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Options Meerkat vs Unusual Whales
Unusual Whales is a real-time options flow platform: every large print as it happens, gamma exposure across the market, alerts, and news. Options Meerkat is an AI research assistant: ask what the flow, the IV, or the dealers' gamma say about a stock, and it answers with the numbers and the charts, and backtests the strategy you are weighing.
Checked on October 26, 2026 against Unusual Whales' pricing and its site. Prices and plans change; theirs are theirs to state. If something here is out of date, write to us and we will correct it.
The short answer
Which one fits
Choose Unusual Whales if
- You trade on the flow as it prints, on every US ticker, with alerts.
- You want custom alerts, news without delay, and the market's gamma minute by minute.
- You follow Congress trades and the rest of what it tracks beyond options.
Choose Options Meerkat if
- You want to know what the flow and the volatility mean for one stock, explained, more than to watch the tape.
- You want to backtest a strategy (the wheel, puts, spreads) before you trade it.
- You want strategy P/L, IV percentiles, and dealer gamma in one place, free or for $29 a month.
Side by side
What each one offers
▲ marks the side that is ahead on a row, where one is; the rows it marks for Unusual Whales are as much the point as the others.
| Unusual Whales | Options Meerkat | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (flow two days late); Retail Basic $50, Pro $75, Max $120 a month, less when paid yearly | Free; Pro $29 a month or $290 a year (Options Meerkat ahead) |
| Option flow | A real-time feed on every paid plan, every US ticker (Unusual Whales ahead) | Unusual volume against open interest, large prints, and the market tide, on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100: real-time on Pro, delayed about 15 minutes on Free |
| Dealer gamma | A real-time gamma heatmap on every US ticker; SPX market-maker exposure every 10 minutes, or every minute on Max (Unusual Whales ahead) | Gamma, delta, vanna, and charm exposure by strike, on every plan: from real-time chains on Pro, delayed ones on Free |
| An AI to ask | Mr. Whale, on the paid plans, more of it on the dearer ones | Meerkat, free within a daily allowance: names the tools it called and opens the chart |
| Alerts | 25 custom alerts on Basic, unlimited on Pro and Max (Unusual Whales ahead) | Coming to Pro: alerts on your own watch lists |
| Backtests | Not on its pricing page | The wheel, puts, covered calls, spreads, and condors over a year of daily option closes, against buy and hold (Pro) (Options Meerkat ahead) |
| Strategy P/L | Not on its pricing page | Multi-leg P/L, breakevens, and the chance of profit, ready-made strategies, and an optimizer (Options Meerkat ahead) |
| Volatility history | Volatility dashboards | Each stock's ATM IV ranked against its own year, the 25-delta skew, and the term structure |
| Beyond options | News without delay, Congress trades, prediction markets, an API (Unusual Whales ahead) | Options only, and the earnings calendar |
| Where it runs | The web, and apps for phones | The browser (a phone's too), and a program for macOS, Windows, and Linux, in a window or the terminal |
Unusual Whales: its pricing page and site as of October 26, 2026. Options Meerkat: the pricing and the questions on this site.
Where Meerkat differs
What it does that Unusual Whales does not set out to
- It explains the flow rather than streams it. A block of puts can be a bet, a hedge, or one side of a spread. Ask Meerkat about the day's large prints on a stock and it reads them against the open interest, the IV, and the dealers' gamma, and says what it can and cannot tell. The deep put blocks case follows one.
- It tests the strategy before the trade. Flow says what others did today; a backtest says what a rule did for a year. Meerkat runs the wheel, puts, covered calls, spreads, and condors over daily option closes, trade by trade, against buy and hold. The wheel case is one.
- It costs less to start. The research, the flow, the gamma, and the strategy P/L are free on delayed quotes; Pro, at $29 a month, makes them real-time and adds the backtests.
Where Unusual Whales is ahead
What Meerkat does not do
Unusual Whales covers every US ticker, with the market's gamma minute by minute; Options Meerkat covers the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 (real-time on Pro), so for watching the whole market's flow as it prints, Unusual Whales is the tool. Its alerts, news, and the rest of what it tracks have no match in Meerkat yet. Meerkat is for the slower question: what the options say about a stock, and whether a strategy on it has held up.
Try it on a stock you trade
The dashboard runs in the browser with no account; signing in, free, lets you ask Meerkat your own questions.
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Unusual Whales is a trademark of its owner, named here only to compare. Options Meerkat is not affiliated with or endorsed by it. Nothing on this page is investment advice; options can lose their whole value quickly.