venue for a trader who opens and closes a significant number of positions each month.

RadarPulse operates on a separate, flat monthly subscription model. At launch the tiers are:

• Basic: $12/month, with a 14-day free trial. Scored flow scanner with the 0-100 unusualness score, daily Top 25, EXTREME/ELEVATED/NOTABLE flags, whale detection, Congress and 13F trackers, and 15-minute delayed flow. For a tastytrade user adding their first dedicated flow scanner, this is the entry point.
• Pro: $29/month. Everything in Basic plus saved filters, more alert capacity, and cross-device sync, appropriate for active traders who want persistent configurations across multiple sessions and devices.
• Elite: $59/month. Adds the real-time options tape for traders who need to react to flow signals within the same minute they appear, plus Vera AI equity research for structured fundamental analysis on flow-triggered names.
• Free forever: $100K paper-trading wallet + Academy + leaderboard. No card required. The paper wallet uses real-time options pricing, allowing a trader to test both premium-selling strategies and flow-driven directional positions in a realistic environment before committing capital.

For a tastytrade user who adds RadarPulse at the Basic tier, the combined monthly cost of both platforms is $12 per month plus whatever options commissions tastytrade charges on executed trades. The flow intelligence layer sits above the execution layer, it does not interact with tastytrade's commission structure and does not require any changes to how or where a trader executes positions. The research workflow changes; the execution workflow stays the same.

The $100K paper wallet is free with no card required, making it straightforward to test how a flow-informed research process changes your watchlist and position selection before subscribing to a paid tier. The Academy provides context on how to read the scoring system and interpret flow signals, useful for a tastytrade user who is experienced with the probability analytics but newer to the flow-reading approach.

Full tier details are available on the RadarPulse pricing page. The platform is currently in waitlist mode; join the waitlist to be notified when access opens.

Frequently asked questions

Can RadarPulse work alongside tastytrade?

Yes. RadarPulse is a standalone research tool, it identifies unusual flow, surfaces congressional and institutional trades, and provides AI analysis. You can then execute through tastytrade or any other brokerage. The two tools occupy different parts of your workflow: RadarPulse finds and researches opportunities; your brokerage executes them.

What does RadarPulse offer that my brokerage doesn't?

RadarPulse is focused on the discovery and research layer: a 0-100 score on every options print across the whole tape, a ranked daily Top 25 with EXTREME/ELEVATED/NOTABLE flags, Congress and 13F context in the same view, and AI chat plus AI equity research. Most brokerage platforms show options chains on tickers you're already watching; RadarPulse surfaces exceptional activity across names you might not have looked at.

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.

Is RadarPulse's flow data real?

Yes. RadarPulse generates its own real options flow on a 15-minute delay on every paid tier. The 0-100 score is computed from real Vol/OI, premium size, days-to-expiry and aggressor side. Real-time data is available on the Elite tier.

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