What a journal is actually for
A trading journal has one job: to turn a pile of closed trades into answers you can act on. Which setups pay? Which hours cost you money? Is your average loss creeping up? Does the strategy have a positive expectancy at all, or has a good month been hiding a bad one?
Almost every journal on the market can answer those questions once your trades are in it. That is why comparing feature lists is less useful than it looks. The decisions that actually separate one product from another are structural, and they are the ones that are hardest to undo later: what the app runs on, who holds your data, how trades arrive, and what the subscription costs over years rather than months.
So this guide sets out five criteria first, then compares the main options against them. Every competitor fact below was checked on the provider’s own site or App Store listing on 28 September 2026. Where a provider does not say something, the table says “not stated” rather than guessing.
1. Native app or web app
A web app runs in a browser. You log in from any computer, the same journal appears everywhere, and there is nothing to install or update. Most of the well-known journals are built this way, and several add an iPhone app on top of the web version.
A native app is installed from the App Store and runs on the device itself. It can work offline, can sit in a floating window beside your charts, and does not depend on a website being up. The trade-off is that a native app on one device does not automatically know about the same app on another, unless the developer has built sync.
Neither is better in general. If you move between a work PC, a laptop and a phone, a web journal is simpler. If you trade from one Mac and want the journal on screen while you trade, a native app fits better.
2. Where your trade history lives
This is the question people skip and later wish they had asked. A web journal keeps your trades in the provider’s account system: you sign up, and your history lives with them. That is what makes it available everywhere, and it is also what makes it dependent on the provider’s security, pricing and continued existence.
An on-device journal keeps the history on your own machine. Nobody else holds a copy unless you make one, which is good for privacy and bad if you never back it up.
Two practical checks, whichever you choose:
- Can you export everything? A journal you cannot leave is a subscription you cannot cancel without losing your history.
- Does it need a broker login? Automatic broker sync is convenient, but it means giving a third party a connection to your brokerage account. Read what access it asks for.
3. How trades get in
There are three routes, and most products offer more than one:
- Automatic sync. The journal connects to your broker or platform and pulls trades in as they close. Least effort, and the route where the large web journals are strongest — several list hundreds of supported brokers.
- File import. You export a CSV from your broker and load it. A few seconds of effort per session, no broker credentials shared.
- Manual entry. Slowest, but works for any broker and forces you to look at every trade, which some traders find is half the value.
Before you pay for anything, check that your specific broker is on the supported list for the route you want. “500+ brokers” is irrelevant if yours is not one of them.
4. How deep the analytics go
Every journal in this guide reports the basics: profit and loss, win rate, a calendar, an equity curve. The differences are in the extras, and they are worth paying for only if you will use them:
- Excursion analysis (MFE/MAE) — how far a trade went for and against you before it closed. Useful for tuning stops and targets.
- Grouped breakdowns by setup, time of day, weekday or hold time.
- Trade replay and backtesting — stepping through past sessions or testing a rule on historical data. This is where the higher-priced tiers of several web journals concentrate.
- AI summaries and chat over your own trade history, now offered by several providers.
- Risk tools — position sizing, drawdown simulation, rule enforcement — which some journals include and most do not.
A useful discipline: write down the three questions you want your journal to answer before you look at feature lists, and judge each product on those.
5. What it costs over a year
Journal prices are usually shown per month, often as a monthly equivalent of an annual plan, and often with an introductory discount. Convert everything to what you would pay over twelve months at the price that applies after any offer ends. Free plans exist, but tend to cap imports, asset classes or accounts — check whether the cap bites for the way you trade.
Also note the currency. Some providers show local-currency prices to visitors from other countries, so the figure you see may not be the figure a reader elsewhere sees.
How the main options compare
Facts below are as of September 2026, taken from each provider’s own pricing page, home page or App Store listing on 28 September 2026. Prices are shown in the currency the page displayed; TradesViz showed Australian dollars to an Australian visitor, and the others showed “$” (Edgewonk states USD). Where a figure is an annual plan expressed per month, the table says so.
| App | Runs on | Where the journal lives | Getting trades in | Entry price (as of Sept 2026) | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tradervue | Web (mobile app not stated) | Provider’s web service; sign-up required | Broker import; broker sync listed on paid plans | Silver $29.95/mo; Gold $49.95/mo | Free plan; trials on paid plans |
| TradesViz | Web; iPhone and iPad app | Provider’s web service; app shares data with the web version | File import, manual, auto-sync on paid plans (70+ auto-sync connections, 250+ brokers and platforms listed) | Pro A$28.99/mo monthly or A$21.99/mo billed annually | Basic plan, stocks only, 3,000 executions/month |
| TraderSync | Web; iPhone and iPad app | Provider’s service; the app states an account is required | Import and autosync; 700+ brokers and platforms listed | Pro $29.95/mo monthly; promotional annual price of $179.64/yr shown | 7-day free trial |
| Edgewonk | Web, in a browser on phone, tablet or computer | Web-based with cloud access | Automatic import; 200+ brokers listed | US$197 for a 1-year plan (VAT may apply) | No trial stated; 14-day money-back guarantee |
| TradeZella | Web (mobile app not stated) | Provider’s web service; log-in required | Auto-sync, upload or manual; 500+ broker and prop-firm integrations listed | Essential $35/mo monthly or $315/yr | Not stated |
| RiskDesk | Native Mac, iPhone/iPad and Android apps | On your device; no account | Broker CSV export or manual entry | Free with limited features; Pro US$5.99/mo or US$59.99/yr | Free download |
Where the web journals are stronger. Be clear-eyed about this, because it is most of the market. The large web journals have far wider automatic broker sync than an on-device app, and if you want trades to appear without exporting a file, that alone may decide it. They give you the same journal on any computer with a browser. Several offer trade replay, market replay or backtesting, AI assistants over your history, and mentor or sharing features; TradesViz and Tradervue also have free plans, and TradesViz and TraderSync have iPhone apps alongside the web version.
Where RiskDesk is different. RiskDesk, which ProDesk makes, is a native app for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android. According to its product page, your journal, accounts and settings stay on the device and there is no account to create; trades come in from your broker’s CSV export or by hand. Its analytics include an equity curve, win rate, profit factor, expectancy, Sharpe and Sortino ratios, maximum drawdown and a long-versus-short split, and an Edge Optimiser groups closed trades by setup, market state, hold time, weekday and hour. It also does position sizing and Monte Carlo drawdown work, which journals usually leave to separate tools.
Its limits, from the same page: data does not sync automatically between devices yet (you move it with a JSON backup), the Mac and iPhone/iPad apps are separate App Store purchases, and it does not pull trades from your broker automatically. Its optional broker connections (cTrader, MetaTrader 5, TradingView webhooks) are for placing sized orders, and they are among the few features that use the cloud.
Worked example: the number to check first
Twenty trades, one question
Whatever journal you choose, the first figure to look at is expectancy: what an average trade earns, in units of the amount you risked (R). Suppose your last 20 trades were 8 winners averaging +2.0R and 12 losers averaging −1.0R.
Expectancy = (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss)
Win rate = 8 ÷ 20 = 40%. Loss rate = 60%.
(0.40 × 2.0) − (0.60 × 1.0) = 0.80 − 0.60 = +0.20R
Over the 20 trades that is 8 × 2.0 = +16R from winners and 12 × 1.0 = −12R from losers, a net of +4R, which is 20 × 0.20R. With 1% of the account risked per trade, that is roughly +4% before costs.
Now the useful part. If the losers had averaged −1.4R instead — stops moved, or exits hesitated — expectancy becomes (0.40 × 2.0) − (0.60 × 1.4) = 0.80 − 0.84 = −0.04R. The win rate did not change at all. A journal earns its keep by showing you that shift early, while it is 0.4R on the average loss and not a drawdown.
Twenty trades is a small sample, so treat any figure from it as a direction, not a verdict. Risk of ruin covers how much variation to expect.
Putting it together
Answer the five questions in order and most of the market drops out on its own:
- Do you need the journal on several computers? If yes, a web journal is the straightforward choice. If you trade from one Mac or one phone, a native app is an option.
- Are you comfortable with a provider holding your trade history? If not, look for on-device storage and a full export.
- Is automatic broker sync essential? If yes, check your broker is on the list for the specific product and plan. If a CSV export after each session is fine, your options widen.
- Which three questions must the analytics answer? Pay for replay, backtesting or AI only if they are on that list.
- What is the cost over twelve months, after any introductory offer, in your currency?
Then use the free plan or trial of your shortlist with a month of real trades. The right journal is the one you will still be filling in six months from now, and only a month of actual use tells you that.
Two cautions. Prices and plans in this market change often, and several providers were running promotions when this was checked, so confirm the current terms before you commit. And no journal improves results by itself: it shows you what your trades are doing, and what you change is up to you. Position sizing explained covers the half of the process that happens before the trade.