Last updated: August 17, 2026
Future Stack Reviews did not create an account, connect a wallet, import a transaction, purchase a plan, or generate a report at either company. Every figure below is what a published page displayed on the date recorded beside it. This briefing compares published entitlements, not product performance.
This page contains no affiliate links. Future Stack Reviews receives no compensation from Koinly, CoinTracker, or any company named here. Links to vendor pages are cited as evidence.
Koinly and CoinTracker both let you import history and read tax figures before paying, and both charge for the document you can actually file. They do not calculate the charge the same way. Koinly sells a plan per tax year and applies a separate requirement covering every year in the account. CoinTracker sells an annual subscription and publishes a lifetime tax-form ceiling alongside its per-year limits.
Verdict: the two entry prices are close and are not measuring the same thing, so a buyer cannot rank them from the plan cards. Nothing here establishes which product calculates a complicated portfolio more accurately.
This applies to you if
- Your history runs past one recent tax year
- You need reports for more than one year
- You are deciding what to import before you buy
- You are comparing a one-time purchase against a renewing one
This does not apply to you if
- You want an accuracy test. None was run
- You want a ruling on import cleanup or support quality
- You need tax guidance rather than product documentation
- Your history is a handful of trades in one year
At a glance
| Billing unit | Koinly: one purchase per tax year. CoinTracker: annual subscription |
| Free plan, downloadable report | No on both |
| Entry paid tier | Koinly $49 per tax year, 100 transactions. CoinTracker from $59 per year, 100 per year |
| History that affects the price | Koinly: the filing year plus an account-wide requirement across all years. CoinTracker: not established from the pages checked |
| Separate published cap | CoinTracker: 200,000 lifetime transactions for tax forms on Base, Prime, and Ultra |
| Purchase order affects total | Koinly documents that buying oldest year first can lower the price of the most recent year |
| Automatic renewal | Koinly states no automatic charge for the next year. CoinTracker: not established from the pages checked |
| Entry tier feature gates | Koinly: full report set at the first paid tier. CoinTracker: tax lots and loss harvesting begin at Prime |
| Evidence scope | Public vendor pages only, checked 17 August 2026 |
| Not established here | Calculation accuracy, import cleanup, support quality, checkout price, either company’s overall suitability |
Structural audit
Contents
Free calculates, paid exports
Both free plans share one documented boundary. Neither includes a downloadable tax report.
Koinly states it directly in its pricing FAQ: the free trial does not expire, and a plan purchase is required only to download tax reports. The feature table carries the same line, showing a dash in the Free column against Form 8949 and Schedule D, international tax reports, the comprehensive audit report, and export to TurboTax and TaxACT.
CoinTracker draws it in two places on one page. The Free plan card ends with a crossed item reading “No tax filing.” The comparison table below marks the row for downloading tax forms with a cross in the Free column, while the three paid columns read “All past years.”
Below that boundary the two free plans are not identical. Koinly’s Free column lists capital gains preview, portfolio tracking, a tax optimizer, DeFi and NFT support, FIFO and LIFO and average cost, wallet-based cost tracking under Spec ID, auto balance verification, negative balance warnings, and a double-entry ledger for every asset. CoinTracker’s Free column lists daily portfolio updates, DeFi support, spam detection, a tax summary, mobile app access, and the option to add a tax professional.
Those are lists of published entitlements. This briefing did not test what any of them produce on a real import.
Sources: Koinly, pricing page and FAQ, checked 17 August 2026 · CoinTracker, plans page, checked 17 August 2026
Koinly prices years you are not filing
Koinly’s price is not the number printed beside a tax-year plan. Its Help Center lists four separate requirements for generating a report.
You need a plan for the year you want to report. That plan must cover the transaction count inside that year. All plans combined must cover the account’s total across every year. And the count that matters is the billable count, which excludes deleted transactions, most dust rewards, transactions marked as spam, and transactions Koinly has merged.
The third requirement is the one that changes the arithmetic. Koinly gives it a name, the account-wide transaction limit, and a margin: if the total from previous years is under 1,000, it does not need covering. Past that margin, history from years you have no intention of filing enters the calculation for the year you are filing.
Koinly’s own example is a user with 1,000 transactions in 2023 and 1,000 in 2024. Either buy a plan for each year, or buy one larger plan covering 2,000 for 2024 alone. The second route is cheaper and produces reports only for 2024.
This is a documented pricing mechanic. It sits in a Help Center article rather than on the pricing page, so the figure a buyer compares and the figure that determines the plan are on different surfaces.
The free tier illustrates the distance without either number being wrong. Koinly lists 10,000 transactions on Free and 100 on the $49 plan that generates reports. That is not a claim that a 10,000-transaction account can pay $49 for a report. It is that Koinly permits importing and previewing a dataset far larger than the entry plan will cover for output. Once the yearly and account-wide counts are known, the required plan can sit well above the entry tier.
Sources: Koinly Help Center, How pricing works in Koinly, updated 23 June 2026 · Koinly, pricing page, checked 17 August 2026
Purchase order changes the total
One consequence of the account-wide rule is documented and easy to miss.
Koinly advises that when several years need reports, plans should be purchased starting from the oldest. Buying older years first builds the account-wide coverage, and Koinly states that the plan for the most recent year may then be significantly cheaper than if the recent year had been bought first.
The same page gives the opposite case. A buyer who needs only the most recent year can cover older transactions with one larger plan for that year, which Koinly says is always cheaper than buying a plan per year. The trade is that reports for those older years cannot then be generated.
Two published routes, two different totals, decided by sequence rather than by product choice. A comparison that stops at the tier price cannot show this, because the variable is the buyer’s purchase path rather than a number on the card.
Koinly also states that plans are not subscriptions, that each yearly plan stays valid for ten years from purchase, that reports can be regenerated an unlimited number of times inside that window, and that upgrading mid-way means paying the difference. Payment is accepted in BTC, ETH, DAI, and USDC alongside cards.
Sources: Koinly Help Center, How pricing works in Koinly, updated 23 June 2026 · Koinly, pricing FAQ, checked 17 August 2026
CoinTracker’s ceiling is not a price
CoinTracker publishes two transaction numbers per tier, and they do different jobs.
The plan cards carry the yearly figure: 100 transactions per year at Base, 1,000 at Prime, 10,000 at Ultra. The comparison table below repeats those as pairs covering the plus variants, reading 100 and 250, then 1,000 and 2,500, then 10,000 and 50,000.
Directly under that row sits a second one: “Lifetime transactions limit for tax forms.” The value is 200,000, and it is the same 200,000 across Base, Prime, and Ultra. It does not scale with the tier, which is what separates it from the yearly figure. A ceiling that stays constant while the price rises sixfold is a boundary on the product rather than a variable in its price.
This is where the obvious comparison to Koinly fails. Koinly’s account-wide requirement changes which plan you must buy. CoinTracker’s lifetime figure does not move between the paid tiers, and the pages checked here do not describe it as an input to the plan calculation. Treating the two as the same kind of constraint would be a mistake, and this briefing does not.
What CoinTracker’s plan pages do not state is the basis on which the yearly count is assessed, or what happens when the lifetime figure is reached. Neither was published on the pages checked. Both are recorded in the methodology as open rather than answered here.
Every paid tier is also labeled “Starting at.” The pricing row reads $59 and $99, then $199 and $299, then $599 and $1,999, matching the plus variants in the column headings. A card figure introduced by “starting at” is the minimum listed price for that plan family, not a quote.
Sources: CoinTracker, plans page and comparison table, checked 17 August 2026
What determines the bill
What determines the bill
| Decision axis | Koinly | CoinTracker |
|---|---|---|
| Billing unit | One purchase per tax year | Annual subscription |
| Entry tier that produces a report | $49 per tax year, 100 transactions | From $59 per year, 100 per year |
| History that enters the plan calculation | Filing year, plus account-wide coverage of all years above a 1,000 margin | Not stated on the pages checked |
| Separate published ceiling | None named on the pages checked | 200,000 lifetime transactions for tax forms, constant across Base, Prime, and Ultra |
| Does purchase sequence change the total | Yes. Oldest year first can lower the recent year’s plan | Not applicable to a single annual subscription |
| Automatic charge next year | Stated as none | Not stated on the pages checked |
| Plan validity | Ten years from purchase, unlimited report regeneration | Not stated on the pages checked |
| Documented over-limit behavior | Calculations, sync, imports, and new report generation stop | Not stated on the pages checked |
| Entry tier feature gates | Full report set from the first paid tier | Tax lots breakdown and loss harvesting begin at Prime |
“Not stated on the pages checked” means the Koinly pricing page, the Koinly Help Center pricing article, and the CoinTracker plans page were the sources examined. It is not a statement that the information is unpublished elsewhere. Values as displayed on 17 August 2026.
What stops when a limit is crossed
Koinly documents the failure state in unusual detail for a pricing page. Import more than the plan allows and the Help Center states that calculations halt, that displayed gains and losses may be implausible because they are incomplete, that wallet syncing stops, that CSV import stops, and that reports cannot be generated. It adds that this last effect reaches years where nothing new was imported.
Two things are worth keeping separate. Koinly’s wording covers generating a report. It does not say that files already downloaded stop working, and this briefing makes no claim either way. The stated remedies are upgrading the plan or deleting the excess transactions.
The account also keeps showing figures during this state. Koinly’s own caution is that the gain and loss on the transactions page may be implausible while calculations are incomplete, which is a warning that the visible number and the finished number are not the same thing.
CoinTracker’s plans page publishes both of its limits and does not publish what happens at either. That gap is recorded here rather than filled from another source.
Sources: Koinly Help Center, How pricing works in Koinly, updated 23 June 2026 · CoinTracker, plans page, checked 17 August 2026
The entry tiers unlock different things
Both entry tiers cover 100 transactions. What each one releases at that price is not the same.
Koinly’s Newbie tier at $49 per tax year carries the full report set. Form 8949 and Schedule D, international tax reports, the comprehensive audit report, export to TurboTax and TaxACT, custom file import, cost analysis, and chat support all appear from this tier upward. Everything absent from the Free column arrives at the first paid step.
CoinTracker’s Base tier from $59 per year releases tax form downloads for all past years and TurboTax and H&R Block syncing. The comparison table then marks Base with a cross against tax lots breakdown, against tax loss harvesting, and against performance tracking. Changing the cost basis method by year is crossed at Base and Prime, arriving only at Ultra. Tax lots breakdown and loss harvesting arrive at Prime, which starts at $199.
One row on that table does different work than it appears to. Against “Exclude staking and rebates from transaction limit,” Base reads “Up to $25” while Prime and Ultra read “Unlimited.” That is a value allowance applied to the counting rule, not a cap on staking as a feature. Staking activity beyond that value counts toward the tier’s transaction limit. How many transactions a given account loses to it depends on that account’s staking pattern, which no public page can supply.
Sources: Koinly, pricing page feature table, checked 17 August 2026 · CoinTracker, plans page comparison table, checked 17 August 2026
Country output is not a yes or no field
Koinly’s pricing FAQ splits its answer. Broad support is claimed for all countries that calculate gains using average cost, FIFO, LIFO, or HIFO. Specialized tax reports are then described for “countries like” the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.
That phrasing matters. The eight names are given as examples rather than as a closed list, so this page treats them as examples and does not present the list as complete. The feature table separately places international tax reports outside the Free column, which makes localized output a paid entitlement.
CoinTracker’s plans page names TurboTax and H&R Block integrations in its header and builds the tax rows of its comparison table around Form 8949 and Schedule D. Those are United States filing products and United States forms. A list of supported countries was not on the pages checked for this briefing, and no conclusion about CoinTracker’s non-United States output is drawn here.
The distinction a buyer outside those jurisdictions needs is between a native local form, a filing-software integration, a generic export, and a cost basis calculation to be transcribed by hand. Neither plan page resolves that on its face.
Sources: Koinly, pricing FAQ, checked 17 August 2026 · CoinTracker, plans page, checked 17 August 2026
What the pages leave undefined
Two questions about the published pages remain open. Neither establishes a product contradiction, and neither is treated as one.
CoinTracker’s plans page uses three portfolio-related labels. The Free plan card lists “Portfolio value.” The comparison table marks “Daily portfolio updates” with a check in the Free column and “Portfolio tracking” with a cross in the same column. The page does not define the three terms, so whether they describe one entitlement or three cannot be settled from it. A buyer choosing between free tiers is left without that definition.
Koinly’s Trader column presents two transaction figures rather than one, showing 3,000 alongside a 10,000-plus element. The pricing FAQ separately states that accounts above the top plan can purchase additional transactions in the app, with regular accounts supported up to 100,000. Whether the column displays a selector, a plan boundary, or a rendering artifact was not determined, and this briefing does not describe it as a conflict.
Recording an ambiguity as an ambiguity is the point. Calling either of these a contradiction would require a definition that neither vendor has published.
Sources: CoinTracker, plans page and comparison table, checked 17 August 2026 · Koinly, pricing page and FAQ, checked 17 August 2026
Questions buyers ask
Can I download a tax report on either free plan?
No. Koinly’s pricing FAQ states that a plan purchase is required to download tax reports. CoinTracker’s Free plan card reads “No tax filing,” and its comparison table marks tax form downloads with a cross in the Free column. Both free plans display tax calculations without releasing the file. Checked 17 August 2026.
Does old history increase the Koinly plan I need?
It can. Koinly’s Help Center describes an account-wide transaction limit requiring all purchased plans combined to cover the account’s billable total. Prior-year transactions under 1,000 do not need covering. Above that margin, history from years you are not filing enters the calculation for the year you are. Updated 23 June 2026.
Does the order I buy Koinly plans in change what I pay?
Koinly says it can. When several years need reports, it advises buying from the oldest year first, because that builds account-wide coverage and the plan for the most recent year may then be significantly cheaper than buying the recent year first. Updated 23 June 2026.
Is CoinTracker’s 200,000 lifetime limit part of its pricing?
The pages checked do not describe it that way. The figure is 200,000 across Base, Prime, and Ultra, unchanged as the price rises, which distinguishes it from the yearly count that varies by tier. It reads as a ceiling on tax-form eligibility rather than an input to plan selection. Checked 17 August 2026.
What happens if I exceed my Koinly plan limit?
Koinly states that calculations halt, displayed gains and losses may be implausible, wallet syncing and CSV import stop, and reports cannot be generated, including for prior years where nothing new was imported. The remedies given are upgrading the plan or deleting the excess. Updated 23 June 2026.
Does a Koinly plan renew automatically?
Koinly states that plans are not subscriptions, that no recurring fee keeps a plan active, and that no automatic charge is made for the next year’s plan. Each yearly plan is stated as valid for ten years from purchase, with unlimited report regeneration inside that window. Updated 23 June 2026.
Does every transaction I import count toward the limit?
Not on either platform. Koinly excludes deleted transactions, most dust rewards, spam-marked transactions, and merged transactions from the billable count, and groups split exchange orders. CoinTracker’s table marks spam and dust as excluded from the transaction limit on every tier. Checked 17 August 2026.
Does staking count against the CoinTracker Base limit?
Partly. The row excluding staking and rebates from the transaction limit reads “Up to $25” at Base and “Unlimited” at Prime and Ultra. That is a value allowance inside the counting rule rather than a feature cap, so staking beyond it consumes the plan’s transaction count. Checked 17 August 2026.
Why does CoinTracker say “starting at” on every paid plan?
Every paid tier on the plans page carries that label. The comparison table’s pricing row then shows each family as a pair, $59 and $99, $199 and $299, $599 and $1,999, matching the plus variants in the column headings. The card figure is the minimum listed price for that family. Checked 17 August 2026.
Which countries get localized reports?
Koinly’s FAQ describes specialized reports for “countries like” the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, which reads as examples rather than a closed list. A country list was not on the CoinTracker pages checked for this briefing. Checked 17 August 2026.
Which product is more accurate?
This briefing cannot say. Accuracy requires importing a real history into a paid account and checking the output, and Future Stack Reviews did neither. Nothing here ranks the two products on calculation quality, import cleanup, DeFi classification, or support.
How this was checked
This briefing compares published entitlements. It does not compare product performance.
Pages opened and captured on 17 August 2026
- Koinly pricing page, including the full feature table and the pricing FAQ
- Koinly Help Center, How pricing works in Koinly, showing an update date of 23 June 2026
- CoinTracker plans page, including the four plan cards, the Full Service panel, and the Taxes, Tracking, Support and Access, and Pricing sections of the comparison table
Not done
No account was created at either company. No wallet or exchange was connected. No transaction was imported. No plan was purchased and no report was generated. Nothing here reflects a logged-in view, a checkout screen, or a support conversation. The price an individual account is quoted at checkout was not observed and cannot be established from a public page.
Queued for the next recheck
The following were not examined for this briefing and are not treated as absent. Each is scheduled for a source check before this page is next updated: CoinTracker’s stated basis for assessing the yearly transaction count; CoinTracker’s renewal terms and whether renewal timing affects which tax year is available; CoinTracker’s behavior at the 200,000 lifetime ceiling; CoinTracker’s country-specific report output; how long either company retains a generated report on its servers; and whether Koinly reports already downloaded remain available after an account-wide overage.
Volatility
Koinly’s Help Center article displays an update date. Neither pricing page carries a visible revision history. Every figure here is accurate to 17 August 2026 and should be rechecked before it is relied on.
Correction record
An earlier draft of this briefing described both companies as applying an equivalent second transaction limit that determines price. That comparison was withdrawn before publication. Koinly’s account-wide requirement affects plan selection. CoinTracker’s lifetime figure is a separate ceiling and the pages checked do not describe it as a pricing input.
Sources: Koinly, pricing page, checked 17 August 2026 · Koinly Help Center, How pricing works in Koinly, updated 23 June 2026 · CoinTracker, plans page, checked 17 August 2026
The decision is the billing boundary
The cheaper plan card does not identify the cheaper workflow.
Koinly sells access to a chosen tax year, once, with no automatic charge for the next one, and it prices that year using a count that reaches across the whole account. A buyer who needs three historical years is buying three plans, in a sequence that Koinly itself says changes the total. A buyer who needs one year and has a long history behind it is buying a plan sized by history they will never file.
CoinTracker sells a year of the product. Its yearly count sets the tier, and a separate ceiling sits above the tiers without moving between them. What the pages checked do not settle is how that yearly count is assessed or what the ceiling does when reached.
Four questions decide which structure fits, and none of them appear on a plan card. How many tax years need a report. How much history has to be imported for the calculation to be right. Whether year-round access matters or only a filing document. And whether the purchase is one event or a recurring one.
What this briefing does not decide is which product handles a difficult import better, which produces a return an authority accepts more readily, or which is worth its price. Those need a paid account and a real history, and neither was used here.
Sources: Koinly Help Center, How pricing works in Koinly, updated 23 June 2026 · Koinly, pricing page, checked 17 August 2026 · CoinTracker, plans page, checked 17 August 2026
These structures can change before filing season
Koinly last updated the pricing article cited here on 23 June 2026. Neither plan page carries a visible revision date. Transaction limits, tier names, and prices can change without notice. We recheck the cited pages on a fixed cadence and publish a dated note when a figure on this briefing stops being correct.
Free. Structural audits only. No product promotions.
Corrections and vendor response
If a figure here is wrong, or a cited page has changed, write to [email protected]. Corrections are published with a dated note rather than edited in silently. Vendors named here may submit a response.
Related FSR briefings
Tier B briefings are hands-on tested inside a paid account. Tier C briefings are document-first, built from primary sources without hands-on testing.
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- Tier C Cursor Pricing in 2026: Plans, Usage Limits, and What the Public Pages Do Not Quantify What a pricing page states, and what it leaves unquantified for the buyer to discover later.
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Future Stack Reviews is an independent structural audit publication. This briefing reports what named vendor documents stated on the date recorded. It is not tax, legal, accounting, or investment advice, and it does not assess whether either product suits any individual filing situation. Consult a qualified professional in your jurisdiction.
This page contains no affiliate links and Future Stack Reviews receives no compensation from any company named. Links to vendor pages are cited as evidence.
Tier C: document-first, no hands-on testing. Sources last checked 17 August 2026. Prices, transaction limits, and plan structures change without notice. Verify on the vendor page before relying on any figure here.
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