Koinly review: The best default crypto tax tool for most Australian investors

About Koinly

Koinly is a crypto tax software platform founded in 2018 and headquartered in London, with development and operations based partly in Norway. The company serves users in more than 20 countries with country-specific tax rule sets for each major jurisdiction. Australian users get an Australia-specific product with ATO rules hardcoded, the 50 percent CGT discount applied automatically, myTax report output, and integration support for every major AUSTRAC-registered Australian exchange.

Scale is genuine. Koinly has processed tax reports for more than 1 million users globally. Trustpilot shows 4.6 out of 5 on 2,252 reviews at the Australian domain. The company's own landing page shows 4.8 out of 5 on roughly 2,000 curated reviews, which matches the Trustpilot signal closely. In Australia, Koinly has been positioned by major review aggregators as the default retail choice for crypto tax.

Corporate facts worth knowing

Koinly is operated by Koinly AS and its UK group subsidiaries. The company holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications, both externally audited information security standards. Data is encrypted end-to-end, including at rest on Koinly's servers. Koinly is compliant with GDPR in the European Union, which provides a baseline privacy standard for Australian users as well.

Koinly is not AUSTRAC registered because it is not a financial institution or exchange and does not hold or transact customer funds. It is a software service that reads your transaction data (imported by you) and produces tax reports for you to file. The ATO data-matching program does not run through Koinly. Your transactions are visible to the ATO via the exchanges where they occurred, not via your tax software.

Who Koinly is for

Four customer profiles fit Koinly particularly well.

First, retail investors with 2 to 5 exchange accounts. If your crypto activity sits across Swyftx, CoinSpot, maybe Binance Australia, a hardware wallet, and one or two airdrops, Koinly's 800+ integrations mean everything imports cleanly. Manual CSV reconciliation for a multi-exchange portfolio is the single biggest time sink at tax time, and Koinly reduces that from hours to minutes.

Second, staking and yield earners. Australian tax rules treat staking rewards as ordinary income at AUD value on receipt, and then CGT on disposal. Manual calculation of this across 365 daily distributions is impractical. Koinly automates the two-stage treatment correctly and separates income from capital gains in the final report.

Third, investors using multiple cost basis methods. ATO permits FIFO (default), LIFO, or specific identification. Koinly supports all three and can re-run the calculation on different methods to show which minimises your tax legally. For portfolios with mixed cost bases across assets held for different durations, this feature meaningfully reduces tax bills within ATO rules.

Fourth, SMSF trustees with crypto exposure. SMSF accounts need specific handling because the tax rates differ (15 percent ordinary, 10 percent on long-term capital gains after the one-third discount). Koinly handles the SMSF discount rate correctly and produces reports compatible with what most SMSF auditors expect to see.

Who should pick something else

Three cases where another tool is a better fit.

Heavy DeFi users with dozens of protocols. If your crypto activity includes aggressive DeFi participation across many protocols (Aave, Compound, Uniswap, Curve, GMX, dYdX, newer bridges and yield farms), CryptoTaxCalculator covers DeFi more deeply and correctly than Koinly. The additional cost is usually justified for heavy DeFi users but overkill for typical retail.

Users who want maximum Australian domestic focus. Syla is Australian-built with ATO-specific features and local support. For traders who want the most detailed Australian rule handling and are willing to accept narrower DeFi coverage, Syla is a credible alternative at competitive pricing.

Users under 100 transactions on a single exchange. If your annual crypto activity is very light (say, under 50 transactions on one exchange), most Australian exchanges produce tax reports that are adequate for direct lodgement via myTax without a third-party tool. Save the AUD 64 and use the exchange's native export. Once you have any complexity (multiple exchanges, staking, wallet transfers), a dedicated tax tool becomes worth it.

Australian pricing tiers

Koinly's pricing is tiered by transaction count per financial year, not by time or user. This matters because you only pay for what you generate.

Pricing shown as AUD-equivalent at April 2026 pricing, approximate. Koinly prices subscriptions in USD and converts to AUD at checkout; actual AUD cost depends on exchange rate. Always check koinly.io/au for current Australian pricing before purchasing.

How to pick the right tier

Most new users overestimate their transaction count. A year of weekly dollar cost averaging on Swyftx plus a handful of rebalances is roughly 50 to 80 transactions, comfortably within Newbie. Once you add staking (every daily reward is a transaction), liquidity pool activity, or multiple exchanges, transaction count scales rapidly. If in doubt, import your data on the free plan first (free portfolio tracking works without a paid plan), see the transaction count Koinly calculates, then upgrade to the matching tier before generating the final report.

Exchange and wallet integrations

Koinly's integration breadth is the single biggest reason it ranks first in Australia. More than 800 exchanges, wallets, and blockchains are supported. In the Australian context, every exchange a typical retail user would hold an account at is covered, and most of them via API import rather than manual CSV upload.

Australian exchanges with API integration

Swyftx, CoinSpot, Independent Reserve, CoinJar, Digital Surge, Binance Australia, Coinbase Australia, Crypto.com, Kraken (via their Australian entity), Cointree. For each of these, you add the exchange as an integration in Koinly, paste read-only API keys (never secret keys that allow trading), and Koinly automatically imports your full transaction history. Updates are pulled on a schedule, so your Koinly portfolio stays current with your exchange activity without manual intervention.

Wallet integrations

Every major self-custody wallet has integration: Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, Phantom, Trust Wallet, plus direct address-based import for any Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, or Avalanche wallet. For Ethereum-based activity in particular, paste the wallet address and Koinly pulls the full on-chain history.

Where integrations get tricky

Some newer Layer 1 chains (very recent launches) may have limited Koinly coverage at first. Bridges across chains can double-count transactions if not configured carefully. Older airdrops from defunct chains sometimes need manual classification. None of these are showstoppers, but they are the 10 percent of crypto tax complexity that still needs human review. Koinly flags suspected issues for manual review rather than silently failing, which is the right design choice.

ATO-specific features

The things Koinly does well for Australian users specifically:

50 percent CGT discount applied automatically. For assets held longer than 12 months, individuals and trusts receive the 50 percent discount. Koinly tracks the hold period for every tax lot and applies the discount correctly at disposal. The final report separates discounted and non-discounted gains.

SMSF one-third discount for long-term assets. SMSFs qualify for a smaller (33.33 percent) discount on capital gains for assets held over 12 months, which reduces the effective rate to 10 percent. Koinly handles this correctly when you configure the account as SMSF.

FIFO, LIFO, and specific identification cost basis. ATO default is FIFO. Specific identification is permitted if you can demonstrate which units were disposed. Koinly supports all three methods and can show the tax outcome under each, so you or your accountant can choose the legally permitted method that minimises tax.

Personal use asset exemption flagging. For small purchases potentially qualifying as personal use assets, Koinly flags candidate transactions for your review. You decide whether to claim the exemption based on the actual facts of your acquisition.

ATO myTax report format. Koinly's myTax report provides the exact capital gains figures you enter into myTax lodgement screens. A more detailed capital gains summary is available for accountants or SMSF auditors who need the underlying calculations.

Investor vs trader treatment. Koinly's default is to treat users as investors (CGT treatment). For users classified as traders (ordinary income treatment), the tool can re-run the calculations on a business income basis. This classification is important for tax positioning; see our investor vs trader section of the crypto tax pillar for the framework.

DeFi and advanced transaction coverage

DeFi is where crypto tax tools diverge the most in quality. Koinly's coverage is good for typical retail DeFi use but less comprehensive than CryptoTaxCalculator for heavy DeFi users.

What Koinly handles well: liquidity pool deposits and withdrawals on major AMMs (Uniswap, Sushiswap, Curve), lending and borrowing (Aave, Compound), staking on major proof-of-stake chains (ETH, SOL, ADA, DOT), yield farming rewards as ordinary income on receipt plus CGT on disposal, centralised exchange staking and earn products, and wrapping between major wrapped assets.

Where Koinly is adequate but not perfect: complex yield farm strategies with multiple compounding loops, newer DeFi protocols (launched in the last six months), NFT minting and royalty flows, cross-chain bridges where the accounting depends on how the specific bridge structures the transaction. In these cases, Koinly imports the transactions but may require manual classification. You will spend 10 to 30 minutes reviewing edge cases per tax year.

Where heavy DeFi users hit limits: if you are running dozens of LP positions, active farming strategies across multiple protocols, and thousands of transactions per year, Koinly will handle most of it but you will spend hours reconciling the edge cases. CryptoTaxCalculator is purpose-built for this profile and is worth the premium if your DeFi activity is substantial.

The actual workflow

End-to-end, preparing an Australian tax return on Koinly for a typical retail portfolio (two or three exchanges, some staking, one hardware wallet) takes about 30 minutes of active work.

Step 1: Add integrations. For each exchange, generate read-only API keys in your exchange account and paste them into Koinly's integration page. Koinly pulls the full history automatically. For wallets, paste the public address. This step takes about 5 minutes per integration the first time and is effectively zero work in subsequent years.

Step 2: Review flagged transactions. Koinly highlights transactions it has classified with uncertainty: airdrops that may or may not have been received, missing cost bases, transactions that appear to be self-transfers across wallets (not taxable), and unusual protocol activity. Go through the list and approve or reclassify. This is the step where users can catch errors that would otherwise flow through to the report.

Step 3: Set cost basis method and confirm account type. Confirm you are using FIFO (or change to LIFO or specific ID). Confirm the account is set to Individual or SMSF as appropriate.

Step 4: Generate reports. Download the myTax report (for direct lodgement) and the detailed capital gains report (for your records or accountant). Both come out as PDF and CSV.

Step 5: Lodge or forward to accountant. Either enter the myTax figures directly into the ATO lodgement screens, or send the detailed report to your registered tax agent. Koinly's reports are in a format that tax agents recognise and accept.

Security, privacy, and the Mixpanel exposure

Most Koinly reviews skip the security section or cover it perfunctorily. Given this is tax software holding your financial history, the honest treatment matters.

Core platform security

Koinly holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications. Both are externally audited and annually renewed. Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest on Koinly's servers. Access controls follow least-privilege principles. The core Koinly platform has not been breached. Users import transaction data only. No private keys, no exchange login credentials, no fund-transferring API keys are stored. Koinly reads your data through read-only API keys that you generate on each exchange.

For most users, the practical security posture is that a Koinly compromise could expose your transaction history (which the ATO already has separately) and your email address. It cannot give anyone access to your funds, your exchange accounts, or your private keys.

The December 2025 Mixpanel exposure

In December 2025, Koinly disclosed that customer email addresses may have been exposed through a third-party breach at Mixpanel, an analytics service provider Koinly used for product analytics. The exposure was limited to email addresses only. No passwords, no transaction data, no financial information, no private keys were involved. Koinly notified affected users directly, published a disclosure statement, and terminated the Mixpanel integration.

Context: Mixpanel is widely used as analytics infrastructure by many SaaS products, not just crypto tax tools. The breach affected multiple companies that used Mixpanel, not just Koinly. Koinly's response (prompt disclosure, user notification, vendor termination) is the right incident response handling.

Practical impact: if your email was in the affected set, you may see increased phishing attempts from actors pretending to be Koinly. The mitigations are standard: never click a link in an unexpected email claiming to be from Koinly, always navigate to koinly.io directly from your browser, use a strong unique password, enable 2FA on your Koinly account. These are good practices regardless of whether you were affected.

My overall read: this is an analytics vendor incident rather than a Koinly platform compromise. It does not change the fundamental security assessment of the Koinly service itself, but it is a reminder that third-party vendor risk is a real component of any SaaS tool's security posture. It also caused me to pull the Security and Privacy score from 4.7 to 4.5 in this review; a clean track record with no third-party incident would have justified a higher rating.

Customer support

Three support channels: in-app chat, email ticket, and a comprehensive help centre. No phone support.

In-app chat response times during US and European hours are fast, usually under 15 minutes for simple questions. During Australian business hours (roughly off-peak for Koinly's main user base), response times extend to 1 to 3 hours, still very acceptable for a software tool. Tax-specific questions are answered by staff who understand the country-specific rule sets, including Australian CGT handling.

The help centre is genuinely comprehensive. Most common questions (API key setup for specific exchanges, classification of specific transaction types, how to handle bridge transactions) have detailed written articles with screenshots. For users who prefer self-service, this is usually enough. For complex personal tax situations, Koinly's support team explicitly recommends consulting a registered tax agent rather than attempting to give tax advice themselves, which is the right position.

Koinly vs CryptoTaxCalculator vs Syla

The three crypto tax software options most relevant to Australian users. Each has a specific strength.

Pick Koinly if: you want the broadest default support, the most widely used tool (helpful if you work with an accountant who has already seen Koinly reports), and a price point that sits comfortably in the middle.

Pick CryptoTaxCalculator if: your portfolio is DeFi-heavy, or you are an Australian user who wants local domicile for your tax software vendor.

Pick Syla if: you want the deepest Australian ATO-specific feature set and are happy to trade off some international integration breadth for local focus.

For most retail Australian investors, the differences are smaller than the marketing suggests. Any of the three will produce an accurate Australian tax report. Pick the one whose pricing tier matches your transaction count and move on.

Pros and cons summary

Pros

Broadest integration support of any crypto tax tool in Australia (800+ exchanges and wallets). Australian tax rules handled correctly, including 50 percent CGT discount, SMSF one-third discount, and FIFO/LIFO/specific identification cost basis. Pricing tiers scale to transaction count, so light users pay less. myTax-formatted report built in for direct lodgement. Most widely used crypto tax tool globally (over 1 million users), which means accountants and auditors already know the report formats. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications. Free portfolio tracking tier lets you preview tax position before paying.

Cons

DeFi coverage is good but not best in class (CryptoTaxCalculator is deeper). Australian business hours support is slower than the US/EU peak hours. December 2025 Mixpanel third-party exposure of email addresses (not passwords or financial data, but still a real incident). Pricing is in USD with AUD conversion, so actual AUD cost varies with exchange rate. Some newer Layer 1 chains and bridges require manual transaction classification.

Final verdict

Koinly is the best default crypto tax software for most Australian retail investors in 2026. The combination of broad integration support, correct Australian tax rule handling, reasonable tiered pricing, and strong external security certifications is not matched by any single competitor. For typical users with two or three exchanges, some staking, and one or two wallets, Koinly reduces tax preparation from a manual multi-hour ordeal to a 30-minute review process, reliably and year after year.

The cases where I would genuinely recommend a different tool are narrow. Heavy DeFi portfolios with complex protocol activity: CryptoTaxCalculator has deeper coverage. Users who want the most Australian-specific feature set with local support: Syla is the domestic option. For the large retail majority, which is most readers of this review, Koinly is the right choice.

The December 2025 Mixpanel exposure is worth knowing about but should not change the verdict. It was a third-party analytics vendor incident, not a platform breach. Koinly's disclosure and response handling were appropriate. The practical impact is potential phishing attempts to exposed email addresses, which is mitigated by standard email hygiene.

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