CFRA vs Morningstar 2025: Which Research Tool is Better?

CFRA: 90 Days of Free Features

CFRA is offering a fantastic free feature for 90 days. During this time, you’ll have access to CFRA’s weekly online investment newsletter, The Outlook, and five equity and five fund research reports monthly.

This is an excellent opportunity to use CFRA’s expertise and insights without committing to a subscription. With The Outlook, you’ll receive weekly updates on the latest trends and developments impacting the financial markets.

Meanwhile, the equity and fund research reports provide valuable insights into individual stocks and funds, helping you make informed investment decisions.

Morningstar: Limited Access To Free Tools And Reports

Morningstar’s free version offers users access to its wide selection of editorial pieces. This means that even if you choose not to upgrade to a paid version, you’ll still be able to stay up-to-date on the latest financial news and trends.

While some of the free version’s planning and investing tools may be limited, this doesn’t detract from the value of the editorial content available. Morningstar is known for its high-quality research and analysis; the free version is no exception. Access to this editorial content lets you stay informed and make informed investment decisions.

Click here to read our full review of Morningstar.

CFRA: Extensive Global ETF Coverage

CFRA offers a range of paid features that can help investors discover new investment strategies and make informed investment decisions.

With CFRA’s independent equity, mutual fund, and ETF research, you can explore various investment opportunities and identify companies and industries that may have reported financial results, operational metrics, or corporate governance problems.

In addition, CFRA access to global ETF and mutual fund data and research coverage can provide clear insights into your investments. This can help you make informed decisions and ensure your portfolio is well-diversified.

Morningstar: Robust Set Of Features

Morningstar Investor offers a comprehensive suite of features to support its subscribers in their investment endeavors.

1. Independent Analysis: More than 150 independent analysts offer unfiltered, unbiased, and candid insights, bypassing the hype of Wall Street. This actionable analysis spans various investment types and solely serves the investors’ interests.
2. Powerful Ratings: Morningstar provides powerful and insightful ratings across all investment aspects, including securities, managers, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), and more. These ratings are derived from a transparent and meticulous methodology, simplifying decision-making for investors.
3. Investment Tools: Subscribers have access to a wide range of performance and valuation metrics, complemented by independent analysis and ratings. Users can also use pre-filtered investment lists curated by Morningstar’s expert analysts, helping identify the best potential investments.
4. Portfolio X-Ray: The Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray offers subscribers a comprehensive understanding of their portfolios. It assesses investments from multiple angles including asset allocation, sector weightings, fees and expenses, stock stats, and more. This tool also helps identify any overlap within your portfolio that could influence your diversification.
5. Seamless Account Aggregation: Users can connect all their accounts for a holistic, continuous view of their assets. This feature allows users to track their entire financial portfolio from one platform, simplifying asset management.
6. Personalized Insights: Morningstar Investor offers personalized analysis, commentary, and news tailored to the user’s holdings, watchlists, and preferences. This personalized content can provide deeper context and inform better investment decisions.
7. Watchlists: Users can create and manage watchlists to keep track of investment ideas. These lists can be updated from almost anywhere within the Morningstar Investor platform.

Investing in Morningstar’s subscription services not only provides access to an array of useful tools but also supports your investment journey with over three decades of experience in assisting investors. Their research and resources aim to bring clarity to complex financial decisions, making it easier for you to act on your investment strategy.

You should also read our MarketWatch vs Morningstar review or even our Simply Wall Street vs Morningstar review to see how they perform against competitors.

CFRA: Custom Pricing For Institutional Investors

CFRA offers subscription plans for individual investors, financial advisors and firms, and institutional clients with varying access levels to research and analysis tools. The cost for individual investors is $349 per year, while pricing for financial advisors and institutional clients is available upon request.

Morningstar: Straightforward Pricing

Morningstar Investor offers two subscription plans. The yearly subscription costs $249, which breaks down to $20.75 per month, offering a savings of 41% over the monthly plan. The monthly subscription is priced at $34.95 per month. Both plans offer a free trial for users to get a feel for the platform and its offerings.

CFRA: Solid International ETF Coverage

CFRA also provides broad coverage of investment options, but with a more concentrated focus on U.S. markets. They cover a large number of U.S. stocks and funds, providing deep analysis and ratings for these investments.

While CFRA does cover some international markets, especially international ETFs, their strength lies in their domestic coverage.

Like Morningstar, CFRA offers detailed analysis of individual stocks and funds. Their methodology emphasizes forward-looking factors, and they provide both quantitative data and qualitative assessments of the underlying business and its prospects. However, their international coverage is not as extensive as Morningstar, which could be a limitation for those looking for in-depth analysis of non-U.S. investments.

Morningstar: Comprehensive Market Coverage

Morningstar is renowned for its comprehensive coverage of investment products. It offers analysis for a wide range of securities including stocks, bonds, ETFs, and mutual funds.

The coverage is not just limited to the U.S. markets, but extends globally. This international scope allows investors to explore and analyze investments from around the world, making it particularly useful for those interested in global diversification.

Morningstar also provides extensive coverage of funds, with data and ratings on thousands of mutual funds and ETFs. This includes both qualitative and quantitative assessments, looking at factors like fund management, fees, and historical performance.

Overall, Morningstar covers over 294,000 open-ended funds and 12,800 close-ended funds, in addition, they cover over 23,400 ETFs, making them one of the most comprehensive financial research providers available.

CFRA: STARS Rating System

CFRA uses a system known as STARS, or Stock Appreciation Ranking System, for their investment ratings. The STARS methodology involves comprehensive fundamental analysis and an assessment of the stock’s potential for future performance, rather than relying solely on past data.

CFRA analysts scrutinize the company’s financial health, industry position, and market conditions to predict how the stock will perform over the next 6 to 12 months. They then assign a rating from 5-STARS (Strong Buy) to 1-STAR (Strong Sell).

CFRA’s rating system is also forward-looking, placing significant emphasis on predicting the future performance of an investment. While it offers a thorough analysis, like all forecasts, it carries the inherent uncertainties of future predictions.

Morningstar: 4 Different Rating Systems

Morningstar’s fund ratings encompass four distinct types, each offering unique insights into mutual funds and ETFs from different perspectives.

The Star Rating is a quantitative, backward-looking measure initiated in 2002, which evaluates funds based on their past risk-adjusted returns. This system utilizes a familiar one-to-five-star scale, with five stars representing the highest rating.

In contrast, the Analyst Rating, launched in 2011, provides a qualitative, forward-looking assessment. Funds are rated from ‘Gold’ to ‘Negative’ based on Morningstar analysts’ evaluations of the fund’s strategy and management’s effectiveness, along with the fund’s investment process and the parent company’s role.

The Quantitative Rating was introduced in 2017 as a forward-looking measure, similar to the Analyst Rating, but it’s derived from an algorithmic assessment rather than human analysis. This rating also uses the ‘Gold’ to ‘Negative’ scale and considers factors like the fund’s strategy, process, and fee structure.

Lastly, the Sustainability Rating began in 2019, marking a backward-looking, quantitative approach to rating funds based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. Funds are rated from one to five globes, with more globes indicating higher ESG performance relative to peers. This rating reflects how well a fund’s underlying holdings are managing their ESG risks and opportunities.

Factor 6: External Customer Reviews & Ratings

External Morningstar Reviews & Ratings

CFRA vs Morningstar: My Summary

After a comprehensive analysis of both CFRA and Morningstar based on the factors of free features, paid features, subscription cost, coverage, and investment rating system, I conclude that Morningstar stands out as the superior choice.

Although both platforms offer excellent resources, Morningstar has a slight edge over CFRA due to its expansive global coverage, the inclusivity of its paid features, and the robustness of its star rating system.

Morningstar’s coverage of stocks, bonds, ETFs, and mutual funds across the globe is exceptionally comprehensive, allowing investors to perform thorough analyses regardless of geographical focus.

When considering paid features, Morningstar impresses with an array of options. Subscribers have access to over 150 independent analysts’ insights, portfolio x-ray tools, personalized insights, watchlists, and much more. These features extend beyond basic data and research, providing users with a suite of tools to facilitate informed investment decisions.

Morningstar’s subscription cost is also favorable compared to CFRA. With the lowest subscription option of $20.75 per month (paid annually), Morningstar offers significant value for its cost.

Morningstar’s comprehensive ratings system, including 4 different rating systems, allows users to filter equities based on what matters most to them. I believe this unique feature truly sets them apart.

While CFRA is an impressive platform with its robust STARS rating system and specific U.S. market strength, it doesn’t quite match the comprehensive coverage and feature-rich offerings provided by Morningstar.

Therefore, Morningstar edges out CFRA in this comparison, offering investors a superior platform for financial analysis and investment guidance.

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FAQ

What is the CFRA Star Ranking?

The CFRA Star Ranking is a unique five-tiered system called STARS (Stock Appreciation Ranking System) for our advisory opinions. CFRA analysts assign a 1-STAR rating for strong sell recommendations, 2-STARS for sell recommendations, and 3-STARS when advising to hold a stock.

How Trustworthy is Morningstar?

Morningstar is well-respected for its analysis and rating of mutual funds and ETFs, with its research being widely utilized by prominent figures in finance, such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. While Morningstar’s assessments are typically viewed as trustworthy within the financial community, they are not infallible. Investment always carries some level of risk, and a stellar rating from Morningstar does not ensure the success of an investment.

Is a 5-Star Morningstar rating good?

A 5-star rating from Morningstar means the stock is perceived as being undervalued. A rating of 5-stars is the best rating an equity can receive with Morningstar.