Quantral vs Capitol Trades: every Congress trade, or the members worth following

Capitol Trades is the free tracker most people land on when they search for Congress stock trades, and it earns that spot. It is run by 2iQ, a Frankfurt data company that has collected insider transaction data since 2002, and it lists every trade members of the House and Senate disclose, with a "filed after" count on each row that shows how many days the member took to report it. As of October 15, 2026, its trades page showed 36,776 trades from 209 politicians over three years. If you want the record of what Congress traded, Capitol Trades is hard to beat, and it costs nothing.

Quantral asks a narrower question: which members are worth following. It grades every disclosed trade on what the stock did next, so each member gets a track record, and it shows their trades on the same company page as insider buys and what finance X, Reddit, Substack and YouTube are saying. All of that rolls into one score per stock.

One name clash before we start. Capitol is also the name of a Quantral strategy, a 10-stock list built from Congress buys. It has nothing to do with Capitol Trades.

At a glance

The core difference: a list of trades or a record per member

A disclosure tells you that a member, a spouse or a child bought or sold a stock, inside a size band, up to 45 days earlier. Capitol Trades shows that for every filing and leaves the reading to you. If you want to know what Congress traded this week, or everything one member has traded, that is exactly what you need.

It does not tell you whether the member is any good at it. A buy from someone whose trades have mostly lost money means something different from a buy by someone who has been right most of the time, and a list of trades shows both the same way. Quantral grades each trade, so you can see the difference before you act on a filing. Graded that way, Congress as a group got a touch under 44% of its trades right as of September 21, 2026, and the eight members with enough graded trades to rank sat between 51% and 59%. Congress stock trades are now graded voices has the full scoreboard.

Feature by feature

What each one shows

Capitol Trades lists every transaction members report: stocks, municipal bonds and non-public holdings such as private real estate funds. Each row has the member, the asset, the date it was published and traded, the "filed after" gap, the owner (the member, a spouse, joint or a child), buy or sell, the size band and the price on the trade date.

Quantral tracks every House and Senate member who files, but it can only grade a trade that has a stock price to check against, so the trades that count are those in the listed companies it covers. A municipal bond or a private fund stake shows up on Capitol Trades and not in Quantral. If you want a member's full disclosure, Capitol Trades is the place.

Filters and pages

This is Capitol Trades' strongest ground. Its trades table filters by politician, stock, party, sector, asset type, trade size and buy or sell. Politician pages add committee memberships, preferred sectors and related articles, stock pages show which members traded a name, and state pages roll it all up by state. A weekly newsletter and an X account post new trades.

Quantral has no trade screener. Congress trades show up in the app's feed, on each member's profile and on each company page. The closest it comes to a ready-made list is the Capitol strategy: every Monday it takes the companies members disclosed buying most in recent weeks, builds a 10-stock, equal-weight list, and tracks it against the S&P 500.

How the trades turned out

Capitol Trades shows the price on the day of each trade, and the rest is up to you. There is no return per trade and no ranking of members by results.

Quantral grades every trade on what the stock did next, dated to the day the filing went public, because that is the first day anyone outside the member's household could act on it. Each member's profile shows how many trades were right, how often they beat the S&P 500 and by how much on average, on the same leaderboard as the X, Reddit, Substack and YouTube voices Quantral grades. Members rank once they have enough graded trades, the same floor as everyone else.

Context

Capitol Trades covers Congress and nothing else. Quantral shows a member's trade on the same company page as insider buys and the crowd on finance X, Reddit, Substack and YouTube, weighted by who has been right before. A member's buy that lines up with a CEO buying shares and a credible bullish case on X reads differently from one that stands alone, and the stock's score reflects all three.

Speed

Neither one gets a trade early. Members have up to 45 days to report, and both read the filing, not the trade. Capitol Trades says it publishes new trades as close to real time as possible, and its "filed after" column makes the delay plain: the latest House filings we saw on October 15 came 20 to 44 days after the trade. Quantral shows a trade once the filing is out, with the same delay built in.

Price

Capitol Trades is free, with no account needed. Quantral is $14.99 a month, or $9.99 a month billed yearly, which starts with a 7-day free trial. You pay for the grading, the insider and crowd data next to it, and the score that puts them together.

Who Capitol Trades is best for

Capitol Trades is the better pick if the record itself is the job. Journalists, researchers and anyone who wants to see every trade a member made, sort by party or sector, or check how late a filing came in will get more out of it than out of Quantral, and it costs nothing. It also covers bonds and private holdings that Quantral leaves out.

Who Quantral is best for

Quantral is the better pick if you are deciding whether a member's trade deserves your attention. It shows you the trade, who made it and their record, and puts it next to insider buys and the crowd's view in one score. You can see how that looks on the Congress stock tracker page, and the Nancy Pelosi tracker shows one member's trades in full.

Is Quantral a Capitol Trades alternative?

For the raw list, no. Quantral has no trade screener, no state or committee pages, and it grades only trades in the listed stocks it covers. If that is what you use Capitol Trades for, keep using it.

For judging a trade, yes. Quantral works as a Capitol Trades alternative when your question is whether this member's filings have been worth following. You can also run both, Capitol Trades to see the filing and Quantral to check the member's record and the rest of the picture.

Common questions

What is Capitol Trades?

Capitol Trades is a free website that tracks stock trades disclosed by members of the US House and Senate under the STOCK Act. It is run by 2iQ Research, which says it combines automated collection with analysts who check the records.

Is Capitol Trades free?

Yes. Capitol Trades states that it is free for the public, and you can browse the trades, politician and stock pages without an account.

Is Capitol Trades accurate?

Its data comes from the official House and Senate disclosures, and 2iQ says its analysts check the records rather than relying on automated processing alone. For any single trade, the original filing on the House Clerk or Senate eFD site is the final word.

Does Capitol Trades have an API?

Capitol Trades does not list a public API on its site. Its parent company, 2iQ Research, sells data feeds and an API to professional clients such as hedge funds and asset managers. Quantral has no bulk API either, but its MCP server lets Claude or ChatGPT pull Congress trades and member records into a chat.

Is Capitol Trades the same as Quantral's Capitol strategy?

No. Capitol Trades is 2iQ's free tracker. Capitol is a Quantral model portfolio: the 10 companies members of Congress disclosed buying most, rebuilt every Monday and tracked against the S&P 500.

Can I use both?

Yes. Use Capitol Trades to see a new filing or everything a member traded, then check Quantral to see whether that member has been right before and whether insiders and the crowd lean the same way.

Choosing between them

If you want every Congress trade in one free table, Capitol Trades does that job better than anything else we have seen. If your harder question is whether a member's next filing is worth acting on, Quantral answers it with their graded record and the rest of the stock's picture in one score. Start with the Congress stock tracker, and for every tracker side by side, read the best Congress stock trackers.

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Quantral surfaces signals and context from public sources to support your own research. Nothing here is financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell. Capitol Trades details were checked on its own site on October 15, 2026; check Capitol Trades directly for the latest.