In this article
Koinly is cryptocurrency tax and portfolio software that collects transaction records, connects related movements and calculates gains and income using the settings selected for an account. It is useful when activity spans several wallets or exchanges, but a completed report depends on complete records. Importing a sale without its earlier purchase can produce a convincing calculation from the wrong starting point.
The service provides an interface for reviewing those records before downloading reports. That review is central to its purpose: the software can organize evidence and expose inconsistencies, while the user or accountant still needs to decide whether the imported history and transaction treatment are appropriate.
What Koinly does, and who is behind it
Koinly is a commercial service associated with founder and CEO Robin Singh. Its public materials describe a self-funded business supported by paid tax reports. The company presents the product to individual cryptocurrency users and accountants rather than as an exchange, a wallet or a place to deposit assets.
Its development reflects a practical change in cryptocurrency recordkeeping. A holder may buy on one exchange, withdraw to a personal wallet, swap through an application and later sell somewhere else. None of those interfaces necessarily holds the complete history. A tax tool attempts to connect the pieces without requiring the holder to reconstruct every movement in a spreadsheet.
That does not make the service a tax authority. Support for a country or accounting method does not establish that every possible transaction is automatically classified correctly under that country's rules. The relevant jurisdiction, tax year and circumstances must still match the report being prepared.
From imports to a usable transaction history
Koinly supports several import methods, including exchange connections, downloadable transaction files and public blockchain information. A public address can reveal the movements associated with that address. An exchange connection can supply activity that happened inside an exchange and never appeared as a separate on-chain transaction.
The distinction matters. Blockchain records may show a deposit into an exchange without showing the trade that followed. An exchange export may show a withdrawal without identifying the user's receiving wallet. Combining both histories helps the software recognize that a movement between a person's own accounts is a transfer rather than an unrelated acquisition or disposal.
For that reason, adding only the accounts that remain in use can leave older costs missing. Closed exchange accounts, previous wallets and historical purchases can still explain the origin of coins sold in a later year. Preserve original exports before editing imported entries, and keep a short record of why a correction was made.
The guide to crypto wallets and custody explains why one person can control several addresses and accounts. For accounting, those separate interfaces may need to be considered together even when the assets are no longer stored in the same place.
Why missing purchase history changes the result
Koinly's help documentation describes a specific failure case: when the system lacks an acquisition history, it can assign zero cost basis to the affected coins. Cost basis is the recorded acquisition cost used in a gain or loss calculation. A zero value can therefore overstate the calculated gain compared with a history that includes a documented purchase.
A warning is a request to investigate, not evidence that the software has discovered free coins. The missing event might be an earlier exchange trade, an incomplete import or a transfer from a wallet that has not been added. The appropriate correction depends on what actually happened.
Other inconsistencies need a different investigation. Duplicate imports can make a balance look too large. Incorrect time zones can separate matching transfer records. Missing prices can affect valuations even when the asset quantities are correct. Editing the final gain figure conceals these problems; finding the underlying transaction creates a record that can be explained later.
Fees deserve their own check. A trading fee and a blockchain withdrawal fee can arise during the same journey but describe different costs. Our explanation of crypto transaction fees provides the network background. Whether and how a particular fee enters a tax calculation requires the correct local treatment.
What the published prices cover
Checked on October 18, 2026, Koinly's public pricing page listed Newbie at $49 per tax year for 100 transactions, Hodler at $99 for 1,000 transactions, and Trader from $199 for 3,000 or more transactions. The displayed free plan allowed portfolio work and previews, with a limit of 10,000 transactions, while downloadable tax reports required payment.
The company describes these purchases as payments for particular tax years rather than an automatically renewing subscription. Its support documentation also distinguishes a year's transaction allowance from account-wide transaction limits. Consequently, a reader should check the billable count shown inside the account before assuming that a small number of transactions in the latest year determines the entire charge.
That pricing model makes an initial import useful before purchase: it reveals the size and complexity of the history that needs reconciliation. These are the displayed dollar prices on the check date, not a promise about future pricing, local taxes or every account-specific upgrade. Confirm the selected year, allowance and final checkout amount together.
Read-only access reduces one risk but creates another obligation
Koinly says its exchange API and OAuth connections use read-only permissions, allowing transaction imports rather than trades or withdrawals. It also describes encryption in transit and at rest. These are provider statements about its security arrangements, not a substitute for checking the permissions requested by a particular connection.
A tax application should not need a wallet seed phrase to read public blockchain transactions. A secret recovery phrase can authorize spending, whereas a public address identifies records that can be inspected. Keep those roles separate when following an import guide, and review any request that appears to grant broader access than the stated task requires.
Read-only information can still be sensitive. Combining wallets and exchange histories can associate previously separate activity with one account. An extended public key can also expose a wider set of wallet addresses than a single address. Consider which records are being shared, protect the account and export copies of the finished work rather than depending indefinitely on access to one service.
Who it fits, and where human review remains necessary
Koinly can suit a holder with several sources of records or an accountant who needs a structured history to inspect. The benefit is most concrete when transfers, fees and older acquisitions can be reconciled instead of handled as disconnected statements. A simple buy-and-hold history may need much less investigation than repeated DeFi transactions.
The harder cases are often about meaning rather than arithmetic. A bridge movement, liquidity position, reward or unusual token event may need supporting documents and a decision about classification. A portfolio balance alone cannot answer that question. The guide to crypto market data also explains why a quoted valuation is different from a realized sale.
Before treating a report as finished, compare account balances, investigate material warnings, check representative purchases and sales, and retain the exports used to support corrections. Where the legal treatment is uncertain, bring those records to a qualified adviser. The useful result is an explainable history, not merely a downloaded file with a total at the bottom.