The Best Koinly Alternative for Canadian Crypto Investors
If you are shopping for a koinly alternative canada filers can stand behind, the whole thing comes down to one number kept correctly over time: the adjusted cost base. The CRA averages your cost across every unit of a coin you hold, updates it on every purchase, and expects the same pool to still be right years later. This page compares CryptaTax and Koinly on that and on the rest of a Canadian return. Koinly is a capable product; comparison points are framed *as of June 2026*, and anything tied to Koinly's current plans should be verified on its own site.
General information provided as of June 2026, not tax advice. Koinly is a trademark of its respective owner; verify its current features and pricing on its official site. Whether your crypto activity is a capital gain or business income depends on your circumstances, so confirm your position with a qualified accountant.
Why Canadians look for a Koinly alternative
Canadian crypto filers rarely switch tools over features. They switch because a number stopped being reproducible. The adjusted cost base is a running average that every purchase changes, so a disposal in October depends on an acquisition in February that itself moved an average set the previous year. Miss one acquisition and every disposal after it is wrong, silently, in a way nothing flags.
The second common trigger is a loss that did not land. Sell at a loss, buy the same coin back inside 30 days, and the superficial loss rule can deny it, adding the denied amount to the cost base instead. People who harvest losses in December and rebuy in early January are the ones who find out. Neither of these is a hard rule to state. Both are hard to maintain by hand, which is exactly the kind of work software should be doing.
CryptaTax vs Koinly for CRA reporting
The table sets out what decides a Canadian filing. The CryptaTax column describes how CryptaTax is built. The Koinly column is not filled with claims: vendor capability and pricing move, and sending you to the source beats asserting something that goes stale.
| For a CRA filing | CryptaTax | Koinly |
|---|---|---|
| Adjusted cost base | Averaged per coin across identical properties, updated on every acquisition | Confirm how the cost base is averaged |
| 50% inclusion rate | Half the net capital gain carried into taxable income | Check how the inclusion rate is applied |
| Superficial loss rule | Applied automatically on a reacquisition within 30 days | Verify superficial loss handling |
| Capital vs business income | Each event classified, so the two are reported separately rather than merged | Check whether the distinction is supported |
| Reporting currency | Canadian dollars throughout, valued at the time of each event | Check the reporting currency and rate source |
| Self-transfers | Both legs matched automatically, so a move between your own wallets is not a disposition | Verify how transfers between your own accounts are treated |
| Output | Schedule 3-ready capital gains figures with the transactions behind them | Match against the outputs you need to file |
| Audit trail | Every figure traces back to a source transaction | Check traceability |
| Pricing | Published, and scales with transaction volume | Check current plans at your real volume |
Adjusted Cost Base (ACB) averaging done right
Canada uses the Adjusted Cost Base: the average cost across all your units of a given coin, in Canadian dollars. You do not get to nominate which units you sold. When you dispose of part of a holding, the cost of what you sold is that average, and the pool carries on with the rest.
Across hundreds of transactions and several platforms, keeping that pool accurate in a spreadsheet is slow and error-prone, and the errors compound rather than cancel. It is also the single thing a CRA review would look at, because getting the ACB right, with a trail behind each disposition, is what makes both the gain and the loss defensible. CryptaTax maintains the pool automatically in CAD and keeps the working behind each figure, so you can see which acquisitions produced a given average rather than taking it on trust.
The 50% capital gains inclusion rate
The inclusion rate is 50%: half of your net capital gain is added to your taxable income and taxed at your marginal rate. There is no separate capital gains tax rate in Canada, and no holding-period discount, which makes the Canadian calculation structurally simpler than the Australian or UK one. What it does not make simpler is arriving at the gain, since that still depends on the ACB.
Only the net gain is included, so losses matter. Capital losses offset capital gains, and where they exceed them the excess can generally be carried to other years. That is precisely why the superficial loss rule below deserves attention: a loss that gets denied is not a rounding issue, it is a deduction you were counting on.
Superficial loss rule (30-day) handling
If you sell crypto at a loss and buy the same crypto back within 30 days, the superficial loss rule can deny the loss. It is not simply erased: the denied amount is added to the adjusted cost base of the reacquired units, so the benefit is deferred to whenever you eventually dispose of them rather than lost outright.
This is the mechanism that quietly undoes December tax-loss harvesting, and it is a rule about *your* holdings across all your accounts, not about one exchange in isolation. A tool that only sees one venue cannot apply it correctly. CryptaTax applies the rule automatically across your connected accounts and adjusts the cost base accordingly. Read the mechanics in the tax-loss harvesting guide.
Capital gains vs business income
The same activity can be a capital gain for one person and business income for another, and the difference is not marginal: one has half the profit included in your income, the other has all of it. Which side you fall on depends on the facts of how you operate, so it is a judgement worth confirming with an accountant rather than assuming.
When crypto is a capital gain
For most individuals investing rather than operating a business, disposals are capital gains. Half the net gain is included in taxable income at your marginal rate, and it is reported on Schedule 3 of the T1 return.
When crypto is business income
Business-like, high-frequency trading generally means the full profit is taxable as business income rather than half of it as a capital gain, and it is reported on a different form under different rules. Volume and intent both matter to the question, which is why it is a facts-and-circumstances judgement rather than a threshold you can look up.
What changes if you are mining
Mining run as a business produces business income, and it also changes what you can deduct: a business miner can typically deduct equipment, electricity and other costs, where someone mining as a hobby cannot. The same rig can therefore sit on either side of the line depending on how the activity is actually conducted.
What software can do here is keep the two streams distinct so the question stays answerable. CryptaTax classifies each event and reports the two separately rather than merging them into a single figure that hides the distinction. The Canadian crypto tax guide sets out where the line usually falls.
Schedule 3-ready reports
Schedule 3 is the part of the Canadian T1 return where capital gains and losses are reported, and it is where crypto dispositions land. CryptaTax produces Schedule 3-ready capital gains figures in Canadian dollars with the transactions visible behind each number. See crypto on Canada's Schedule 3 for how dispositions reach the form.
If your activity is business income instead, it is reported on T2125 rather than Schedule 3, under different rules. CryptaTax separates business-income events from capital dispositions so the figures are not mixed, and your accountant has what they need for that form. When you evaluate Koinly, check the outputs it provides today against the forms you actually file.
Pricing compared for Canadian filers
Check Koinly's current plans, transaction limits and add-ons on its own site; pricing moves faster than anything else in a comparison. CryptaTax's pricing is published and scales with transaction volume rather than penalising it.
Compare at *your* real volume rather than the entry tier. Once a year of DeFi and exchange activity is imported, the transaction count is usually well above what people estimate, and that is where the cost difference shows up.
Switching from Koinly before 30 April
The Canadian filing deadline is 30 April. If you or your spouse are self-employed, the filing deadline is 15 June, but any tax owing is still due 30 April. Preparing your Schedule 3 figures well before then gives you time to spot a missing acquisition rather than discovering one under deadline pressure.
- Export your history from Koinly, with any manual adjustments, so you have a record of how prior years were treated.
- Connect the same wallets and exchanges to CryptaTax and let it rebuild the ACB pool from source data.
- Compare the overlap year, looking especially at any loss followed by a rebuy inside 30 days, since that is where the two tools are most likely to diverge.
- Resolve any difference before you file. A gap is almost always a classification disagreement on a specific transaction, and finding which one is the point.
Because both tools read the same blockchain and exchange data, a clean migration should reproduce your history rather than rewrite it. Capturing everything as you go, especially the ACB pool for each coin, is far easier than rebuilding it later.
Related comparisons and Canadian guides
Still shortlisting? See the general Koinly alternative comparison for the jurisdiction-neutral view, the best crypto tax software roundup for the full list, or the Canadian crypto tax guide for the rules themselves. The same regional depth for the other two markets: Koinly alternative for Australia and Koinly alternative for the UK.
FAQ
The one that keeps your adjusted cost base right over time and applies the superficial loss rule across all your accounts rather than one exchange at a time. Those two mechanics decide a Canadian return. CryptaTax handles both automatically and shows the working behind each figure; compare it against Koinly on a year of your own history where you already know roughly what to expect.
Yes. CryptaTax maintains an averaged ACB pool per coin in Canadian dollars, updated on every acquisition, exactly as the CRA's identical-properties rule requires. Each disposition links back to the acquisitions that set the average, so the figure is reproducible rather than something you have to take on trust.
If you sell at a loss and reacquire the same crypto within 30 days, the loss can be denied. The denied amount is added to the adjusted cost base of the reacquired units, so the benefit is deferred rather than lost. Because it applies across your holdings rather than per exchange, a tool that only sees one venue cannot apply it correctly.
It depends on how you operate. Business-like, high-frequency trading or mining run as a business is generally business income, where the full profit is taxable and reported on T2125, rather than a capital gain where half is included and it goes on Schedule 3. The distinction turns on the facts, so confirm your position with an accountant. CryptaTax keeps the two streams separate so the question stays answerable.
Capital gains and losses from crypto dispositions go on Schedule 3 of the T1 personal return, and the taxable half flows into your income. If your activity is business income it is reported on T2125 instead. CryptaTax produces Schedule 3-ready capital gains figures with the transactions behind them and keeps business-income events separate.
30 April. If you or your spouse are self-employed the filing deadline is 15 June, but any tax owing is still due 30 April. Reconstructing a full transaction history is the slow part, so preparing your Schedule 3 figures well ahead is worth more than any tool choice.