Koinly Review: What It Does, How It Charges and Who It Suits

Key takeaways

• Koinly is crypto tax reporting software. It imports your history, calculates gains and losses and produces reports such as Form 8949. It is not a broker, and it does not hold your coins.
• Plans are sized by the number of transactions in a tax year, and a free tier previews results but does not produce reports. This page gives no prices.
• Results depend on complete imports. Transfer matching and missing cost basis can need manual fixes.
• Koinly does not give tax advice, and a tax professional is still needed for complicated cases.
• It fits people with many exchanges and wallets better than people with a few simple trades.

What is Koinly?

Koinly is a crypto tax reporting service that connects to exchanges, wallets and blockchains, calculates your gains and losses and produces reports you can use to prepare a return. It reads your data. It does not trade, hold or move your crypto.

The company says it offers hundreds of integrations and tax reports for more than 20 countries. This review is for US readers and is based on what Koinly publishes and on IRS guidance. Banking on Bitcoin does not test products hands-on, so treat it as a description of what Koinly says it does. Koinly runs an affiliate program, and this page carries affiliate links, as the editorial standards explain. The criteria used here are coverage, tools for checking accuracy, pricing transparency, data security and limits.

What does Koinly do?

Koinly imports transactions, applies a cost-basis method and generates reports. That covers three jobs in order.

First, import. Koinly’s support pages describe an API connection to an exchange, a CSV or Excel upload, and a public wallet address for supported blockchains. If a platform is not supported, you can create a custom wallet and import a file. What Is a Bitcoin Address? explains why a public address is enough for reading a history.

Second, calculation. Koinly lists several cost-basis methods, including FIFO, LIFO and HIFO, and lets you track costs in a shared pool or per wallet. It says it detects transfers between your own wallets so that the original cost carries forward. Which method applies to you is a question for your tax professional.

Third, reports. Koinly says it produces a Form 8949 for each exchange or wallet, split into short-term and long-term disposals, along with reports for TurboTax and TaxAct. How Is Bitcoin Taxed in the US? explains the concepts behind those forms.

How does Koinly handle Form 1099-DA?

Koinly says you can download 1099-DA forms from your exchanges, upload them, and have Koinly use them to fill the relevant boxes on Form 8949. Transactions from wallets that no broker reported are handled separately.

For context, the IRS describes Form 1099-DA as the form brokers use to report digital asset proceeds to you and the IRS. Brokers must report gross proceeds for transactions on or after 1 January 2025, and basis on certain transactions on or after 1 January 2026. The IRS also says that whether or not you receive a 1099-DA, you must report all income, gains and losses from digital asset transactions on your federal return. A form from one broker shows only what that broker saw. If you moved coins in from elsewhere, the cost basis may be missing or wrong, which is where a full history in software helps. It still does not replace checking the figures yourself. See Is Bitcoin Regulated in the US? for the wider background.

How does Koinly price its plans?

Koinly sells plans sized by the number of transactions in a tax year, and the plan you need depends on the year and on how many transactions it holds for that year. According to its support pages, a free tier lets you import data and view calculated gains and a tax summary, while generating reports needs a paid plan.

Two consequences follow. Cost rises with transaction count, so active traders and anyone who spends bitcoin often can land in higher tiers. And because plans are per tax year, catching up on several years means paying for each. This page gives no figures, because they change. Read Koinly’s pricing page against your own count before committing. Referral offers and discount codes exist, and they are a reason to compare the full-year price, not to pick a tool.

How do you get started?

Start by listing every exchange and wallet you used in the year, plus earlier years if you need them to establish cost basis. Selling and spending both create records the tool must import, as How to Sell Bitcoin and How to Spend Bitcoin explain. Then work through the steps below.

1. Create an account with Koinly. Its support pages say you can import before paying, so you can see what your history looks like first.
2. Add each exchange or wallet by API (read-only), CSV file or public address.
3. Wait for processing, then open the warnings. Typical ones are sales with no matching purchase and transfers that did not match.
4. Fix gaps by importing missing accounts or adding manual entries, and confirm the cost-basis method with your tax professional.
5. Upload any 1099-DA forms and compare the totals.
6. Choose a plan sized to your transaction count and generate your reports.

Never give any tax tool your seed phrase or private keys. It does not need them, and a request for them is a scam. What Is a Seed Phrase? explains why.

What are Koinly’s downsides?

Koinly’s main downsides are its dependence on complete data, the manual work that transfers can need, and costs that grow with activity.

• Complete imports are required. Koinly’s support pages describe warnings for missing purchase history. If a sale has no matching purchase, a zero cost can be assumed, which may overstate a gain.
• Transfers can be misread. Its support pages say that transfers between wallets can show up as a disposal and a separate deposit, resetting the cost basis, sometimes because a CSV wallet has the wrong time zone. Moving coins between your own wallets is common, so expect to review matches.
• Pricing grows with activity. Plans are per tax year and per transaction tier.
• Rules have changed. Koinly’s pages describe a migration setting for the shift to wallet-based cost tracking. The IRS issued a safe harbor for that change in 2024 guidance, so the choices deserve a professional’s review.
• Your history sits in one place. A full record of your activity and read-only exchange connections concentrate with one provider. We found no publicly reported breach of Koinly’s own systems in our searches, which does not prove none exists. Koinly’s support pages also warn that scammers use its name, a pattern covered in Common Bitcoin Scams.

Who does Koinly suit?

Koinly suits people who use several exchanges and wallets, move coins between them, need a US Form 8949 or hand a report to an accountant, or have filings in more than one country. Its breadth of integrations helps most in those cases, and so does the ability to upload broker forms. It also suits people who prefer to review calculations in software and see warnings than to maintain a spreadsheet by hand.

Who does Koinly not suit?

Koinly is a weaker fit for someone with a handful of simple trades on one exchange, who may manage with the broker’s form and a spreadsheet, and for anyone whose records are so scattered that cleanup will dominate. Software cannot recreate records you never kept. Software calculates and does not judge DeFi, staking or business income, which call for a tax professional. It is also a poor fit for people unwilling to connect accounts to a third party. If you hold bitcoin through an ETF in a brokerage account, that is a different product with its own tax reporting. Bitcoin ETFs: What They Are explains how it differs, and your broker or a tax professional can say which forms apply.

What are the alternatives?

Alternatives include other tax tools, a spreadsheet, or working directly with a tax professional. Best Crypto Tax Software sets out criteria and covers CoinLedger and CoinTracker alongside Koinly in alphabetical order. Note that vendors, Koinly included, publish their own “best crypto tax software” lists that name themselves. Read those as marketing, and judge any tool against your own accounts.

How can you check whether it fits?

The practical test is to import your real accounts on Koinly and see how many warnings appear before choosing a plan. New to Bitcoin? The Start Here path covers the basics in order. Crypto assets are volatile and you can lose money, and tax software does not change that. Nothing here is tax or financial advice. Talk to a qualified tax professional, and check current guidance on irs.gov.

Last checked: 2 October 2026. Fees, features and availability change, so confirm them on the provider’s own site.

Where to go next

• Best Crypto Tax Software: What to Look For and the Main Options: criteria and three tools compared.
• How Is Bitcoin Taxed in the US? A General Guide: the tax concepts behind the reports.
• How to Sell Bitcoin: Your Options, the Costs and What to Watch For: selling and the records it creates.
• How to Spend Bitcoin: Paying With It, Cards and Taxes: why spending is generally a taxable event.