Free vs paid
Free trading journal options, compared honestly
There are three ways to keep a trading journal without paying: a spreadsheet, a free plan of a journal app, or a notebook. Each works; they differ in how much of the work you do yourself.
A spreadsheet
Free and unlimited, and fully under your control. The cost is time: every trade is typed in by hand and every metric needs a formula. It works well for a few trades a week.
- Best for: low-frequency traders who like building their own sheets
- Our free Google Sheets and Excel template has the formulas set up for you
A journal app's free plan
SuperTrader's Free plan gives you a proper journal with an analytics dashboard for up to 30 entries in total, with no card and no time limit. It's the quickest way to see what a journal shows you before deciding whether to pay.
- Best for: building the journaling habit and testing whether reviews change your results
- Upgrade path: Pro adds unlimited trades, broker sync and AI insights
When paying is worth it
Once you trade more than a handful of times a week, manual entry is the first thing that gets skipped, and a journal you skip shows you nothing. Automatic imports and AI pattern detection are what most traders upgrade for.
Want the full picture?
See everything the SuperTrader journal does, or how it compares with other trading journals.