Koinly Review: Crypto Tax Software, Honestly Assessed

Crypto tax is a data problem before it's a money problem. One active DeFi year can generate thousands of taxable events across a dozen wallets and chains, and no spreadsheet survives that. Koinly is the tool most people reach for to pull all of it into one place and turn it into a filing-ready report. This is an independent, balanced review: what Koinly does, how its pricing and free tier actually work, where it genuinely helps, where the reconciliation pain is real, how it stacks up against CoinTracker and the others, and how the affiliate link works — honestly. For the underlying tax rules themselves, see our crypto tax reference; this is the tool review, not the rulebook.

What is Koinly?

Koinly (Koinly is crypto tax software that imports transactions from exchanges and wallets, computes capital gains and income, and generates jurisdiction-specific tax reports such as IRS Form 8949 and the UK HMRC Capital Gains Summary) is crypto tax software: you connect your exchanges and wallets, it imports every transaction, computes your capital gains and crypto income, and generates a filing-ready tax report for your country — Form 8949 and Schedule D in the US, the HMRC summary in the UK, and equivalents for Australia, Canada, the EU, and 20+ other jurisdictions. It also runs a free portfolio tracker. It does not file your taxes and it is not a tax advisor. Last verified: 2026-06-19.

The problem Koinly targets is reconciliation. Every crypto-to-crypto swap, every DeFi yield claim, every airdrop, every NFT mint is a separate taxable event (see our crypto tax reference for why), and the IRS now receives Form 1099-DA gross-proceeds data directly from US brokers. Koinly's job is to ingest all your sources, match transfers between your own wallets so they aren't mistaken for sales, and output the gain/income figures you actually report.

How Koinly works

• Import everything. Connect exchanges by read-only API key or CSV export, and self-custody wallets by public address (read-only — never a seed phrase). Koinly pulls the full transaction history into one ledger.
• Auto-categorize. It labels swaps, transfers, staking rewards, airdrops, LP moves, and NFT trades, and tries to match wallet-to-wallet transfers so a move between your own wallets isn't taxed as a sale.
• Reconcile. A review/error tab flags missing cost basis, unmatched transfers, duplicates, and uncategorized events. Clearing these is the real work — and the difference between a correct return and inflated gains.
• Compute & export. Pick a cost-basis method (FIFO/LIFO/HIFO, per wallet), and Koinly produces the gain and income totals plus the downloadable forms.

The honest framing: Koinly is a utility, not magic. Its output is only as good as the data you connect and the warnings you resolve. Skip a wallet and your cost basis breaks; ignore the review tab and your numbers are wrong.

Pricing & plans (2026)

Koinly is free to calculate and paid to export. Portfolio tracking, importing transactions (the free tier currently lets you bring in a large volume — reviewers report up to ~10,000 transactions — across unlimited wallets and exchanges), and seeing your estimated capital-gains and income summary cost nothing. You can even run the tax optimizer and pick a cost-basis method for free. You only pay when you want to download an official tax report for a given tax year — and paid plans are priced per tax year by transaction count, not as a monthly subscription. This "calculate for free, pay to file" model is genuinely useful: you can fully reconcile your year and see the final number before spending a cent. Last verified: 2026-06-19.

As of mid-2026, the paid tiers were structured roughly like this — treat these as approximate and confirm the live numbers and your own transaction count on koinly.io/pricing before buying, because Koinly adjusts prices and runs seasonal sales:

A few honest notes on how this plays out:

• You buy per year you file. A clean year and a heavy DeFi year can land on different tiers — and an old year you forgot to file is its own purchase.
• Transaction count is the cost driver, and DeFi inflates it fast (every swap, LP add/remove, and reward is a transaction). Heavy on-chain users get pushed up tiers quickly.
• Prices and tier limits change. The figures above are directional; the price at koinly.io/pricing is what you actually pay.

Worked example: which plan, and where it breaks

Abstract pricing tiers tell you little. Here's a concrete filer — call her Maya — walked end to end, so you can see which tier she lands on, what the report actually produces, and exactly where the "magic button" stops and the manual work begins. Last verified: 2026-06-19.

Maya's 2025 tax year:

• Coinbase — bought BTC and ETH, ~40 buys/sells over the year, then withdrew most of it on-chain.
• Kraken — ~60 spot trades (crypto-to-crypto and fiat).
• One MetaMask wallet — the on-chain leg: ~15 Uniswap swaps, 4 LP add/removes on a Base DEX, weekly staking-reward claims (~50 events), 2 airdrops, and 6 NFT trades. Plus a bridge from Ethereum to Base.

Where reconciliation breaks (the manual pass):

1. The bridge looks like a sale. The Ethereum→Base move can show up as a disposal until Maya confirms it's a self-transfer — left unfixed, it invents a phantom gain.
2. LP add/remove fragments. Depositing two tokens into the Base DEX pool and later withdrawing creates LP-token events Koinly may leave "uncategorized" — she has to decide (with her CPA) whether the deposit is a taxable disposal.
3. The forgotten-wallet trap. Coins she withdrew from Coinbase into a second wallet she never connected arrive in MetaMask with no cost basis — Koinly defaults toward a basis that inflates her gain until she connects that wallet.
4. Staking timing. Fifty small reward claims are income at FMV on each claim date — Koinly prices them, but Maya should spot-check a few against reality.

Net: Maya pays ~$99 for the Hodler year, gets a filing-ready 8949/Schedule D, and spends perhaps an hour in the review tab clearing the bridge, LP, and missing-basis flags. Skip that hour and her gains are overstated. That's the honest shape of the tool: it does ~85% automatically and makes the last 15% findable — it does not do it for you. (Koinly has no token and nothing to "stake" or trade — it's pure SaaS, so ignore any site claiming a Koinly coin or airdrop.)

Jurisdictions & integrations

Koinly generates localized tax reports for 20+ core countries and can be configured for 100+, and connects to a broad set of exchanges, wallets, and blockchains. Last verified: 2026-06-19.

On the tax side, Koinly produces jurisdiction-specific reports including:

• US — Form 8949, Schedule D, and Schedule 1 (income), with per-wallet cost basis aligned to the IRS wallet-by-wallet rules.
• UK — HMRC Capital Gains Summary, with share-pooling.
• Australia — ATO summary / trading-stock report.
• Canada — Schedule 3 with the adjusted-cost-basis method.
• EU & others — Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, the Nordics, Japan, New Zealand, and more, plus a generic mode for unlisted countries.

On the data side, Koinly advertises 800+ exchanges, wallets, and blockchains via API/CSV, 170+ blockchains, 20,000+ coins, and (by its own tally) 1,000+ direct integrations and 7,000+ DeFi protocols — plus unlimited CSV import for anything not natively supported. These are vendor-tallied figures that change over time and are counted generously, so treat them as ballpark and check the integrations page for current numbers. Hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor) and major software wallets (MetaMask, Trust) connect by public address; major exchanges connect by API or CSV.

Connect by public address and read-only API keys only. Koinly never needs a seed phrase or trade/withdrawal permissions — anything asking for those is a scam.

DeFi, NFTs & the limitations

Koinly is one of the stronger tools for DeFi and multi-chain portfolios — but "strong" still means a manual reconciliation pass, not a one-click answer. This is the section most reviews gloss over, so here's the honest version. Last verified: 2026-06-19.

• The "missing cost basis" trap. If you don't connect a wallet, coins that arrived from it have no cost basis, and Koinly assumes a basis that inflates your gain. The single biggest source of wrong numbers is an unconnected or forgotten wallet — connect everything before you trust the total.
• Manual tagging tail. Auto-categorization catches the large majority of events, but obscure LP positions, exotic smart contracts, bridges, and wrapped assets fragment your history and need hand-correction. Reviewers consistently report getting ~most of the way automatically, then spending real time on the remainder.
• Transfer matching. Wallet-to-wallet moves can be mislabeled as sales, which invents phantom gains until you match them. Always review any self-to-self move showing a gain or loss.
• Volume = effort. The more wallets, chains, and DeFi activity you have, the more unlabeled events you'll reconcile — and the higher the pricing tier.

The 1099-DA / wallet-by-wallet shift

The US rules changed under your feet, and this is where Koinly's design either saves you or trips you up. Three moving parts:

1. Per-wallet (not universal) cost basis is now mandatory. From 2025 the IRS requires basis to be tracked per wallet/account (Rev. Proc. 2024-28) — the old universal "blend everything together" method is no longer allowed. Koinly migrated US users off universal basis at the end of 2024; if you used it before then, check how your legacy lots were allocated (Koinly applied a "lowest-cost → biggest-wallet" allocation by default), because that allocation choice changes which gains land in which year.
2. Form 1099-DA arrived. US brokers (Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Robinhood Crypto, etc.) now issue it. For tax year 2025 it reported gross proceeds only; cost-basis reporting on covered assets becomes mandatory for 2026 transactions (those forms arrive in early 2027). Koinly supports uploading each 1099-DA and cross-checking the broker's proceeds/basis against your imported history, flagging mismatches before you file.
3. The non-covered trap. Assets you transferred in from self-custody show as non-covered with unknown basis, and the IRS defaults to $0 basis unless you document otherwise — which would tax the entire proceeds as gain. This is exactly the gap Koinly is built to close: your own per-wallet ledger supplies the real basis the broker doesn't have.

What this means in practice: Koinly's per-wallet model is the right shape for the new regime, but you must reconcile Koinly's figures against every 1099-DA your exchanges send and supply your own records for non-covered inbound assets — a mismatch between your 8949 and a broker's 1099-DA is a classic CP2000-notice trigger. Confirm Koinly's current 1099-DA handling on its site, as basis reporting is still phasing in. For the full rules behind all of this, see the crypto tax reference — that's the rulebook; this page is the tool review.

Koinly vs the alternatives

Koinly leads on DeFi/multi-chain breadth and international coverage; CoinTracker suits US Coinbase-primary users; CoinLedger is the budget-friendly option; TokenTax adds white-glove CPA service at the top end. None of them removes the reconciliation work. Last verified: 2026-06-19.

Prices and coverage are directional and change — verify each vendor's live pricing and country list. The practical move: most tools have a free calculate tier, so import your real wallets into two of them and compare the reconciled numbers (not the first auto-import) before paying — the gap between tools is almost always in DeFi categorization, not headline price. For portfolio tracking specifically (a related but separate job from tax filing), see our best crypto portfolio trackers guide.

Who Koinly is good for / who should skip

Good fit:

• DeFi-heavy and multi-chain users who need broad chain/protocol coverage in one ledger.
• International users outside the US who need localized reports (HMRC, ATO, Schedule 3, EU formats).
• Anyone with several wallets and exchanges who needs transfers reconciled rather than a single-exchange export.

Could skip (or use something simpler):

• Coinbase-only US users — Coinbase's own export or CoinTracker's native integration may be enough.
• Single-exchange, low-volume holders — the exchange's built-in tax report may cover you; only buy Koinly if you actually need the consolidated report.
• Anyone expecting zero effort — if you won't do the reconciliation pass, no tool will give you correct numbers.

How to get started

1. Create a free account at koinly.io and set your country and base currency so it generates the right forms.
2. Connect every wallet and exchange — wallets by public address, exchanges by read-only API or CSV. A missing source breaks cost basis.
3. Work the review tab. Resolve missing cost basis, unmatched transfers, duplicates, and uncategorized DeFi/NFT events. This is the real work.
4. Set a cost-basis method per wallet (FIFO/LIFO/HIFO) consistent with your jurisdiction, and cross-check against your 1099-DA forms.
5. Buy the plan for that tax year and export. You only pay to download the report; then file via TurboTax, TaxAct, or a crypto CPA. The koinly.io/pricing price is what you pay — our affiliate link doesn't change it, but Koinly does run its own seasonal sales.

Glossary

Quick definitions for the tax terms in this review (the full treatment lives in the crypto tax reference):

• Cost basis — what you originally paid for an asset (purchase price plus fees). Your gain is sale price minus cost basis. If Koinly can't find the basis (an unconnected wallet), it can't compute a correct gain.
• Capital gain / loss — the profit or loss when you dispose of crypto (sell, swap, or spend). Short-term (held under a year) is taxed at ordinary income rates in the US; long-term (over a year) at lower 0/15/20% rates.
• FIFO / LIFO / HIFO — cost-basis methods for choosing which lot you sold. FIFO (first-in-first-out) sells your oldest coins first; LIFO the newest; HIFO (highest-in-first-out) the most expensive, which minimizes the gain on each sale. Koinly lets you pick per wallet — pick one consistent with your jurisdiction and stick to it.
• Wallet-by-wallet basis — the IRS rule (from 2025) that basis must be tracked separately per wallet/account, not blended across all of them. The reason Koinly insists on connecting every wallet.
• Wash sale — selling at a loss and rebuying the same asset quickly to harvest the loss. The 30-day disallowance rule applies to stocks; as of 2026 it does not apply to crypto in the US — so the trick is legal for now, but bills to close the gap keep appearing. Don't assume it lasts forever.
• Form 8949 / Schedule D — the US forms where individual disposals (8949) and their totals (Schedule D) are reported. Koinly produces both.
• Form 1099-DA — the broker form US exchanges now send the IRS reporting your crypto activity. "Covered" assets eventually carry basis; "non-covered" (e.g. coins you moved in from self-custody) show basis as unknown — your records fill the gap.
• Non-covered asset — crypto a broker can't vouch for the basis of (transferred in, or acquired before the covered-asset window). Defaults to $0 basis at the IRS unless you document the real number.

Final verdict

Koinly is a genuinely good, broadly-supported crypto tax tool — the default choice for DeFi-heavy and international users — provided you understand it's a utility that needs real reconciliation work, not a magic button. Its free calculate tier lets you prove it on your own data before paying, its per-wallet basis model fits the new 1099-DA regime, and its jurisdiction coverage is among the widest. The honest caveats: pricing climbs with transaction volume, the DeFi auto-categorization leaves a manual tail, and a single forgotten wallet will quietly inflate your gains. For most people with multiple wallets and on-chain activity, it's worth it — pair it with a crypto CPA if your DeFi history is heavy.

A note on our link. Our link to Koinly is an affiliate link: Koinly runs a standard SaaS affiliate program — directionally up to ~40% on a first purchase (commonly cited as ~20% initial plus up to ~20% recurring, with a ~90-day tracking window and a ~$100 minimum payout; treat these as approximate and program-dependent) — so if you subscribe through it, this site earns a commission at no extra cost to you. It is not a discount code and does not get you a lower price than Koinly's own current offer — Koinly runs its own seasonal sales directly. Pick a tax tool on coverage, accuracy, and price, not on anyone's referral link.

What to watch next

The ground keeps moving, and it moves in Koinly's favor as much as against it:

• 1099-DA basis reporting goes live for 2026 transactions (forms arrive early 2027). Once brokers report basis on covered assets, the reconciliation job shifts from "fill in the blanks" to "find where your records and the broker disagree" — exactly the kind of mismatch a tool like Koinly is built to surface.
• DAC8 / CARF reporting kicked in for EU and UK exchanges from 2026 — more jurisdictions getting automatic broker data means more filers who need a consolidating tool, not fewer.
• The crypto wash-sale gap is a perennial target for legislation; if it closes, every tax tool's loss-harvesting math changes overnight. Watch it.
• Pricing and integration counts drift every season — re-check koinly.io/pricing and your own transaction count right before you buy, not when you're researching.

The throughline: as broker reporting tightens, the value of a tool that holds your complete, per-wallet history in one place goes up, not down. Koinly's bet — that reconciliation is the hard part of crypto tax — looks more right each year.

This guide is general information, not tax advice. Crypto tax rules change fast — several US rules shifted in the last year alone. Confirm Koinly's current pricing and features on its site, and consult a CPA familiar with crypto in your jurisdiction before filing.

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Related: Crypto Tax 2026 reference · Best crypto portfolio trackers