I Ranked Six Crypto Tax Software Tools
I’m a crypto tax accountant, so I use this kind of software with clients all the time. In this article I rank six crypto tax tools on pricing, integrations and ease of use, using an example of someone with 750 transactions across a couple of blockchains, with a little bit of crypto staking.
Disclosure: some links and discount codes in this article may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you sign up through them.
Koinly
Pricing
Koinly is one of the most popular crypto tax tools on the market. For our example, Koinly would fit in the 139 bracket. This is in Australian dollars, and I think it is a very competitive price. As we go through the other software you’ll see that Koinly is one of the better options on pricing.
Integrations
Koinly says it has close to 700 different integrations across exchanges, wallets and blockchains, with over 170 different blockchains. I think Koinly has the widest range of integrations of any of these tools. It is probably one of their top selling points, and I think that’s why they’ve become so popular. Your choice of software will depend on which exchanges and wallets you use and which blockchains you’ve transacted on. Koinly publishes a list of all their integrations, so search it for the ones you use and see if they’re covered.
Features and Ease of Use
Koinly is really good to use and quite simple. The transaction screen is very easy to read. My concern is that it shows a maximum of 25 transactions per screen, which is frustrating. Showing 200 to 400 transactions at a time would save a lot of clicking through pages. Koinly covers all the key features you want. They do the reconciliations, they run the tax reports, and they’re really good at displaying balances across your coins and exchanges, which is one of their key selling points.
Errors
Koinly can be a little poor at guiding you on how to fix errors. They do flag on the tax reports page that you might have an issue, but I find it harder to fix, and you’ll see in one of the tools below how much better it can be handled. It’s around the industry standard, and it’s a weak point across all of this software.
Innovation
Koinly has really struggled to innovate over the past 12 to 18 months, while other tools have come onto the market or improved. I think they’ve been so successful that they don’t see why they need to change or add new features.
Inviting Tax Professionals
Their accountant integration is really good. It’s very easy to use the invite team function to bring your accountant in, and they can then log in and see everything. As an accountant I have a list of all my clients and can see their files, which is really handy.
Tier
I’m putting Koinly in the A tier. It is a great piece of software and it is very popular. My main concerns are the lack of innovation and the fact that the transaction page only shows 25 transactions at a time.
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Crypto Tax Calculator
Pricing
Number two is Crypto Tax Calculator, and it’s a tool I rate very highly. For our example client it’s 129 dollars per year. That covers you for 12 months of access, so you can do one tax report or five years of tax reports. This is a key feature when it comes to pricing, and I don’t think any of the other tools in this list do that.
Integrations
Crypto Tax Calculator is good with integrations as well. They say they have over 600, covering all the major blockchains, wallets and exchanges. I do find Koinly has a little more, but for most of my clients this ticks the box. Unless you’re using some obscure blockchain or exchange, Crypto Tax Calculator will likely have what you need.
Ease of Use
Crypto Tax Calculator is my personal favorite when it comes to ease of use. Their transaction screen has changed a few times and only recently changed again, but in my view it’s still the most detailed while being easy to read and understand. Their import system works well, and their features are broad and expanding all the time. They’ve just added a tax harvesting tool, which I’ll cover in more detail in an upcoming article.
Reconciliation
They really focus on the reconciliation side of things, which I think is the number one thing crypto software should be focusing on. They want to make it simple to see what is wrong with your data, where to fix it, how to fix it and what order to fix it in. They’ve just moved this to the tips page, which asks if you have missing cost base, or if you’ve missed an import after a negative balance of a coin, and then lets you dig further into those. In my experience it is the strongest software when it comes to reconciling your data. They’re also big on showing you the impact of every transaction on your balances and your tax. On the transaction page you can dive in deep and see the changing balances or the tax impact of that transaction.
Weak Points
One weak point is the way they display some balances. I find it can be a little glitchy, and it can be confusing to work out what calculator balances and imported balances are. It has been improving, but I think it can be worked on more.
Inviting Tax Professionals
The way they invite tax professionals in is a little messy. As an accountant, I have to add the client to my system and send an invite, and then we have to link and merge data, so I end up sending quite detailed instructions. Once it’s sorted out it is a really good system.
Tier
It’s probably no surprise that Crypto Tax Calculator goes in the top tier. It’s not perfect, and I don’t think any crypto tax software is, but it’s definitely in the elite category.
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CoinTracking
Pricing
The third one is CoinTracking, which is the first crypto tax software I ever discovered and used. For our example client it would be 233 a year. All the pricing is in USD on their website so you have to do conversions. You can also pay in Bitcoin, which is a nice feature.
Integrations
It’s hard to find a number for how many integrations they have. I did find something saying over 110 exchanges, but Koinly is said to have over 400, so CoinTracking has a lot fewer. They also don’t seem to be adding many integrations. They do have some blockchains and wallets, but nowhere near as many as the more modern tools.
Reporting
Modern is not how I would describe CoinTracking. It is a pretty archaic looking piece of software. It has very advanced reporting, so once you get your data in it is very good. You can run a lot of different reports, including a really good one showing realized and unrealized gains, which lets you do some tax planning. It just looks old though, and getting transactions in is a bit slow. Manual entry is fine, but they don’t have the import functionality the others do.
Errors
I find it really clunky, and again it is poor at identifying errors. A lot of this software has the same problem. It might say there’s an error, but it doesn’t explain how to fix it. They just don’t clearly show where the errors are or how to go about fixing them.
Tier
I’m putting CoinTracking in the B tier. It is a great option if you need really detailed reporting, but for the everyday user I don’t think it’s very user friendly. It’s pretty hard to learn, and if you get something wrong it’s hard to identify.
CoinLedger
Pricing
The fourth is CoinLedger. I haven’t used this one as much as some of the others, but it does seem to be getting more popular over time. It’s coming in at 99 per year, which is great pricing. The frustrating part is that the website doesn’t clearly say what currency that is, even when you change the location at the bottom of the page. If it is 99 Australian dollars then it is the most competitive pricing of all the tools covered here.
Integrations
I couldn’t find a number of integrations, but there are a lot listed, and they seem to cover all the big ones. It’s a bit disappointing that they don’t show on their website how many they have.
Transaction Screen
The import functionality and the software in general are really clean and easy to use. My concern is that the transaction screen isn’t very detailed. If they took a page out of Crypto Tax Calculator’s book but kept their clean, sleek design, I think that would be a really good improvement. I trialed an import of a wallet I knew would have lots of errors, and it only brought up one. I was concerned that it wasn’t bringing through more errors or clearly flagging problems with cost base or where the assets came from. This is a common theme across a lot of these tools.
Dashboard
It did seem very easy to invite your tax professional in, which is a bonus. They don’t really have a dashboard though, so if you want portfolio management and a view of what you hold, this software is not for you. It seems to do the tax side of things and that’s it.
Tier
I’m putting CoinLedger in the B tier. It has potential but it’s not quite there yet. It’s not as detailed as Koinly or Crypto Tax Calculator, but it still looks like it could become a good option.
CoinTracker
Pricing
The fifth is CoinTracker. Don’t get confused, this isn’t CoinTracking. The names are so similar that it is frustrating. At 279 dollars this is the most expensive of the six, which already puts it behind the others.
Integrations
They list 513 integrations with over 30 blockchains, which puts them quite high overall, though not as many blockchains as Koinly. On their website they promote partnerships with some big names including Coinbase, OpenSea, TurboTax and H&R Block. They’ve clearly gone down the route of partnering with big names in the crypto industry to get their name out there.
Functionality
It is a smooth looking piece of software and the transaction screen is quite detailed, which I like, but it doesn’t have the functionality you would expect, especially given the big names. I find it really poor at identifying errors, and this is especially true as a tax professional. They have an invite a tax professional feature, but when I’ve been invited in for clients I couldn’t even see the transaction screen. I could see that there were errors, but I couldn’t give any feedback on how to fix them, which is really poor. They seem to be focused on producing tax reports and not so much on whether those reports are accurate.
Tier
That puts CoinTracker in the B tier. It looks good, but it doesn’t have the functionality you’d expect from software with these major partnerships.
Sharesight
Pricing
The sixth is Sharesight, and you’re probably wondering, isn’t that made for share tracking? They do offer crypto tracking too. Pricing is a little confusing because it’s lumped in with the share side and goes by number of holdings. I’m going with the under 20 holdings option, which comes out to 228 a year. That’s a bit pricey, especially if you’re expanding into lots of different cryptos.
Integrations
This is where the problem is with Sharesight. Based on what I found, it only integrates with eight cryptos, and even those are pretty archaic. It looks like crypto was added without much thought. You can add custom coins but it’s a lot of work. It’s not built for crypto tracking and is really only useful for someone who holds some Bitcoin and Ethereum. If you’re an everyday crypto investor using exchanges and trading a range of different assets, you’re probably not going to use it.
Tier
Sharesight is an F tier. It’s just not suited to what I’d estimate is 99 percent of investors. It’s fine for people with very small holdings in particular crypto assets who want to combine them with the rest of their portfolio, maybe shares and ETFs, but for the general person it’s no good.
Final Rankings
Crypto Tax Calculator comes out on top in my tier list, but there are some other good options out there. Look at what you are doing in crypto, which wallets, exchanges and blockchains you use, and what kind of activity you have, to see whether the software will suit you. Use the free trials. On pricing, CoinLedger comes out cheapest, but Crypto Tax Calculator is not far behind, and because it can cover multiple years I think it’s the winner when it comes to price.
