If you’ve bought, sold, swapped, or staked any crypto this year, you probably owe the IRS a detailed accounting of it — and your exchange’s transaction history alone won’t get you there. Crypto tax software connects to your exchanges and wallets, calculates your gains and losses, and produces the tax forms (or the files your accountant or TurboTax needs).
Koinly and CoinTracker are the two names that come up first, and for good reason: both are established, both handle the core job well, and both let you import your full history for free before you pay a cent. But they price differently, they shine in different situations, and picking the wrong one can cost you double what the right one would.
This guide compares them on real pricing with a worked example, free-plan limits, supported exchanges and wallets, DeFi handling, ease of use, and support — then gives an honest verdict by user type.
Quick note: this is educational content, not tax advice. We’re comparing software, not telling you what you owe — when in doubt, talk to a tax professional. For the tax concepts themselves, start with our crypto tax guide for beginners.
The Short Version
Free Plans: Try Before You Pay
This is the most beginner-friendly part of both products. Neither charges you to import and calculate — you only pay to download the finished tax forms.
Koinly’s free plan is the more generous of the two: import up to 10,000 transactions, connect unlimited wallets and exchanges, track your portfolio, and preview your capital gains, losses, and income on screen. The single restriction is that you can’t download any reports. For a beginner, that means you can see exactly what you owe (roughly) before spending anything.
CoinTracker’s free plan centers on portfolio tracking: connect your accounts, watch your holdings and performance year-round, and see a tax summary. Form downloads require a paid plan. It’s less of a “preview your taxes free” tool and more of a free portfolio tracker with tax features you unlock later.
Practical advice: import your history into both free plans. It costs nothing, takes about 20 minutes, and you’ll see your real transaction count — which tells you exactly which paid tier you’d need on each. Then buy only the one you’ll actually file with.
Features: Integrations, DeFi, and Country Support
Supported exchanges and wallets: Koinly advertises 400+ exchange integrations and 100+ wallets, covering 20,000+ cryptocurrencies. CoinTracker supports 300+ exchanges. For a beginner on Coinbase or Kraken with a Ledger or Trezor, both cover you completely — the difference only matters if you use smaller international exchanges or a long tail of wallets.
DeFi and NFTs: Koinly has the edge here. Its DeFi support (staking, liquidity pools, yield farming) and NFT tracking are broader, and all of it is available even on the $49 plan. CoinTracker’s DeFi handling is more limited, particularly for complex positions, and NFT tracking is minimal. If your activity is mostly “bought on Coinbase, held on a hardware wallet,” this doesn’t matter. If you’ve touched DeFi protocols, it matters a lot.
Country support: Koinly is the international pick — tax reports for 100+ countries and 20+ jurisdictions. CoinTracker is US-focused, built around IRS forms (8949, Schedule D) and direct integration with TurboTax and H&R Block. US filer either way? Both work. Filing outside the US? Koinly, comfortably.
Tax-loss harvesting: CoinTracker includes tax-loss harvesting identification on its Prime plan and up — it flags positions showing unrealized losses you could sell to offset gains. Koinly offers tax-loss harvesting suggestions as well, without tier-gating them. For beginners, this is a nice-to-have, not a deciding factor.
Staking transactions: worth a specific callout. Staking rewards generate lots of tiny taxable events that can blow through a transaction limit on their own. CoinTracker excludes your first $25 of staking transactions from the count, and Prime plans and up include unlimited staking. On Koinly, staking transactions count toward your limit like everything else — heavy stakers should size their plan accordingly.
Ease of Use and Onboarding
Both are built for non-accountants, but they feel different.
Koinly’s onboarding is import-first: connect exchanges via read-only API keys or CSV upload, add wallet addresses, and watch it categorize. The dashboard is clean, and the review workflow for flagging unrecognized transactions is straightforward. Beginners generally get from signup to a calculated tax summary in under an hour.
CoinTracker feels more like a finance app: the portfolio dashboard is the home screen, tax features sit alongside performance tracking, and the guided setup holds your hand a bit more. US beginners who already use TurboTax will find the export flow familiar.
Neither requires accounting knowledge. Both will occasionally mislabel a transaction — especially DeFi activity — and both require you to review and correct the flags before downloading forms. Budget an hour of review time with either one; the software does the math, but you’re still responsible for the accuracy.
Support and Reputation
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I actually need crypto tax software?
If you only bought crypto and never sold, swapped, or earned staking rewards, you may have nothing to report — but you still need records. The moment you sell, swap, spend, or earn rewards, you’re generating taxable events that need cost-basis math across every transaction. Our crypto tax guide for beginners explains what counts. Software becomes worth it the moment manual spreadsheets sound miserable.
Will this software file my taxes for me?
No — it calculates everything and produces IRS-ready forms (Form 8949, Schedule D) or export files for TurboTax, H&R Block, and accountants. You (or your tax pro) still file. Think of it as the calculator, not the filer.
Is it safe to connect my exchange account?
Yes, when done right. Both connect via read-only API keys — the software can see your transaction history but can’t move your funds. Never enter your exchange password or 2FA codes into tax software, never share private keys or seed phrases, and enable 2FA on the tax software account itself.
What counts as a “transaction” for pricing?
Roughly: every trade, sale, swap, transfer between your own wallets, staking reward, and DeFi interaction. Transfers between your own wallets usually count even though they’re not taxable — which is why importing first (free) to see your real count matters more than estimating.
Can I switch from one to the other later?
Yes. Your transaction history lives on your exchanges and wallets, not in the tax software — you can import the same history into the other tool anytime. You’d only pay again if you need that year’s downloadable forms from the new tool.
Which is better for DeFi?
Koinly. Broader DeFi protocol support, NFT tracking, and none of it tier-gated. If your history includes liquidity pools, yield farming, or complex on-chain activity, Koinly will require less manual cleanup.
The Bottom Line
Koinly wins on price and international/DeFi breadth. CoinTracker wins on the US filing workflow, multi-year coverage, and portfolio tracking. For most beginners, the practical move is the same either way: import your history into both free plans, check your real transaction count, and buy the cheapest tier that covers you.
If price is the deciding factor — and for most beginners it should be — start with Koinly at $49. If you’re a US filer who lives in TurboTax and wants one subscription covering every tax year, CoinTracker is the smoother fit. Either way, do it before April — reconstructing a year’s worth of trades from memory is the actual nightmare these tools exist to prevent.
Both companies are established — Koinly founded in 2018, CoinTracker in 2017 — and both handle sensitive financial data with bank-grade encryption. Neither stores your private keys or exchange passwords (connections use read-only API keys), and both support two-factor authentication on your account.
Koinly offers email support on all plans plus live chat, with a comprehensive knowledge base. Its reputation is strongest among international users and DeFi-heavy portfolios.
CoinTracker offers email and live chat support with availability varying by tier (24/7 on the top tier), and it’s registered with FinCEN as a money services business with SOC 1 and SOC 2 certification. Its reputation is strongest among US filers. Some users report slower support responses on lower tiers and occasional import bugs with lesser-known exchanges — the usual caveats of any tax software.
Neither company will ever ask for your seed phrase or private keys. Anyone claiming to be “Koinly support” or “CoinTracker support” asking for them is a scammer.
Who Should Pick Which?
Choose Koinly if:
- You want the lowest price at your transaction volume (it’s cheaper at every equivalent tier)
- You trade on international exchanges or file taxes outside the US
- You use DeFi protocols or hold NFTs
- You only need one tax year handled and want every feature unlocked at the entry price
Choose CoinTracker if:
- You’re a US filer who wants the smoothest TurboTax / H&R Block integration
- You’re reconciling multiple past tax years in one session (one subscription covers all years)
- You want year-round portfolio tracking as well as tax features
- You’re a heavy staker who’d benefit from the staking transaction allowances
- You want built-in tax-loss harvesting identification
The honest truth: for a beginner with a simple buy-and-hold history, both will produce the same correct tax forms — the math is the math. The decision comes down to price (Koinly usually wins), your country’s tax system, and whether you value CoinTracker’s US filing workflow enough to pay the premium. And remember: import into both for free first. Your actual transaction count makes the decision for you.
- Pick Koinly if you want the lowest entry price, trade on international exchanges, use DeFi, or file outside the US. Its $49 entry plan undercuts CoinTracker, and every paid tier includes the full feature set — you only pay for transaction volume.
- Pick CoinTracker if you’re a US filer who wants the smoothest path into TurboTax or H&R Block, year-round portfolio tracking, or built-in tax-loss harvesting. It’s more expensive at the entry level but purpose-built for the US tax workflow.
- The pricing plot twist: both are free until you click “download.” You can import your entire transaction history into both, see your calculated gains and losses, and only pay when you need the actual tax forms. There is no reason to guess which is cheaper for you — import first, then decide.
Pricing: What Your Transaction Count Really Costs
Both tools price by transaction count — a number you won’t know until you’ve imported everything. That’s why the free import matters so much. Here’s how the paid tiers stack up (per tax year, as of September 2026):
| Koinly | CoinTracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0 — import up to 10,000 transactions, track portfolio, preview gains; no report downloads | $0 — portfolio tracking and tax summary; no form downloads |
| Entry paid | $49 — up to 100 transactions | $59 — up to 100 transactions |
| Mid tier | $99 — up to 1,000 transactions | $199 — up to 1,000 transactions (Prime) |
| High volume | $199 — up to 3,000 transactions | $599 — up to 10,000 transactions (Ultra) |
| Top tier | from $299 — 10,000+ transactions | $1,999 — up to 50,000 transactions (Ultra+) |
Two structural differences matter more than the headline prices:
- Koinly charges per tax year; CoinTracker’s subscription covers all tax years. If you’re reconciling 2023, 2024, and 2025 in one session, Koinly charges per year while CoinTracker charges once. For multi-year catch-up filing, that flips the math.
- Koinly doesn’t gate features by tier. The $49 plan has the same DeFi support, NFT tracking, cost-basis methods, and TurboTax export as the top Pro plan (from $299) — the only difference is how many transactions are covered. CoinTracker’s advanced features (tax-loss harvesting, per-year cost-basis customization) unlock at higher tiers.
Worked example — a beginner with 80 transactions in the tax year:
| Koinly | CoinTracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan needed | Newbie ($49, covers 100) | Base ($59, covers 100) |
| Cost | $49 | $59 |
Koinly wins by $10 at low volume. Now the same beginner a year later, with 600 transactions:
| Koinly | CoinTracker | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan needed | Hodler ($99, covers 1,000) | Prime ($199, covers 1,000) |
| Cost | $99 | $199 |
The gap widens as volume grows — Koinly is consistently cheaper at equivalent transaction counts. CoinTracker’s case has to be made on features and workflow, not price.
Pricing figures reflect published plans as of September 2026. Both companies adjust pricing — always check the official pricing pages before buying.
