HalalScreener Review

HalalScreener launched in 2026 as a product of LuminFuture Holdings, LLC and positions itself against Zoya and Musaffa on three claims: transparency, an AI Scholar, and price. The transparency claim is the substantive one. Its methodology page lays out AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21 in full: a qualitative screen that fails companies whose core revenue comes from alcohol, gambling, pork, tobacco, conventional banking, conventional insurance, adult entertainment, or weapons, followed by three ratios against market capitalization, total interest-bearing debt below 30%, cash and interest-bearing securities below 30%, and non-permissible income below 5% of revenue. Zoya applies the same AAOIFI thresholds but locks the ratio detail behind Pro; HalalScreener shows the debt ratio and grade free and the full breakdown on Pro.

The grading layer is where HalalScreener adds something. Rather than binary pass/fail, each compliant stock gets a grade from A+ (all ratios well under the limits) to C- (borderline), with F for non-compliant, and a 'Doubtful' flag whenever any ratio sits within 83% of its threshold. That caution zone matters in practice: a company at 28% debt-to-market-cap passes AAOIFI today and may fail after one bad quarter or a share-price drop, and the Pro 'Early Warning' feature extends the idea to your portfolio by naming the price at which each holding would tip. Data is sourced primarily from SEC EDGAR filings with FinancialModelingPrep for profiles and gap-fill, prices update daily, and stocks are re-screened within 48 hours of each earnings release. Crypto is screened qualitatively on use case and protocol mechanics with no ratio test, which the site states rather than implies.

Coverage is honest but narrower than the market leader. HalalScreener screens 8,200+ US-listed stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies, 96 major global companies through their US ADRs, and Bursa Malaysia securities via the Securities Commission Malaysia's official list; it does not cover other local exchanges directly and says every coverage request is logged. Its own comparison page concedes Zoya's advantages, an iPhone app, in-app trading via Plaid and SnapTrade, and an established brand with named scholars, which is a level of candor worth noting. The July 2026 intake submission quoted 10,000+ assets; the live pricing page says 8,200+, and this listing uses the live figure.

Pricing is simple and currently the cheapest among the serious screeners. Free gives top-10 results per screen, 3 stock detail views total, 3 AI questions total, 3 watchlist slots, and 3 scans each on the Chrome extension and Telegram bot, which is enough to evaluate the tool but not to use it. Pro is $9.99/month or $79/year and unlocks unlimited screening, full ratios, the purification calculator, portfolio tracking with verdict-change emails, broker sync for one brokerage, Early Warning, 30 AI questions a day, and 10 price alerts. Premium is $16.99/month or $139.99/year and adds unlimited AI questions, full MCP access for Claude and ChatGPT, Sunni and Shia rulings side by side, unlimited broker sync, 25 alerts, CSV export, and priority support. Both paid tiers carry a 7-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, and the site promises existing subscribers keep their price. Web subscriptions bill through Stripe (older ones through Polar); in-app purchases bill through Apple or Google.

The AI Scholar is the second differentiator. It answers fiqh, food, zakat, and stock questions from an index of 10,000+ fatwas, cites a source for each answer, and on Premium presents the Sunni position (citing Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah) and the Shia position (citing the office of Ayatollah Sistani) side by side at equal weight, a design choice no competitor matches. Answers are generated with Google's Gemini API, and the terms are explicit that neither screening results nor Scholar answers are fatwas. The same engine powers the Halal Check Chrome extension, which overlays verdicts on 45+ finance and brokerage sites, answers 'is it halal?' searches in Google results, and scans grocery, recipe, and restaurant pages for pork and alcohol; a Telegram bot; an Android app on Google Play since September 2026 that bundles prayer times, Qibla, Quran, and a compliance widget; an MCP server; and a Tesla in-car mode. There is no iPhone app.

Governance is the trade-off to understand before relying on it. HalalScreener retains no named Shariah scholar or supervisory board; its model is standards-based screening with the full method public, and it describes that distinction to users directly. Zoya's verdicts sit under two named advisors and Musaffa's under a board, so an investor who wants a scholar's accountability behind a verdict should treat HalalScreener as a transparent second opinion rather than a certification. The company is also small, LinkedIn lists its size as 'Myself Only', with a February 2026 terms date, so continuity risk is real for a subscription product. Against that, the privacy policy is one of the most specific in the category, naming every processor (Vercel, Turso, Stripe, RevenueCat, Polar, Google, Gemini, Resend, Upstash, Sentry, SnapTrade and others) and spelling out exactly what the extension reads on each class of site, and the company states it does not sell personal data.