Alpha

Alpha

Public Holdings, Inc. · Business

Alpha is Public's AI stock research assistant. It explains why stocks, ETFs, and crypto move, and answers your questions about any ticker.

Interface preview of Alpha

About Alpha

What Is Alpha

Alpha, sometimes called Public Alpha or Alpha AI, is an AI investing tool built by Public Holdings, the company behind the Public investing app. It lives inside Public's platform and runs on GPT-4, a large language model. You give it a ticker, and it tells you what's happening with that asset and why.

The appeal is narrow and obvious. Most brokerages hand you a chart and a wall of numbers; Alpha hands you a sentence. Ask why a stock dropped 6% before lunch, and an AI market analysis lands in seconds instead of a support ticket.

It's not a robo-advisor, and it won't tell you what to buy. Public states plainly that Alpha output isn't investment research or a recommendation, and that the model, like any generative system trained on a mountain of internet text, can be confidently wrong in ways that sound completely reasonable. Treat it like a well-read friend who's fast but occasionally sure of the wrong thing.

Getting Started

  1. Create a free account at public.com or install the Public app on iOS or Android.
  2. Open Alpha from within the platform, then build a watchlist of stocks, ETFs, and crypto you care about.
  3. Ask a question about any ticker, or let Alpha surface why an asset is moving.
  4. Check the reasoning against the underlying numbers before you act on it. Alpha generates text, not verified facts.

Product Information

A quick look at Alpha's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.

Free PlanYes
Paid Plans$0
PlatformWeb, iOS, Android
DeveloperPublic Holdings, Inc.
CategoryBusiness
Release DateJul 2023
Latest UpdatedOct 2025
Website VisitsN/A
Website Global RankN/A
API AvailabilityNo

Best for

The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.

Users

  • Self-directed retail investors
  • Newer investors learning how markets work
  • Busy watchlist keepers

Tasks

  • Explaining a price move
  • Summarizing earnings calls
  • Researching an unfamiliar ticker

Scenarios

  • Checking your portfolio over morning coffee
  • Deciding whether to add an asset to your watchlist
  • Catching up after a market selloff

Key features

Real-Time Move Explanations

Alpha's main job is answering the question every watchlist owner asks: why is this thing moving? It pulls together price action and market context, then writes a short explanation in plain English that a reader with no finance background can follow in a few seconds. You get real-time stock updates with a reason attached, not just a red or green number. That's the whole point of an AI stock research tool.

Conversational Stock Q&A

You can ask Alpha anything about any stock and get a written answer back. Type a question the way you'd ask a colleague who happens to follow the markets closely, and it responds in roughly the same register. It's built for people who want a starting point on an unfamiliar name, not a lecture on valuation theory.

Custom Watchlists for Stocks, ETFs, and Crypto

Build a single watchlist that spans equities, exchange-traded funds, and digital assets. The stock watchlist app tracks the whole list and flags unusual movements so you're not refreshing five tabs to spot them.

Earnings Call Summaries

Full earnings calls often run an hour or more, and they rarely reward a casual listener who just wants to know whether the quarter went well. Alpha condenses one into the key takeaways, which is usually enough to tell whether a company beat expectations and what management chose to stress in its remarks.

Performance and Outlook Analysis

Beyond a single day's move, Alpha can walk through a stock's performance, relevant metrics, and where the outlook stands according to what's been reported publicly. It's the kind of background you'd normally assemble from three or four tabs, condensed into a single answer.

GPT-4 Under the Hood

Alpha is powered by GPT-4, a generative large language model from OpenAI. That's what lets it hold a normal conversation about markets instead of forcing you through a fixed set of menus.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Free to use if you have a Public account, with no separate subscription.
  • Turns dry market data into readable explanations you can absorb in seconds.
  • Covers stocks, ETFs, and crypto in one watchlist, so you're not juggling apps.
  • Handles natural-language questions, which beats hunting through filters and screeners.

Cons

  • Locked inside the Public platform. You can't use Alpha on another brokerage.
  • Public warns the output can be inaccurate, so you have to verify anything before acting on it.
  • No API means you can't wire Alpha into your own tools or spreadsheets.
  • The free plan rides on Public's account terms, so "free" still means signing up.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Alpha comes with a Public account at no extra charge. You create the account, and the tool is available inside the platform. There's no separate Alpha subscription.