The price screener: what it catches and how to read the alert

The price screener is a sweep of the whole market once a minute: it compares every pair with its own price N minutes ago and sends an alert when the difference passes the percentage you set. You do not pick the coin in advance — you get the pairs that made the move. Below: what counts as a move, what the alert shows, and why alerts end up either too frequent or too rare.

In short

The screener sweeps the market for you: you never pick a coin, the alert comes from whichever pair made the move.
Five scenarios: three “percent over an interval” (two up, one down) and two breakouts — the 24-hour high and the 24-hour low.
One move, one alert: the condition is checked on the crossing of your threshold, not re-checked every minute.
The screener states a fact — price moved this much in this window. It names no entry, no stop, and no position size.

Which moves the price screener catches

Scenarios define what counts as a move. Each runs on its own, you can enable any combination, and one of them firing is enough for an alert:

Pump — early. Price gained your percentage over a short window. This is the jolt: news, a listing, one large order.
Pump — peak. A second threshold for the upside, usually a larger percentage over a longer window. This is continuation of a move already under way, not its start.
Dump. The mirror scenario for the downside: you enter the percentage as a positive number and the screener measures the fall.
24-hour high breakout. No threshold at all: price has set a new upper edge of its daily range.
24-hour low breakout. The same from below.

Every percentage scenario has its own window, from 1 minute to 4 hours. The same percentage in different windows describes different events: 3% in 5 minutes is a jolt, 3% in 4 hours is a steady drift that barely shows on a minute chart. That is why the two upside scenarios exist separately: the short window catches the start, the long one catches the continuation.

How it differs from the neighbouring price screeners

Three JustScreener screeners work on price, and the main difference between them is who picks the coin:

Screener	You pick the coin	What counts as a hit
Price change	No, the whole market is swept	A move of your percentage over an interval, or a break of the daily extreme
Target price	Yes — the coin and a number in USDT	Price crossed your mark
Price levels screener	No, the engine finds levels from candles itself	Price approached a level it found, or broke it

The difference is practical, not verbal. The price screener answers “where is something happening on the market right now”; the target price answers “has my coin reached my number”. The first one is for when you have no idea yet; the second one is for when the idea exists and is waiting for its price. What moves price in the first place, and why it differs between exchanges, is covered in “The price of a cryptocurrency”.

What the alert contains

The alert is assembled from facts, not from a conclusion. What is in it:

The pair and a counter. How many alerts on this coin have arrived over the period you set in the limits.
A block per exchange where the condition fired. The funding rate, when the pair has one, then the scenario heading with its interval.
The price change over that interval as a percentage, and next to it the open interest change, in percent and in dollars. Spot pairs have no second line — open interest does not exist on spot.
A breakout line, if the daily high or daily low scenario fired.
The 24-hour price range: low, current price, high. It shows at a glance where the coin sits against its daily edges.
Links to the exchange and the chart — the ones enabled in your general settings.

When the condition fires on several exchanges at once, the blocks follow one another inside a single alert — that is one event, not three messages. A move visible across several venues is the coin itself moving; a move on a single venue is worth checking against that venue's turnover. How to read the price-and-open-interest pair is covered in the article on open interest.

How the screener helps

Watching one or two coins by eye is doable. A sharp move can happen on any of thousands of pairs at any hour, and that you cannot track by hand. The price screener compares every pair on 10 exchanges — spot and futures — with its price N minutes ago, every minute, and sends a push or Telegram alert once the move covers the percentage you set. No need to pick a coin.

Open the price screener

Why one move does not turn into 60 alerts

The screener sweeps the market every minute, and a strong move lasts longer than a minute. Four different mechanisms keep one move from being sent over and over.

Firing on the crossing, not on the state

A percentage scenario checks not only “does the condition hold now” but also “did it hold a minute ago over the same window”. The alert goes out only on the minute it starts holding. Without that, a 5% move over an hour would keep the condition satisfied for an hour and produce up to 60 messages about one and the same thing.

Arming the breakout

The daily high moves together with price, so every minute of a fresh high formally satisfies “price broke the high”. After the first breakout alert the screener stays quiet on that coin and that side until price retreats 1% from the level it fired at, or until 30 minutes pass with no new extreme. This is behaviour, not a setting.

A pause between alerts on one coin

The minimum interval between messages about the same coin. Zero means off. The pause caps the pace of repeats and works separately from the limit: the limit caps how many, the pause caps how often.

An alert cap per coin per period

Say, no more than 3 alerts on one coin per hour. This is the last line of defence against a single coin that rises all day crowding the rest of the market out of your feed. The cap is off by default — turn it on right away, together with your first threshold.

An illustrative setup and what it would catch

An illustrative example: catch the early impulse, but only on liquid futures pairs.

Scenario “Pump — early”: 3% in 5 minutes. “Pump — peak” and “Dump” are off.
Market filter: futures only.
Minimum 24h turnover: $50m. Minimum open interest: $10m.
Limits: 2 alerts per coin per 60 minutes, a 15-minute pause.

What this setup would catch

A pair that moves +3.4% in 5 minutes with $120m of daily turnover produces an alert: the price and open interest change on every exchange where the condition fired, plus the daily range. If the condition fired on three exchanges in the same minute, it is still one alert with three blocks.

What it would miss — and that is fine

The same coin rising 3% over an hour: a steady drift does not fit into a five-minute window, and the second scenario with a long window exists for it. A coin with $8m of turnover: the floor cuts it. Spot venues: both the market filter and the open interest floor cut them. A miss caused by a filter is a decision, not a failure — the screener is tuned to exactly what you are willing to read.

Why you get too many alerts — or too few

Both complaints come down to the same four dials: the threshold, the window, the liquidity floors, and the limits.

Too many: the threshold sits below ordinary noise

A percentage that coins cover during an ordinary day should not be an alert. If the feed is full of tickers you have never heard of, raise the percentage or lengthen the window — one change at a time, otherwise you cannot tell what worked.

Too many: no liquidity floors set

On a thin pair, 5% costs one order. The minimum daily turnover and the minimum open interest are your main defence against coins where a move means nothing. Both are entered in millions of dollars.

Too many: every scenario switched on at once

Five active scenarios with wide thresholds produce a stream people stop reading by day two. Start with one scenario and one set of thresholds, and add the rest as the flow becomes predictable.

Too few: the open interest floor removes all of spot

This is the most common non-obvious cause of silence. Open interest does not exist on the spot market, so any value above zero in that field cuts every spot venue out entirely. If you trade spot, leave the field at zero and control noise with the turnover floor instead.

Too few: the market filter and the exchange list

The market filter says futures while the coin trades on spot — then there will be no alerts on it. A short exchange list in your general settings does the same: the screener only looks at the venues you enabled.

Too few: two conditions instead of one

The “unusual move for this coin” mode works together with the percentage threshold, not instead of it: a move has to pass both. Checking favourites only has the same effect. And separately: on the free plan after the trial you get one alert a day, and the counter resets at 07:01 UTC.

Price screener FAQ

How do I set up an alert for a sharp crypto price move?

Switch on the “Pump — early” scenario, set the percentage and the interval (say, 3% in 5 minutes), add a minimum daily turnover, and cap the alerts per coin. You do not pick a coin: the screener sweeps the whole market and sends you the pairs that passed your threshold.

How is the price screener different from the target price screener?

The price screener sweeps the whole market looking for a move of your percentage over an interval — it picks the coin itself. The target price screener is the reverse: you name the coin and a number in USDT, and the alert arrives the minute price goes through it.

Why am I getting too many alerts?

Usually the threshold sits below ordinary daily noise, the turnover and open interest floors are unset, or the per-coin alert cap is off. Raise the threshold or lengthen the window one change at a time so you can see what worked.

Why is the price screener silent?

The most common non-obvious cause is a minimum open interest above zero: spot has no open interest, so such a value cuts every spot venue out. Check the market filter, the list of enabled exchanges, and the “unusual move for this coin” mode too — it works on top of the percentage threshold, not instead of it.

Will I get an alert for every minute of a strong move?

No. A percentage scenario fires on the minute the threshold is crossed, not for as long as the condition holds. The daily-extreme breakout has its own arming: the next alert on the same coin and side comes after price retreats 1% from the level, or after 30 minutes with no new extreme.

Does the price screener work on spot or only on futures?

On both. The settings have a market filter: spot, futures, or everything. The only thing to note is that the open interest line and its floor apply to futures pairs only.

Does the screener tell me where price goes next?

No. The alert records a fact: price covered your percentage within your window. Whether the move continues or reverses is something the screener neither knows nor predicts — the entry, the stop, and the position size are yours to decide.

? How do I set up an alert for a sharp crypto price move?

Switch on the “Pump — early” scenario, set the percentage and the interval (say, 3% in 5 minutes), add a minimum daily turnover, and cap the alerts per coin.

Every form field — the percentage, the interval, the market filter, the floors, and the limits — is explained in “Setting up the price screener”. Worked cases from alert to decision are in “Price Screener Use Cases: From Alert to Decision”. If you need a specific price on a specific coin, that is the job of the target price screener.