Best trading journal in 2026, compared

If you trade on MT4, MT5 or cTrader, pick a journal that lists auto-sync for your platform on its own site: TradeZella, Edgewonk, TradesViz and Dusk Analyst all do. Dusk Analyst sends each closed trade from a read-only EA, cBot or NinjaTrader add-on in your own terminal, so it never needs your broker or investor password. Auto-sync (MT4, MT5, cTrader, NinjaTrader) is on Pro at $25/month, free for your first 5 trading days with no card.

It depends on how you trade. Dusk Analyst's Free plan has unlimited trades, 2 accounts, manual entry, CSV import, tags, calendars and weekly reports, with no card and no time limit, but no auto-sync (that is Pro: MT4, MT5, cTrader and NinjaTrader). Stonk Journal is free with unlimited trades and accounts but manual entry only. TradesViz's free plan covers stocks only, up to 3,000 executions a month.

A spreadsheet works while you trade one account and log every trade by hand. A journal earns its cost when you want trades captured automatically, stats like win rate by setup without formulas, or several accounts side by side. You can start free on Dusk Analyst and only pay for Pro if auto-sync saves you the time. See our journal vs spreadsheet guide.

Yes. The free tier costs $0 forever and includes two accounts, manual trade entry and CSV import - enough to journal a live account properly, with win rate, P&L and equity curve all calculated for you. There is no credit card required to start. Pro ($25/month flat) adds unlimited accounts, MT4/MT5/cTrader/NinjaTrader auto-sync, AI insights on your trading (1,000 trade-analyses a month), monthly reports and full export, and every new account gets Pro free for 5 trading days with no card. The pricing is deliberately simple: one plan, one price, no per-feature upsells.

Yes, and it needs no card. Every new Dusk Analyst account gets Pro free for 5 trading days from sign-up: auto-sync from MT4, MT5, cTrader and NinjaTrader 8, AI Insights with 1,000 credits, monthly reports and unlimited accounts. After that Pro is $25/month, and you can cancel anytime from Billing in the app. If you skip it, the account moves to Free with every trade kept.

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, cTrader or NinjaTrader 8. For MT4/MT5/cTrader/NinjaTrader 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 the free Pro week (5 trading days, no card) includes the full monthly allowance.