Advantages
- Easy to use and designed to follow regulations
- Rich portfolio tracker capabilities
- Multiple crypto report formats
- Practical for accountants and tax professionals
Disadvantages
- Premium tiers can be expensive
- Some UX issues and missing features
What is Koinly?
Koinly is crypto tax software. If you’ve browsed Koinly reviews, you’ve likely seen that it targets the messy task of crypto tax management by auto-importing transactions from crypto exchanges, wallets, and blockchains.
Robin Singh created this crypto tax calculator after struggling with spreadsheets and mobile trackers to keep tabs on his assets. He wanted a system that could:
- Detect transfers across his wallets and exchange accounts
- Auto-track currencies across connected services
- Merge multiple fills from one order into a single transaction
- Account for fees regardless of currency
- Preserve original cost basis when swapping assets
- Offer different accounting methods
- Show how gains or losses were computed per transaction
With those goals, Robin built Koinly in roughly four months and launched in 2018. Since then, more than one million users have signed up worldwide.
Koinly is known for real-time portfolio tracking and automated tax report generation. These functions let users follow investments and compute capital gains and losses accurately. Many also praise the approachable interface, which works for both newcomers and experienced crypto traders. Now that the basics are clear, let’s dig deeper.
Koinly Review: advantages
Koinly stands among the better-known crypto tax platforms. With a sizable user base, it’s worth unpacking the features that keep it highly rated.
Crypto tax reporting with compliance and safeguards (GDPR, SOC 2)
Security is non-negotiable for any crypto service. So, is Koinly safe? Operating under the European Union’s framework, the platform is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The GDPR sets demanding standards for personal data protection in the EU [1]. Koinly’s adherence indicates robust processes for privacy and transparency, with controls designed to protect user data.
On top of that, Koinly holds industry certifications including SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
SOC 2, defined by the AICPA, focuses on security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. ISO 27001 provides an information security management framework that helps organizations handle risks through structured controls and regular review [2].
Koinly also applies frequent updates, read-only API connections, encryption, audits, and tight access controls. Its syncing uses APIs that never require private keys, reducing exposure while gathering data.
If you’re wondering “Is Koinly safe?”, the regulatory posture and layered controls strongly suggest a clear commitment to security and data protection.
There’s no mandatory know-your-customer (KYC) verification unless you want your personal details shown on tax reports.
Beyond data protection, Koinly aims for accurate, country-specific tax compliance by collaborating with leading accounting firms. These experts routinely review logic and workflows so the software keeps up with local rules.
At the time of writing, reviews have been completed for several regions:
- Canada. Koinly worked with MNP to align reporting and compliance requirements with the country’s ACB cost basis methodology and tax loss rules.
- Australia. Local accountants verified the FIFO method and ensured it meets Australian tax law, including MyTax reporting.
- Ireland. FPM Accountants Limited evaluated the Irish tax calculator for alignment with Irish Revenue guidance, including FIFO and wash sale rules.
User-friendliness also stands out. As many reviews note, the layout is clean, choices are clear, and the onboarding flow walks you through setup smoothly.
Pages explain each step, and account types—individual, business, or accountant—are obvious. Dropdowns reveal extras without clutter. A light/dark theme toggle allows a comfortable view anytime.
Helpful “i” buttons provide context-sensitive answers and quick tips tied to each page. This reduces trips to the help center and speeds up learning.
For example, the tax report area includes collapsible Q&A sections with concise explanations so you can master features quickly.
Extensive resources are available too: a help center, tax guides, and a crypto glossary. As for customer support, you can reach the team via email or live chat—generally friendly and responsive.
Portfolio tracker features, robust and real-time (capital gains)
As a portfolio tracker, Koinly recognizes more than 17,000 cryptocurrencies and connects with over 850 exchanges, wallets, and blockchains, giving you a single overview of holdings, profits, losses, and income.
It works with many wallet types, plus well-known platforms like Binance, Bybit, and Kraken. Connect your accounts, and Koinly compiles a complete view across services.
The crypto tax calculator supports a wide range of transaction categories, grouped into four types:
- Deposit. Funds arriving in a wallet or service, increasing your balance. Examples include staking rewards, airdrops, hard forks, or lending returns.
- Send. Coins leaving your wallet or exchange. Examples include paying for goods, gifting tokens, safekeeping charges, or margin interest expenses.
- Trade. Buying crypto with fiat (e.g., EUR to BTC), selling crypto for fiat (e.g., ETH to USD), or swapping crypto-to-crypto (e.g., BTC to ETH).
- Transfer. Movements between your own wallets, created internally by Koinly to avoid misclassification.
How fees are handled depends on the transaction. For a Trade, fees appear directly with the swap. For a Deposit, you’d add a separate withdrawal tagged as a cost to record the fee accurately.
Tags serve as labels that sort your activity for tax purposes. For instance, Deposit tags like airdrop, reward, cashback, or mining are displayed under Income or Miscellaneous in reports.
You can bring transactions into Koinly three ways: API keys, CSV/Excel import, or manual entry within the interface. If your CSV/Excel exceeds 10 MB, split it into smaller files before uploading.
After import, the app processes the data, flags missing or invalid entries, and ignores duplicates to prevent double counting.
The Overview dashboard acts as a central hub to gauge portfolio health over time.
It’s divided into three parts:
- Chart area. See total value, overall cost basis, unrealized gains, and a timeline you can hover to inspect by date.
- Breakdown area. Below the chart, totals for the selected period appear, including deposits, withdrawals, and trading fees.
- Assets area. Shows each asset’s icon/name, balance, cost, market value, and ROI.
While this layout is familiar in the space, Koinly adds a dedicated NFTs dashboard with image previews, which some competitors lack.
It imports NFTs (ERC-721 and ERC-1155) when you mint, buy, receive, sell, or send collectibles from many Ethereum-based networks like Ethereum and AVAX. Support for Solana and Cardano NFTs is limited right now, with broader coverage planned.
A beta Tax Optimization dashboard highlights potential tax-loss harvesting opportunities. It evaluates assets you could sell to lower taxes and surfaces winning positions that might offset losses. You can preview how gains would change if you exited today.
To dig into raw activity, open the Transactions view in the top navigation. It aggregates trades across accounts and currencies and displays type (Send, Purchase, Gift, etc.), wallet, currency, amount, cost basis, and profit/loss.
Filters make it easy to slice data by type, tag, status, and you can sort by date, gains, or value.
A standout benefit is that the portfolio tracker is free to use, which explains why many Koinly reviews highlight it as a go-to option for a reliable, user-friendly overview.
Tax reports in depth
Beyond tracking, Koinly’s tax capabilities are comprehensive. It produces country-specific reports for more than 30 jurisdictions. Examples include IRS Form 8949 and Schedule D (USA), ATO MyTax Report (Australia), HMRC Report (UK), and CRA Report (Canada).
If your country isn’t on the dedicated list, you can still use supported cost basis methods such as FIFO and LIFO, which apply broadly to 100+ countries.
Full reports may contain:
- Complete transaction history
- Capital gains summary
- Income breakdown
- Gifts, donations, and lost assets overview
- Expenses log
- End-of-year or opening balances report
Need just one section, like an end-of-year holdings report for a wealth tax, or a buys/sells export for your accountant? You can download narrowly tailored reports to suit your case.
The Tax Reports page summarizes activity for the year: totals for transactions, deposits, withdrawals, trades, and transfers, plus capital gains/losses, other gains (like derivatives), income, costs and expenses, gifts, donations, and lost coins.
You can adjust settings such as cost basis and tracking preferences. After tuning, select a report format and press Download Report to generate the file.
If you collaborate with an accountant, invite them straight into your Koinly account so they can review dashboards, verify numbers, and propose tax-saving adjustments—no emailing files required. By default, invited accountants can add, delete, and edit transactions and wallets.
There’s also a crypto accountant directory to help you locate trusted professionals in your region for Koinly tax reviews.
Built for accountants and tax agents
Besides being helpful for traders, Koinly offers tools for accountants, bookkeepers, and tax agents to serve crypto clients efficiently. It supports multiple report types and lets you manage many clients within a single account.
Rather than juggling spreadsheets from numerous wallets and exchanges, professionals can centralize data in Koinly, cutting costs and improving turnaround.
With an intuitive UI and solid documentation, the learning curve is short. Integrations with common tax software like QuickBooks, Nexo, and TurboTax add flexibility for practice workflows.
For example, QuickBooks can receive imported transactions, keep client portfolios current, and streamline tax computations.
Koinly Review: drawbacks
So far, this Koinly review highlighted many strengths in tax reporting and portfolio tracking. It’s equally important to consider limitations before choosing a tool. Here are the main concerns to keep in mind.
Pricing can be costly
Koinly delivers a comprehensive toolkit for tax and tracking. The interface, integrations, and breadth of features are attractive. That said, many Koinly reviews note that it’s on the pricier side for generating tax return reports.
Pricing depends on past transaction volume, which can constrain future reporting and push you toward higher-cost tiers. Active traders might find the top plan necessary just to cover their annual activity.
Even the highest package doesn’t include unlimited transactions; extra activity requires an additional fee.
By contrast, CoinTracking’s top tier includes unlimited transactions and priority support.
On the plus side, Koinly can filter out spam and tiny rewards. It can also automatically group the small fills that exchanges often split from one large order, which may reduce costs.
UX pain points and missing features
Although the interface earns frequent praise, some Koinly reviews highlight rough edges. For instance, instructions around identifying transactions that trigger warnings could be more explicit to prevent confusion.
Users also request simpler importing for popular Layer 2 wallets—Loopring being a frequent example. Right now, you may need to add a separate wallet for each L2, which is a hassle if you maintain several addresses.
A notable concern is the absence of two-factor authentication (2FA). Shareable dashboards might complicate implementation, but many people expect 2FA as a baseline security measure. Requiring verification for every login—even when sharing with an accountant—would be inconvenient, yet it’s a widely adopted safeguard.
Is Koinly safe without 2FA? The platform’s broader security controls are solid, though the omission does stand out for some.
There are also regional constraints. For example, some French users report problems with Formulaire 2086, where fees are interpreted as separate trades, producing incorrect results under local rules.
On a positive note, Koinly maintains an active discussion space for feedback, support tickets, and community threads—signaling that user input drives ongoing improvements.
Koinly pricing plans
As noted earlier, many Koinly reviews perceive the platform as expensive. How does pricing actually work? Here’s a clear breakdown.
Three factors shape the cost structure:
- Yearly plan. Buy a Koinly package for the specific tax year you want a report for. Example: choose the 2023 plan to produce a 2023 report.
- Transaction cap per year. Pick a plan covering all transactions for that year. If you made 2,000 transactions in 2023, your plan must include at least that many.
- Account-wide transaction total. Koinly needs to analyze all prior activity to calculate gains, so your combined plans must cover your total historical transactions. If you’ve done 5,000 transactions overall, your plans must sum to 5,000 or more.
Because of these rules, some users end up needing the top tier, especially if their historical transaction count is high.
The free plan includes essentials: import up to 10,000 transactions, a no-cost Koinly tax summary, and full portfolio tracking across supported wallets and exchanges.
To produce downloadable reports, you must upgrade, with paid tiers starting at 49 dollars per tax year. If the free plan exceeds 10,000 transactions, Koinly pauses gain/loss calculations, which can throw off balances and the dashboard. Upgrading to a plan that covers all activity resolves this.
The entry “Newbie” tier is 49 dollars for one tax year and covers 100 transactions, including error reconciliation and custom file import. Heavier users can opt for “Hodler” at 99 dollars or “Trader” at 199 dollars, each supporting up to 10,000 transactions.
Go beyond that cap and you’ll need the Pro plan, plus add-ons for higher throughput—10 dollars per extra 1,000 transactions up to 100,000.
Custom arrangements are available for individuals or businesses with very large volumes or special requirements.
Before paying, try the free plan to check fit. If you buy a lower tier and later surpass the limit, you can upgrade by paying the difference.
Looking to cut costs? Hunt for a Koinly promo code on coupon or community sites; discounts sometimes range from roughly 20% to 65%.
Payments are flexible: major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dai, and USD Coin are accepted, along with credit and debit cards.
How to set up a Koinly account?
After weighing pros and cons, here’s how to create your Koinly account if you decide to proceed. I’ll cover the steps from signup to selecting a plan.
Step 1: Visit the official Koinly website and press Sign up in the upper right.
Step 2: Enter your name and email, set a password, and choose whether to receive crypto tax news and product updates. Click Create an account. You can also register with Revolut or Google.
Step 3: Pick your account type: Individual, Business, or Accountant. I’ll choose Individual for this walkthrough.
Step 4: Choose your goal: Tax reports plus portfolio tracking, or portfolio tracking only. Then select your home country and base currency so Koinly can tailor calculations and reports.
Step 5: Add your wallets by picking from the list or searching by name.
Step 6: Choose how to import data. Either set up automatic syncing with an API key (selecting the time period) or import manually by dragging a file into the uploader or browsing your device.
You can also click Create without data to configure your account first and add transactions later.
Step 7 (optional): To buy a Koinly plan, open your profile menu (top right) and select Plans. You’ll see the tax year, plan options, included features, and any add-ons like dual nationality or an expert review.
Scroll down to choose your payment method and enter a Koinly promo code if you have one. Click Buy now to complete the purchase.
Conclusions
That wraps up this Koinly review. Overall, Koinly brings a broad feature set for crypto tax reporting and portfolio tracking. It integrates with popular exchanges like Binance and Bybit, and many wallets and blockchains.
For anyone asking “Is Koinly safe?”, the platform generally earns confidence. It’s GDPR compliant and aligned with SOC 2 and ISO 27001. That said, the absence of 2FA at the moment may concern some users.
Aside from that, consider transaction limits and region-specific gaps when deciding if it’s the right fit.
The information on this site is not financial, investment, or trading advice. does not recommend buying, selling, or holding any cryptocurrency. Always consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.
Reviews (6)
In crypto, I think reputation matters more than people admit. A project can have great marketing, but keeping users interested for years is another story.
True. https://coinspot.io/en/best-crypto-trading-telegram/elixir/ is one of the examples that gets mentioned when people discuss older Telegram trading communities. I think having a track record at least gives people something to analyze.
Agreed. Research becomes much easier when there is actual history instead of just promises.
Koinly’s lack of 2FA and high subscription costs make it feel like a rip-off. I expected better security and affordability. Disappointed!
Koinly’s lack of two-factor authentication is a glaring security oversight, especially for a platform handling sensitive financial data. Additionally, its premium pricing tiers are steep compared to competitors, making it a less cost-effective choice for investors seeking comprehensive crypto tax solutions. These factors raise concerns about its value proposition and commitment to user security.
Koinly’s so-called ‘crypto tax solution’ is a complete disaster. The interface is clunky, and the lack of two-factor authentication is a glaring security risk. Their premium plans are outrageously overpriced, and the absence of essential features makes it feel like a scam. It’s infuriating to see such a subpar product being peddled as a top-tier service. I deeply regret wasting my time and money on this.