Best Free Trading Journal in 2026: 5 That Are Actually Free

Search for a free trading journal and most of the results are not free. They are 7-day trials that need a card, 14-day money-back windows that need the money first, or free tiers that quietly exclude the market you actually trade.

This is the honest list. Five journals with a genuinely permanent free plan in July 2026, what each one caps, and which fits which trader. Every price and limit here was checked against the vendor's own pricing page on 29 July 2026.

"Free" Comes in Three Shapes

Before the list, the distinction that decides everything:

1. Permanently free, capped by volume. You can stay on it forever, but you can only log so many trades a month. TradingSFX, Tradervue, TradesViz and Trademetria all work this way.

2. Permanently free, capped by market. No time limit and a generous trade count, but your asset class is not included. This is the one that catches people out, because the cap is invisible until you try to import.

3. Not free at all. A refund window or a card-gated trial marketed as free. TradeZella, TraderSync, Edgewonk and Journalytix are here.

The Five That Are Actually Free

Tradervue — the most generous count, if you trade US equities

Tradervue's free tier is permanent, not a countdown. It allows 30 grouped trades a month, and grouped is doing real work in that sentence: every execution belonging to one position counts as a single trade. Scaling in with four fills and out with two is one trade against the cap, not six. For a swing trader taking a few positions a week, 30 is not a limit you will feel.

The wall is the asset list. The free tier is stocks and ETFs only. Futures, forex and options are paid features. If you trade EUR/USD, this is not a smaller Tradervue for you, it is not available to you.

Best for: US equity swing traders who want a permanent free journal with serious reporting depth. Full tiers in our Tradervue pricing breakdown.

TradesViz — the highest ceiling for volume

The free Basic plan allows 3,000 executions a month on one trading account, which is by far the most volume any free tier here will absorb. Charting and analytics are unusually deep for a free product.

Two catches. It is stocks only on Basic, and auto-sync is not included, so imports are manual or by file. High-volume day traders get the count they need and then hit the market restriction.

Best for: high-frequency US stock traders who want free analytics depth and do not mind importing by hand. More options in TradesViz alternatives.

Trademetria — free with most features on

Trademetria's free plan allows 30 orders a month on one account, plus 3 real-time quotes a month. What stands out is how little is fenced off: the journal, key metrics, day trade report, calendar, analytics and deposit tracking are all available without paying.

Paid tiers move to $19.95 a month for Basic (100 trades a month) and $29.95 for Pro (unlimited, up to 50 accounts).

Best for: traders who want the widest feature set on a free tier and trade a low enough volume to live inside 30 orders.

Myfxbook — unlimited, but it is analytics, not a journal

Myfxbook is free, unlimited, and auto-syncs live from MT4 and MT5. For a forex trader who wants win rate, drawdown and profit factor computed automatically with no manual entry, nothing else on this page competes.

Understand what it is, though. Myfxbook analyses account performance. It does not journal the decision: why you took the trade, what conditions were present, what you were feeling, what the chart looked like. It will tell you that your Tuesdays are red. It will not tell you that your Tuesdays are red because you trade the London open without your setup confirmation.

Best for: forex traders on MetaTrader who want automatic performance stats and are not trying to audit their own reasoning.

TradingSFX — the smallest count, the widest market coverage

Full disclosure, this is our product, so read the number rather than the adjective. The free Basic plan is 10 trades a month, permanently, no card. That is the lowest trade cap on this page.

What it buys at that count: every market the platform supports rather than a stocks-only slice, plus the position size calculator, equity curve, and CSV and JSON export so your data is never hostage. Ten trades a month is a real constraint for a day trader and irrelevant for a swing trader, and it is enough sample to answer the only question a free plan needs to answer, which is whether journaling changes how you trade.

Best for: forex, indices, gold and crypto traders who want an actual journal on a free plan, since Tradervue and TradesViz exclude those markets and Myfxbook does not journal reasoning.

The Ones That Are Not Free

Worth knowing so you stop searching for a free tier that does not exist:

• TradeZella — no free plan, no trial. Essential $35/month ($26/month billed annually), Pro $59, Ultra $99. A 14-day money-back request is the only exit. Detail: is TradeZella free?
• TraderSync — no free plan. A 7-day trial that requires a card and restricts CSV export while it runs, which matters if the plan was to import your history, read the reports and leave with your data. Entry $29.95/month.
• Edgewonk — no free plan and no trial. $197 per term with a 14-day money-back guarantee, so the money leaves your account first. VAT is added at checkout for EU and UK buyers.
• Journalytix — no free plan, single tier at $47/month.

And the Actually Free Option Nobody Lists

A spreadsheet. It costs nothing, it works offline, and for your first fifty trades it is genuinely fine.

It stops being fine in predictable ways: screenshots have nowhere to live, filtering performance by two setup conditions at once turns into a pivot-table project, every report is manual chart work, and a single formula error silently corrupts months of statistics without ever throwing a warning. We wrote up where the wall usually is in trading journal template vs Excel.

Which One, By Market

The question that settles it is not which journal is best. It is which one includes your market on the free tier.

• US stocks, moderate volume → Tradervue free. Thirty grouped trades is a lot when scaling counts as one.
• US stocks, high volume → TradesViz free, for the 3,000 executions.
• Forex on MT4/MT5, want it automatic → Myfxbook, unlimited and synced.
• Forex, indices, gold or crypto, want a real journal → TradingSFX free.
• Multi-asset with low volume, want maximum features free → Trademetria free.
• Fewer than 50 trades total → a spreadsheet, honestly.

What No Free Plan Includes

Consistent across every option here, so budget for it if you need it:

• Broker auto-import is a paid feature everywhere except Myfxbook.
• Prop firm rule tracking does not exist on any free tier, and on most paid tiers either. If you are running a funded challenge, that is the thing to check before anything else. What to track in a prop firm journal covers what the rules actually require.
• AI review of your trades is paid across the board.
• Chart replay backtesting is paid where it exists at all.

Bottom Line

If you trade US equities, Tradervue's free plan is the most generous serious journal on the market and you should start there. If you trade forex on MetaTrader and want zero manual work, Myfxbook is free and unlimited.

If you trade forex, indices, gold or crypto and want a journal that records why you took the trade rather than just what it did, the free tiers that exclude your market are not options at all, which narrows the list considerably. TradingSFX Basic is free forever at 10 trades a month across every market it supports, no card.

Whichever you pick, pick one this week. The gap between traders who journal and traders who intend to is wider than the gap between any two products on this page.

Comparing paid tiers instead? See the best trading journals in 2026 roundup.

Published July 29, 2026 · Free-tier limits and pricing verified 29 July 2026 against each vendor's own pricing and help pages: Tradervue trade import quota, TradesViz pricing, Trademetria pricing, TradeZella help centre pricing. Vendors change limits without notice, so confirm before committing.