ClearBasis vs Koinly
Broad, mature, many-jurisdiction coverage. If you need a statutory form for one of a dozen countries and you connect a lot of exchanges by API, this is the obvious mainstream choice. We are a different shape of product: narrower today, and built so that every number can be traced to the record it came from. Below is what they do better, where we differ, and a table where each figure is the one the vendor published, linked to the page it came from.
What Koinly does better
Starting anywhere else would waste your time.
- Statutory forms for around a dozen jurisdictions — HMRC Capital Gains Summary, Canada Schedule 3, Sweden K4 including the SRU digital format, France 2086, Finland Lomake 9, ATO reports. That is years of unglamorous per-country work.
- A free tier that lets you see the computed answer before paying: unlimited wallets and up to 10,000 imported transactions, with gains visible on screen. The paywall is on the paperwork, not the arithmetic.
- Genuinely open portability — transaction history, per-disposal capital gains and opening/closing holdings with acquisition costs all export as CSV, with a documented import schema.
Where we are different
Every figure carries its evidence. Every figure links to the row it came from — source file, row number, tx hash, price source. Rulesets are versioned and dated (2026.08-r1) and the methodology memos (M-001…) are published, not internal.
The answer is free; the paperwork is paid. Everything computed and visible — true gain, the blank-basis overstatement, per-lot detail in preview, gaps and decisions. Payment unlocks the documents (Form 8949, workpapers, exports); nothing about the answer is hidden to sell the answer.
Your basis is portable by design. Basis Passport: your full evidence-linked basis history as a signed, versioned JSON file, free from any saved scan even if you never pay. The spec is public and anyone — including these competitors — may implement it.
Dead platforms are the specialty. Dead-platform rebuild is the specialty: FTX, Celsius, Cryptopia, Mt. Gox and others, reconstructed from what survives, with the gaps shown rather than filled in.
Side by side
| ClearBasis | Koinly | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get without paying | Everything computed and visible — true gain, the blank-basis overstatement, per-lot detail in preview, gaps and decisions. Payment unlocks the documents (Form 8949, workpapers, exports); nothing about the answer is hidden to sell the answer. | Connect unlimited wallets, import up to 10,000 transactions and see computed gains on screen; generating and downloading the tax reports requires a paid plan for that tax year. |
| Price at ~1,000 transactions | $99 per tax-year bundle (≤1,000 tx) | $99 per tax year (Hodler, ≤1,000 tx) |
| Above that | $249 (≤5,000 tx) · $399 (≤15,000) · $649 (≤50,000) | $199 per tax year (Trader, ≤3,000 tx); the Pro tier (≤10,000 tx) price is not stated on the pricing page |
| Connections | 13 auto-detected CSV formats today, including the 1099-DA itself and migration files from Koinly, CoinTracker, CoinLedger and CoinTracking. Read-only API and on-chain sync are not live yet — that is the honest gap. | Vendor's own pages disagree the same day: 1,000+ direct integrations on the integrations page, 900+ and 800+ elsewhere. API and CSV both supported. |
| Country depth | Three deep country guides (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania) in five languages plus a global hub; US federal throughout. | Around a dozen jurisdictions with dedicated statutory forms, plus generic reports elsewhere. |
| Documents produced | Form 8949 (PDF + CSV), evidence workpapers, TurboTax CSV, TXF — opening with payments. | Complete Tax Report PDF, Form 8949, Schedule D, TurboTax, TXF, plus the national forms listed above. |
| Evidence behind each figure | Every figure links to the row it came from — source file, row number, tx hash, price source. Rulesets are versioned and dated (2026.08-r1) and the methodology memos (M-001…) are published, not internal. | An itemised report showing per-disposal working — but no published methodology document, no versioned or dated ruleset, and no citation of the underlying statute beside each figure. |
| Getting your data out | Basis Passport: your full evidence-linked basis history as a signed, versioned JSON file, free from any saved scan even if you never pay. The spec is public and anyone — including these competitors — may implement it. | Full transaction history and per-disposal gains export as CSV, with a documented import schema. |
| Dead platforms | Dead-platform rebuild is the specialty: FTX, Celsius, Cryptopia, Mt. Gox and others, reconstructed from what survives, with the gaps shown rather than filled in. | Not a stated specialty. |
| Support model | Self-serve; no sales calls. Practitioner tier (Workbench) is self-serve too. | Email/chat support; no published done-for-you price found. |
Koinly figures from their own pricing page, checked 2026-08-23.
Which one should you actually use?
Choose Koinly if you need dozens of exchanges connected by API today, or a statutory form for a country we have not built yet. We would rather tell you that than take your money for a worse fit.
Choose ClearBasis if your problem is missing cost basis — transferred-in coins, a dead exchange, a decade of history, or a 1099-DA that reads your whole sale as profit — and you need every figure to survive a question from a tax authority, with the evidence attached.
Use both if it helps. Their export imports here directly, and our Basis Passport is an open format anyone can read — including them. Switching costs are a business model, not a law of nature.
Other comparisons
ClearBasis vs CoinTracker · ClearBasis vs CoinLedger · ClearBasis vs Blockpit · ClearBasis vs CoinTracking
compare-2026.1 · figures checked 2026-08-23 · Koinly are trademarks of their respective owners; ClearBasis is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them. Competitor figures are what each vendor published on its own site on the date shown and change without notice — follow the links and check before deciding. Where a vendor does not publish a figure in machine-readable form we say so rather than estimate it. ClearBasis is tax software, not a law firm, accounting firm or tax preparer.