In 2026, Stonk Journal is the best free trading journal for most traders who want unlimited trade logging, performance statistics, calendars, risk rules, and multi-account tracking without a monthly subscription. Its free plan supports unlimited trades, multiple market types, trade setups, statistics, calendar views, and risk-management features.
Best Free Trading Journals at a Glance
| Trading Journal | Best For | Free Plan | Main Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stonk Journal | Unlimited manual journaling | Unlimited trades, multiple markets, statistics, calendar, risk rules, and multi-account tracking | Confirm whether your broker import method is supported |
| TradesViz | Automated imports and analytics | 3,000 executions per month, 80+ charts, broker imports, unlimited tags and notes | Free plan is limited to stocks |
| Trademetria | Stocks, options, forex, futures, and crypto | 30 orders per month, one account, and three open positions | Low monthly order limit |
| Tradervue | Low-volume stock and ETF traders | 30 logical trades per month | The limit counts completed trades, not individual executions |
| TradeTally | Open-source and self-hosted journaling | Free cloud option and open-source self-hosting with Docker | Self-hosting requires technical setup |
1. Stonk Journal: Best Overall Free Trading Journal
Stonk Journal is the strongest choice if you want a free trading journal without a low monthly trade limit.
Its free plan includes:
- Unlimited trades
- Support for multiple market types
- Performance statistics
- Calendar-based trade review
- Risk-management rules
- Multiple-account workflows
- Trade setups
- Shareable trade links
- Notes and journal analysis
The platform suits traders who enter trades manually and want to review patterns such as win rate, profit factor, average win, average loss, holding time, time-of-day performance, and rule compliance.
Choose Stonk Journal if: you want a broad free feature set and do not want a 30-trade or 30-order monthly cap.
2. TradesViz: Best Free Journal for Imports and Analytics
TradesViz is a better fit for traders who want to upload or sync broker history instead of entering every trade manually.
The free plan includes:
- 3,000 executions per month
- Automatic broker synchronization
- Imports from more than 250 broker and platform formats
- More than 80 performance charts
- Unlimited tags and notes
- A daily profit and loss calendar
- One trading account
- Stock trading support
TradesViz counts individual broker fills as executions. If you scale into or out of positions, several fills can count toward the monthly limit.
The main limitation is market coverage. The free TradesViz plan is designed for stocks. Traders who mainly trade futures, forex, options, or other asset classes may need a paid plan.
Choose TradesViz if: you trade stocks and want automated imports, charts, and statistical analysis.
3. Trademetria: Best Free Multi-Asset Journal for Light Trading
Trademetria supports several markets, including:
- Equities
- Options
- Futures
- Forex
- Cryptocurrencies
- CFDs
Its free plan includes one account, up to three open positions, and imports of up to 30 orders per month. It also supports daily and individual trade journaling, historical performance, key metrics, fee tracking, a trade calendar, strategy tracking, and image uploads.
The 30-order limit makes Trademetria a better choice for swing traders, occasional traders, and beginners than for active day traders. Its paid Basic plan raises the import allowance to 500 orders per month, but an upgrade may not be necessary if your activity stays below the free limit.
Choose Trademetria if: you trade several asset classes and place fewer than 30 orders each month.
4. Tradervue: Useful for Low-Volume Traders
Tradervue's free plan allows 30 imported trades per calendar month. Tradervue defines a trade as a logical completed trade rather than an individual execution, so multiple fills can be grouped into one trade.
That makes Tradervue suitable for:
- Swing traders
- Part-time traders
- Traders reviewing a small sample of historical trades
- Beginners who want a straightforward trade-review process
Tradervue lists its paid Silver plan at $29.95 per month and Gold at $49.95 per month. The paid plans add unlimited imports and other reporting features.
The free plan is separate from the paid-plan trial. New users who select a paid plan can be charged after the seven-day trial unless they switch to the free plan before the trial ends.
Choose Tradervue if: you prefer its trade-review workflow and make fewer than 30 logical trades per month.
5. TradeTally: Best Open-Source Trading Journal
TradeTally suits traders who care about data ownership, open-source software, or self-hosting.
The platform provides:
- Trade logging
- Broker-history imports
- Setup tags
- Notes and chart images
- Realized and unrealized profit and loss tracking
- Performance analysis by symbol, strategy, and time period
- Cloud access
- Docker-based self-hosting
TradeTally states that its free tier includes unlimited trade storage. Users can also self-host the application if they want more control over the infrastructure and data environment.
Self-hosting requires more work than signing up for a conventional web app. You may need to configure Docker, maintain updates, manage backups, and secure the server.
Choose TradeTally if: privacy, customization, and self-hosting matter more to you than convenience.
What Should a Free Trading Journal Record?
A useful trading journal should record more than entry price, exit price, and profit or loss. Track the information that lets you compare good trades with bad ones.
Recommended fields include:
- Date and time
- Symbol or market
- Long or short direction
- Entry price
- Exit price
- Position size
- Stop-loss and target
- Planned risk in dollars or percentage
- Trade setup
- Market condition
- Entry and exit reasons
- Commissions and fees
- Profit or loss
- Risk-to-reward result
- Chart screenshots
- Emotional state
- Rule violations
- What you would repeat or change
The fields that usually provide the most value are setup, planned risk, rule compliance, and screenshots. They help distinguish a profitable process from a lucky result.
Free Trading Journal App or Spreadsheet?
A free trading journal app is useful when you want automatic calculations, dashboards, trade tagging, calendar views, broker imports, and account-level reporting.
Use an app when you need to filter results by:
- Setup
- Market
- Time of day
- Account
- Strategy
- Rule compliance
Google Sheets or Excel may be the better choice when you want full control over the columns and formulas. A spreadsheet also provides offline access, local data storage, and no account registration.
For a basic spreadsheet journal, create columns for date, symbol, direction, entry, exit, size, stop, target, gross P&L, fees, net P&L, setup, mistake, and notes. The trade-off is that you must build and maintain the formulas yourself.
Which Free Trading Journal Should You Choose?
Choose based on your trading volume, markets, and preferred workflow:
- Stonk Journal: Best for unlimited manual trade logging and the broadest free feature set.
- TradesViz: Best for stock traders who want broker imports and detailed analytics.
- Trademetria: Best for traders who use several asset classes and place fewer than 30 orders per month.
- Tradervue: Best for low-volume traders who prefer logical trade grouping and a focused review process.
- TradeTally: Best for traders who want open-source software or self-hosting.
- Google Sheets or Excel: Best when you want a fully custom journal without dedicated software.
A trading journal will not make a strategy profitable by itself. It can show whether your results come from a repeatable process or inconsistent execution.