The best free trading journal is the one that stays free — and still logs your real history.

Yes. Tradervue itself has a free plan (limited), TradesViz offers a free tier with ads and feature limits, and Dusk Analyst has a genuinely usable free tier: two accounts, manual entry, CSV import, tags, analytics and weekly report export at $0 with no card required. The frequent complaint in trading communities is hitting a free-import cap quickly — 'free option but you hit the max 100 free imports a month'. Dusk Analyst's free tier covers two full accounts with CSV import so you can actually log your history, not just a taste of it. Data is stored on Cloudflare, identity is handled by Auth0, billing by Stripe, and the AI that answers your insight questions runs on DeepSeek. No card is required for the free tier.

There are free journals, but most are capped in ways that make them hard to use seriously: import limits, ad walls, or single accounts. The genuinely free options in 2026 are: Dusk Analyst's free tier (2 accounts, manual + CSV, $0), Tradervue's free plan (limited imports), TradesViz free (ads/limits), and DIY spreadsheets or Notion templates (free but manual). If you want a journal that grows with you — CSV import now, MT4/MT5/cTrader auto-sync later — Dusk Analyst's free tier is the strongest starting point.

For a beginner, the best free journal is one with structure but zero friction: it should log trades, tag them, show simple stats and let you review weekly. Dusk Analyst's free tier does all of that on two accounts at $0. If you prefer spreadsheets, our Excel and Google Sheets trading journal template pages walk you through a DIY version — but a structured journal saves the upkeep. Start free, and when your volume grows, Pro at $25/month adds unlimited accounts and auto-sync.

Yes — the free tier genuinely costs $0: two accounts, manual entry, CSV import, tags, analytics, calendars and weekly report export, no card required. It is not a free trial; it is a permanent free tier. Pro at $25/month adds unlimited accounts, MT4/MT5/cTrader auto-sync, AI insights and full export when you are ready. Our 2026 audit verified 356 brokers and prop firms one by one against their own sites; the brokers table on the home page shows the evidence.

The essentials: per-trade entry (symbol, direction, entry/exit, P&L, date), tags or notes, basic performance stats (win rate, profit factor, equity curve), and a way to review weekly. Anything beyond that is nice-to-have. Dusk Analyst's free tier covers all of it, and if you later want auto-sync or AI insights you can upgrade without re-entering your history.

Yes. Dusk Analyst Pro has a free trial of up to 30 days: 30 days if you start it within an hour of signing up, 15 days within 24 hours. A card is required to start it, nothing is charged on the day it starts, and when the trial ends Pro is $25/month unless you cancel. We email you a reminder before the trial ends. You can cancel anytime from Billing in the app; cancelling during the trial ends it straight away, nothing is charged, and your account goes back to the Free plan with every trade kept. There is one trial per account. The trial includes everything in Pro: MT4, MT5 and cTrader auto-sync, monthly reports, unlimited account books, 1,000 AI credits a month for AI Insights and CSV export. Start it in the app at app.duskanalyst.com, where it is offered whenever you open a Pro feature such as Connectors, and from the plan card in the sidebar. The Free plan is separate: it needs no card and stays free forever.

Yes - CSV import is available on every plan, including free. If you've been tracking trades in a spreadsheet, broker export or another journal, export the CSV from wherever it lives and import it into Dusk Analyst; the journal matches it against your accounts and keeps your history continuous. Import is also the fallback for platforms that don't run MT4, MT5 or cTrader. For MT4/MT5/cTrader terminals, Pro auto-syncs going forward and the EA backfills any trades your terminal missed while it was off. Any platform that exports a CSV of your trade history works. Dusk Analyst recognises TradingView, Tradovate, cTrader, MT4 and MT5 exports on sight; for anything else you map your columns once and that parser is saved for next time. Comma, semicolon and tab files are all handled, day-first and month-first dates are detected from the file itself, and any row that cannot be read is listed for you rather than dropped quietly.

Pro includes 1,000 AI trade-analyses every month. One credit covers one trade, so asking a question about a 40-trade week costs 40 credits and you can keep asking. The allowance resets on the 1st of each month and the counter sits in the top bar of the app, so you always know where you stand. Narrowing a question to one account or a shorter date range makes the same allowance go much further. Free accounts get a small number of AI credits to try AI Insights, alongside the full journal, analytics and weekly reports, and Pro's free trial (up to 30 days) includes the full monthly allowance.

Yes - and the evidence is in your own history. Traders who review their closed trades consistently find the same handful of mistakes: entering without a setup, oversized risk, revenge trading after a loss, and ignoring sessions or news that hurt their edge. A journal makes those patterns visible because it records the context around every trade - entry reason, R:R, daily loss, emotional state - not just the P&L. You don't need to journal for years to see a return; most traders notice their biggest leak within the first month of honest review. Dusk Analyst makes the habit cheap: the free tier covers two accounts with manual entry and CSV import, so the barrier is ten minutes of setup, not a subscription.