How the yield is worked out
- Covered calls: you own the underlying and sell an out-of-the-money call. Yield = bid ÷ underlying price.
- Cash-secured puts: you set aside cash to buy at the strike and sell an out-of-the-money put. Yield = bid ÷ strike.
- Annualized = yield × 365 ÷ days left, not compounded. Short-dated options often look best annualized, but you’d have to repeat the trade every week to earn it.
- Delta is a rough estimate of the chance the option ends in the money. The default views look at deltas between 0.15 and 0.35.
The bid is used rather than the mid, since that’s what a seller can usually get straight away.
Delayed/indicative data, not financial advice. Options are risky and can lose their whole value.
Frequently asked questions
Is a high yield a good trade?
Not by itself. Premium is high when the market expects big moves (high implied volatility), which is also when the underlying is most likely to blow through your strike. A covered call caps your upside; a cash-secured put can leave you owning something that has fallen well below the strike. Nothing here is financial advice.
Which markets can it scan?
Two, picked with the Market buttons above the table. Crypto options (the default) come from Deribit’s public data, the biggest crypto options exchange: BTC and ETH, plus USDC-settled options on SOL, XRP, AVAX, TRX and HYPE. They need no key, and if Deribit can’t be reached the screener falls back to OKX’s BTC and ETH options. US options cover a watchlist of about 65 of the most active US stocks and ETFs (SPY, QQQ, IWM, NVDA, TSLA, AAPL and more) with your own free Alpaca key.
Is the data real-time?
No. Treat it as delayed and indicative, and not as financial advice. Deribit’s numbers are close to live (volume covers the last 24 hours). Alpaca’s free plan uses an indicative options feed: quotes may be delayed or modified, and trades are delayed. US open interest is published once a day, from the previous session. Turn on auto-refresh next to the results to update the table in place every 30 seconds, minute or 5 minutes.
Why do US options need a key?
US options prices (OPRA data) are licensed, so a website can’t hand them out for free. Alpaca gives anyone a free market-data key that includes an indicative options feed. Your key is saved only in your browser and sent only to Alpaca, never to us. Option open interest comes from Alpaca’s trading API, which free paper-trading keys can use too. See how to get a free Alpaca key.
How are crypto option prices and sizes shown?
Deribit quotes BTC and ETH options in coins; the screener converts every price to US dollars per coin using the expiry’s forward price. Volume and open interest are in coins (one Deribit BTC option is 1 BTC), so ratios such as volume ÷ open interest and put/call are directly comparable. Delta is worked out in your browser with the Black-Scholes formula from Deribit’s mark implied volatility.