A trading journal Excel template you never have to build.

Yes — people have tracked trades in Excel for years, and it works up to a point. You build columns for entry, exit, size and P&L, then add formulas for win rate and profit factor. The cost is maintenance: every broken formula or duplicated row eats review time. A structured journal does the same job without the sheet. Dusk Analyst imports trade history via CSV in minutes and computes the analytics for you, so you get spreadsheet control without the upkeep. The Free tier covers two accounts with manual entry, CSV import, tags, calendars, core analytics and weekly report export at $0. Pro at $25 per month adds unlimited accounts, auto-sync, AI insights and full export.

A usable sheet needs trade date, symbol, direction, entry, exit, size, fees and P&L per row, plus summary formulas for win rate, profit factor and average R. It works, but it is real work: you design it, test it, and rebuild it when you change instruments. If you would rather trade than maintain formulas, skip the sheet. Dusk Analyst provides the same structure ready-made — log trades manually or import a CSV, and win rate, profit factor and calendars are computed automatically. Data is stored on Cloudflare, identity is handled by Auth0, billing by Stripe, and the AI that answers your insight questions runs on DeepSeek. The Free tier includes two accounts at $0 with no card required, and weekly report export is built in. Pro at $25 per month adds unlimited accounts, auto-sync, AI insights and full export.

Options add columns most sheets never handle well: expiry, strike, premium, strategy type and legs. A template can carry them, but your broker's export rarely lines up with the template's columns, and that cleanup is where most Excel journals die. Dusk Analyst handles options without a template: log the strategy, entry and exit manually, or import a CSV from your broker, and the journal tracks P&L, tags and calendars from there. Our 2026 audit checked 356 brokers and prop firms one by one against their own sites, and the brokers table on the home page shows the evidence for each. Free covers two accounts; Pro at $25 per month adds unlimited accounts, auto-sync, AI insights and full export.

Free Excel templates exist on blogs, forums and template sites, but most are either too basic or too bloated, and none of them fill themselves in. You still download, enable macros, fix formatting and re-enter every trade by hand. If the goal is a free journal, the more reliable route is a tool with a free tier: Dusk Analyst's Free plan covers two accounts with manual entry, CSV import, tags, calendars, core analytics and weekly report export at $0, no credit card required and no time limit. Trades go in by hand or by CSV, and the analytics compute themselves. Data is stored on Cloudflare, identity is handled by Auth0, billing by Stripe, and the AI that answers your insight questions runs on DeepSeek. Upgrade to Pro at $25 per month when you want auto-sync, AI insights and unlimited accounts.

There are free option-tracking spreadsheets, and they can track premiums, strikes and expiries. The catch is the same as any sheet: you maintain the formulas, reconcile the data, and re-enter what your broker does not export cleanly. A free journal that is not a spreadsheet can do more with less effort. Dusk Analyst's Free tier gives you a real journaling workspace — two accounts, manual entry, CSV import, tags, calendars, core analytics and weekly report export — at $0, with no card required. Add Pro at $25 per month for unlimited accounts, auto-sync MT4, MT5 and cTrader, AI insights and full export.

Yes - the Excel template is free and needs no account to download. Open it in your spreadsheet app and start logging trades immediately. It's built to be a genuine starting point: structured columns for the data that matters, with the key metrics calculated for you. If you outgrow it, Dusk Analyst imports the same CSV structure and continues your history on any plan.

The Excel template calculates the metrics that matter for review: win rate, profit factor, expectancy per trade, average win vs average loss, max drawdown and an equity curve from your logged trades. Enter each trade's entry, exit, size and result; the formulas do the rest. It's a solid foundation - and if you later want auto-sync or AI insights, Dusk Analyst imports your CSV and carries the history forward.

One row per trade. Fill in date, symbol, direction, entry, exit, lot size and P&L; the template computes the rest (win/loss, R-multiple, running equity). Add notes in the journal column while it's fresh - the notes are where the learning happens. If you'd rather not type rows at all, Dusk Analyst on Pro auto-syncs MT4/MT5/cTrader and still gives you the same metrics.

Yes, and it's painless. Export your Excel template as CSV and import it into Dusk Analyst - the free tier includes CSV import, so you keep your full history and pick up where the template left off. From there you can keep logging manually, or upgrade to Pro for MT4/MT5/cTrader auto-sync and AI insights. Nothing you've recorded is wasted.

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, expectancy, drawdown 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 auto-sync, AI insights on your trading (1,000 trade-analyses a month), monthly reports and full export, and has a free trial of up to 30 days (card required). The pricing is deliberately simple: one plan, one price, no per-feature upsells.

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.