Awaken.Tax vs. Koinly

Which crypto tax app is better, Koinly or Awaken.Tax?

Looking for a crypto tax calculator that has everything you need to calculate and report your crypto taxes? If you’re torn between Koinly and Awaken.Tax, check out our side–by–side comparison for everything you need to know.

Integrations

Your crypto tax tool needs to support all the exchanges, wallets, and blockchains you use so you can import your data to calculate easily. Koinly is far more established in this regard, with more than 800 integrations overall, compared to Awaken’s 133. 

It is worth noting however that both platforms allow custom CSV imports for platforms not supported natively or automatically. But thanks to more native and automatic support, with Koinly, you’ll spend less time importing your data as in most instances you’ll either connect automatically via API or upload a CSV file you’ve exported from your exchange or wallet (without any manual edits and changes needed) Here’s how easy it is.

Bonus point: Koinly also empowers users with educational content, including more than 195 how-to YouTube videos, showing users exactly how to import their data correctly. Meanwhile, Awaken has around 5 how-to videos currently.

Portfolio tracking

Both Koinly and Awaken work as free crypto portfolio trackers, as well as tax calculators. So not only can these tools help you come tax time, but they can help you manage and track your crypto investments beforehand, and even optimize your tax liability.

Both platforms offer data on both a macro and micro level of your portfolio, including viewing your unrealized gains and losses and information about the performance of your individual holdings, but with Koinly you get more, including a free tax optimization tool to help you optimize your position ahead of the end of the financial year, as well as a more user-friendly dashboard chart that you can adjust to show your portfolio performance over a given time period.

DeFi, NFTs, margin trading, and derivatives

Crypto tax gets complicated, especially for investors with more complicated transactions like DeFi, loans, or leveraged transactions that result in realized PnL. Your tool needs to handle it all.

And it’s good news for both Koinly and Awaken users on this front. Both tools have excellent support for more advanced transactions, including income like staking and mining rewards, NFTs, and leveraged transactions like margin trades and futures.

As well as this, both tools offer excellent DeFI support compared to other crypto tax tools, with a particular focus on adding new and growing DeFi chains that many other crypto tax tools have failed to add as of yet, including chains like Sui, Scroll, and Base.

Where Koinly comes out slightly ahead is that it simply supports more blockchains automatically. While Awaken users can import custom CSV files to add any blockchain data, Koinly does this via API for more chains to automatically import your data, meaning you can spend less time on your taxes.

Free plan

Both Awaken and Koinly work on a freemium model, meaning you can try out the software before you ever spend a dime. Unlike other crypto tax platforms, both Koinly and Awaken offer a true try-before-you-buy experience, with no features locked behind paywalls, so you can make sure you love the software and that the calculations are correct before you upgrade to a paid plan.

The main difference is the amount of information supplied, as for Awaken users, you can’t preview your calculated gains, losses, and income if you’re over a certain transaction threshold. Whereas with Koinly, you get a free tax summary (excluding for Canadian users), to make sure you’re happy with the calculations before you pay for a plan.

With Koinly though, you get more features - including a free tax optimization tool and an NFT dashboard that lets you view your NFTs within the app.

Paid plans

Koinly is more affordable than Awaken, with plans starting from $49 for 100 transactions and ranging up to $199 for 10,000 transactions. Awaken does have a current promotion that allows users with less than 365 transactions in a year to generate reports free, otherwise, the next cheapest plan starts from $199 for 1,500 transactions up to $749 for unlimited transactions.

Usability and features

Both Koinly and Awaken strive to make crypto tax simpler for users. Both platforms offer features to do this once your data is imported, including support for less common transactions, transaction filters to find data easily, and automatic error detection to help highlight any issues where data is lacking information that may impact your calculations.

Koinly, however, may come out ahead thanks to a wealth of educational content. So not only does the tool automatically detect issues, but it’ll then guide you to content that can help you resolve those issues, while Awaken is yet to add much help content. 

As well as this, when it comes to crypto tax grey areas - that is where legislation has not yet been released on cashback, transfer fees, and more - Koinly lets you customize your settings to decide how you’d like to treat these alongside your accountant. It also offers superior support for more accounting methods, including Optimized HIFO and ACB, and specific country cost basis methods like the UK’s Share Pooling and France’s PFU methods.

Customer support

Awaken is a relatively new platform and as of yet, has no Trustpilot reviews, although the platform has received good feedback across Twitter and from accountants, particularly in regard to Solana support. The platform offers email support, but no live chat as of yet, although there is a handy ‘taxGPT’ tool within the app.

Koinly meanwhile is a more established platform offering both live chat and email support, with more than 1 million users, and an average Trustpilot score of 4.7 stars from more than 1,600 reviews.

Reputation and security

You need to trust your crypto tax tool with your data, both from a security and privacy perspective. Koinly excels in this regard with an excellent reputation with partnerships across the globe including MetaMask, Coinbase, Binance, and more. The platform is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified, and we never collect more data than we need to, or share it.

Meanwhile, Awaken is a relatively new platform and is yet to establish a strong reputation, although the platform is fully compliant with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Supported countries 

For investors in the US, both tools offer a range of reports including the IRS Form 8949 and Schedule D and TurboTax reports. But Awaken is yet to expand to international support, while Koinly offers custom reports for investors globally including the ATO myTax report, HMRC Capital Gains Report, and the CRA Schedule 3 report.

Conclusion: Which is better?

Although we might be a little biased, we think Koinly comes out on top thanks to more integrations, easier automatic data import, international support, and more affordable pricing - and we’ll keep working hard to keep our product that way.