# Crypto Trading Journals

Journals for crypto traders — your own fills synced from the exchange, and whether funding and fees are inside the P&L they show you.

*https://cryptomarkets.tools/categories/trade-journals*

## What this category is

A journal reads back trades you have already made. It pulls your fills from the exchange,
rebuilds them into positions, and lets you tag, annotate and slice the results until a pattern in
your own behaviour shows up — the setup that loses, the hour you should not trade, the size at
which your stop discipline breaks. It does not choose the next trade, place an order or hold
funds; a tool that does those things is a [terminal](https://cryptomarkets.tools/categories/trading-terminals) or a
[bot](https://cryptomarkets.tools/categories/trading-bots), and the journal tab inside one of those, as in
[Altrady](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/altrady), stays a feature of that card.

Every product here is built for crypto first. The multi-asset journals that also take crypto
imports — the ones a stock or futures trader already knows — are catalogued on
[StockMarketStack](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/trade-journals) and are not repeated
here.

## What decides the choice

**Which of your venues it reads, and how.** The supported-exchange lists overlap less than you
would expect: [TraderMake.Money](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradermake-money) lists eleven,
[CoinMarketMan](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinmarketman) seven of a different mix, including BloFin, Phemex and
WOO X, and [TradeChainly](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradechainly) seven that include Coinbase, Kraken and
Crypto.com and no perp DEX. Start from your own exchange, not the count. All four connect a
centralised exchange by read-only API key. Perp DEXs are where they part: Hyperliquid's fills are
public by address, so a journal can import them from a wallet address with no key at all, and
whether it does — and how far back — is on each card.

**Whether funding is inside the P&L.** This is the number that most often makes a journal
disagree with the exchange. Funding on a perpetual is paid or received at every funding time the
position spans, and on a position held for days it can outweigh the trading fees. Some journals
here import funding payments and count them in each trade's result; on one, the product pages
name only trading fees deducted per fill while a blog post says funding sits next to every
position, and the card leaves it unconfirmed. A journal that leaves funding out will flatter a long held through positive
funding and punish a short, and the error grows with the holding period.

**How far back the first import reaches.** A journal can only rebuild what the exchange's API
returns, and the exchanges do not all keep the same depth of history behind their endpoints. One
journal here publishes the first-sync window per venue, from 30 days to full history and "last
10,000 orders" on Hyperliquid; another gives two different windows on two pages of its own docs.
If the year you want to review is older than the window, export it from the exchange yourself and
upload it to a journal that takes a CSV — two of the four do, and two do not — and
[how to export exchange trade history](https://cryptomarkets.tools/how-to/export-exchange-trade-history) covers
where each exchange keeps the file.

**Who pays for the free plan.** A free journal is paid for by someone. On one card it is the
exchange: automated imports are free for accounts opened through the journal's referral links,
and the vendor's explanation is "the exchanges reward us". On another, the free plan is
real but shows a short window of your history. The cards say which, in the vendor's own words.

**What your data feeds.** A journal holds a complete record of your positions, and some products
use the pool. One aggregates its users' long and short positioning into a paid feature and says
in its privacy policy that aggregated data may be used commercially; two run public leaderboards
of opted-in traders. None of that is hidden, and all of it is on the cards — read it before you
connect a key.

## The directional features in this category

Two of the four journals ship something beyond your own record inside the plan you buy.
[Thrive](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/thrive) has several such modules: a long/short score with sizing guidance,
data-feed signals scored as wins or losses, and AI trade ideas with entries and stops, charged in
the same credits as its trade reviews. TradeChainly has a price-forecast page. In neither product
are these the headline, a plan of their own or wired to place orders, so both are listed and
judged as journals, flagged `recommendations`, with the modules named in Limitations.
A journal whose product was the call would not be here. Thrive's terms also describe a
marketplace where other users sell signal subscriptions; this catalogue does not list it.

## What is not here yet

Four products is a small category, and it is small on purpose: twenty journals were screened and
four passed. Others were left out for selling signals as part of the product, for a price that
appears only after an exchange sign-up, for no named publisher, for looking abandoned, or for being
a stock journal with a crypto import. A journal that is crypto-first, names who runs it and lets
you look before paying is a candidate.

## What this category looks like

Counted across the 4 cards below, not quoted from anyone.

- **Free tier:** 2 of 4
- **Cheapest paid month:** median $46.99, across $9 to $99 — from the 4 cards that publish a monthly price
- **Ships an MCP server:** 2 of 4

## Cards

- [CoinMarketMan](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinmarketman.md) — Futures journal synced from seven venues by read-only key; free on referred accounts.
- [Thrive](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/thrive.md) — A perps trading journal with read-only sync and AI review of a trade against its market.
- [TradeChainly](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradechainly.md) — One-plan crypto journal for seven exchanges, with a read-only Claude and ChatGPT link.
- [Trader Make Money](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradermake-money.md) — Crypto-only trade journal over 11 venues, funding inside the P&L, with an MCP server.

## FAQ

### Is it safe to give a trading journal my exchange API key?

A read-only key cannot place an order or move funds, which is why every journal in this category asks for one and several refuse a key that can trade. Create the key with read permission only, never withdrawal, and revoke it at the exchange when you stop using the journal. A Hyperliquid account needs no key at all on some journals, because its fills are public by wallet address.

### Why does my journal show a different P&L from the exchange?

Usually funding, then fees, then history the import never reached. A perpetual position pays or receives funding at every funding time it is held across, and a journal that imports fills but not funding payments will overstate a long held through positive funding. Check whether the journal names funding as something it imports, and how far back its first sync went for your venue.

### Is there a free crypto trading journal?

Two here have a free plan, with limits that matter. One shows only the last 31 days of trades on one connection; the other automates imports only for exchange accounts opened through its referral links, which the exchange pays for. The other two sell a single paid plan after a free trial.

### Do crypto trading journals give trading signals?

Their job is your own record, and the cards here were judged by it. Two of the four also ship directional features inside the same plan — a long/short score and trade ideas in one, price forecasts in the other — and their cards are flagged for it. A journal that sold calls as its product would not be listed.