Trackers vs. Copy-Trading Apps
This is the fork that matters most, and it decides everything else. Capitol Trades, Quiver, Unusual Whales, Barebone.ai and AlphaYou are research tools: they show you the filing and you decide what to do. Autopilot and Dub are brokerage products that mirror a chosen portfolio into your own account automatically, which means an account minimum, a management relationship, and far less control over individual positions. Autopilot asks for a $500 minimum per portfolio; Dub lets you start at $100. Neither is a bad product, but if you wanted to read filings and were sold an automated account, that is a mismatch worth catching early.
The 45-Day Lag Nobody Can Engineer Around
Public-filing trackers depend on the underlying disclosure. Covered congressional transactions generally use the earlier of 30 days after awareness or 45 days after the transaction. A reporter can file sooner. Compare the actual event and filing dates, then separately assess delivery after publication.
What a Free Tier Actually Gets You
Capitol Trades is the real outlier here: free, no account required, and built by 2iQ Research on top of an established insider-filing database. If congress trades are all you want, it is hard to justify paying anyone. The paid tools are selling one of two things: breadth, meaning insider and fund filings in the same place, or delivery, meaning an alert that reaches you rather than a dashboard you have to remember to open. Check which of those you are actually buying, because a free tier that delays everything by a day is a preview, not access.
Where AlphaYou Fits
AlphaYou bundles congressional filings with insider Form 4s, 13F fund disclosures, government contract awards and tracked influencer calls in one alert feed, on the logic that these signals read better together than alone. A congress purchase next to an insider buy in the same sector tells a fuller story than either does by itself. The free plan stays free rather than expiring into a trial. Where it is a weaker fit: there is no options flow, and its stock research does not place brokerage share orders. AlphaYou does offer user-directed copy trading, but only for Hyperliquid traders, so if you want US stock portfolios copied into your broker, Autopilot or Dub is the honest answer.
