ZenLedger vs. Koinly

Which crypto tax app is better, Koinly or ZenLedger?

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

Integrations

With thousands of coins and tokens available to trade, you need to know your crypto tax platform supports all your investments - and Koinly takes the lead, with more than 800 integrations overall, compared to ZenLedger’s 400+. Notably, Koinly offers a lot more support for newer and growing DeFi chains like Sui, Cosmos, Dogechain, Hedera, Link, and many more, while Zenledger is yet to add these.

As well as this, Koinly supports more blockchains via API - more than 220 blockchains in fact, and thousands of tokens - compared to ZenLedger’s 50 blockchains, so it's much easier and quicker to get your data imported.

Koinly also supports users with importing their data every step of the way with more than 190 integration how-to videos on YouTube, that show you exactly how to generate your API keys or locate your CSV file for upload. On the other hand, ZenLedger's 71 videos focus on marketing messages.  

Portfolio tracking

Both Koinly and ZenLedger function as both a free portfolio tracker and tax calculator, meaning both products can help you better understand your portfolio investments and performance. While ZenLedger offers a high-level overview of market prices for the top coins and the price and value of your holdings, that’s it. 

Meanwhile, Koinly offers a high-level view of your portfolio, including the total value, cost basis, unrealized gains/losses, a breakdown of your transactions, and fiat held on exchanges. As well as this, on an individual assets level, Koinly provides balance, cost (total and per unit), market value, rank, market cap, ROI, allocation, and more. Alongside this, Koinly has a dedicated NFT dashboard that lets you preview your NFTs in the app, as well as see total and individual asset value, cost basis, and unrealized gains/losses.

DeFi, NFTs, margin trading, and derivatives

Degen? You need tax software that can handle your chaos. From DeFi to margin trading to derivatives to lending, both Koinly and ZenLedger are up to the task. As well as this, both platforms can handle simpler transactions like mining and staking income, alongside airdrops, but Koinly stands out with superior blockchain support for DeFi investors, while ZenLedger is yet to add support for many popular DeFi chains including Link, Cosmos, Sui, DeFiChain, and many more, compared to Koinly's 220+ supported blockchains.

You can compare how the different apps handle the same transactions, including calculations and the amount of information provided, below with Koinly on the left and ZenLedger on the right.

On top of superior DeFi support, Koinly has extensive help guides for users importing liquidity transactions and DeFi lending platforms to make it as easy as possible to navigate your transactions and troubleshoot any potential issues.

Free plan

Both Koinly and ZenLedger operate on a freemium model, but Koinly’s is far more generous. All of Koinly’s features, excluding the ability to download your tax report, are available on its free plan. Nothing is locked behind paywalls, so you can make sure you’re happy with how Koinly works before you’ll ever pay a dime. 

Meanwhile, ZenLedger does offer a free plan, but many features, including tax loss harvesting and a full tax summary, are locked behind paywalls.

Paid plans

For the cheapest paid plan, Koinly and ZenLedger are comparable - coming out at $49 per year. But Koinly works out cheaper on other plans, with up to 1000 transactions supported for $99 a year, and up to 10,000 transactions supported for $199 a year. Comparatively, ZenLedger's next tier of plan starts from $199 for up to 5,000 transactions and $399 for up to 15,000 transactions.

Usability and features

Because Koinly was built by crypto investors who get how much of a pain accounting for crypto transactions on your tax return can be, it’s user-focused. That means Koinly has made it as easy as possible to import, navigate, view, edit, and troubleshoot your transactions.

So while both products feature automatic error detection, transaction filters, and tags, Koinly offers a lot more support in all regards. Koinly makes it easier to filter your transactions, tag them accurately to ensure your tax report is accurate, and provides a wealth of self-help guides to help you troubleshoot any common data import issues.

ZenLedger meanwhile struggles with CSV imports, and often data that is imported is not tagged automatically, or worse, handled incorrectly, meaning there are a lot of manual edits needed in order to get your transaction history sorted and generate accurate reports.

For international investors in particular as well as investors dealing with transactions in legislative gray areas, Koinly's tax settings allow users to both customize to their country's rules, as well as take a more conservative or aggressive approach based on their accountant's advice. Meanwhile, ZenLedger’s tax settings are limited to cost basis, country, and currency only, meaning it may be unable to support users worldwide.

Customer support

More than 1 million customers have used Koinly to calculate and file their crypto taxes, as well as thousands of CPAs globally - and it shows, with an average 4.7-star rating on Trustpilot from more than 1,600 reviews. Meanwhile, ZenLedger has a respectable average of 3.5 stars on Trustpilot from just over 70 reviews. One user who made the switch from ZenLedger to Koinly was impressed with a cleaner UX and a superior customer support experience.

While both platforms offer free email support and live chat for all plans, if you want an expert to review your transactions to make sure everything is in order, Koinly’s pricing works out better, with expert reviews priced between $499 to $1999 depending on the season. With Koinly’s expert reviews, one of our seasoned handlers will go through every aspect of your transaction data, to make sure everything is imported and calculated correctly, so you can file your taxes with confidence knowing the figures are correct. Meanwhile, ZenLedger offers a 60-minute consultation for $275 or a premium prepared plan starting from $3500.

Reputation and security

Both platforms benefit from strong partnerships across the industry. Notable names from Zenledger partnerships include eToro, MetaMask, and BitPay. Likewise, Koinly is paired up with some leading crypto businesses such as MetaMask, Binance, and Nexo. Koinly also focused on teaming up with leading tax software around the world including Clear Tax, Wealthsimple, and Tax Scouts.

When it comes to security, Koinly is SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certified and has not suffered any data leaks or hacks to date. Meanwhile, ZenLedger is SOC 2 certified, but unfortunately suffered a data breach in 2023 due to a third-party vendor. Data leaked included names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. This information was listed for sale on a dark net forum, and ZenLedger warned customers of potential phishing attempts to follow.

Supported Countries 

Both Koinly and ZenLedger offer excellent support for US users, including dedicated IRS forms such as Form 8949, Schedule D, and Schedule 1, and reports you can upload directly into your preferred tax filing solution like TurboTax or TaxAct. 

But outside the US, Koinly stands out - with dedicated reports for Canada, Australia, the UK, Sweden, France, Finland, and Switzerland - as well as a Complete Tax Report PDF that can help you file in many more countries. While ZenLedger claims to support international investors, it only offers generic gains, income, end-of-year valuation reports, and so on for international users.

Conclusion: Which is better?

While ZenLedger offers fair support for large crypto exchanges and a similar price point for low-volume investors, Koinly is the better choice with a feature-packed freemium model, better pricing, superior customer support, and more integrations and international support. While we might be biased, we think Koinly is better suited to the majority of investors, and we'll keep working hard to keep our product that way.