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. DuskAnalyst 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. DuskAnalyst 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. DuskAnalyst 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: DuskAnalyst'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. DuskAnalyst'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.