Koinly Expert Review vs Crypto Tax Made Easy: Which Do You Need?

Short answer: Koinly Expert Review cleans up your Koinly account. It checks the data you imported, fixes negative balances and missing purchase history, and tidies your labels. Crypto Tax Made Easy cleans up your Koinly account too, and then goes further: we investigate what actually happened on-chain, reconcile the balances a plain import can’t see, and make sure your reports are accurate and you’re not leaving tax savings on the table. Everything Expert Review does, our review already includes. The difference is how deep it goes, and how little we need from you to get there. (There’s a real 3-year pricing example below, too.)

Disclosure: Crypto Tax Made Easy is a recommended partner of Koinly, Awaken, and Summ. We use Koinly in client work and recommend it when it fits. This article compares service models, not whether Koinly is good software. (It’s good software.)

Is Koinly Expert Review worth it?

Yes, if your problem lives where Expert Review works.

Here’s a simple way to see it. Every crypto tax job has three layers:

1. Clean data in. Your tax reports are only as accurate as the data you feed your tax software. Many exchange APIs have incomplete data, csv’s can be formatted incorrectly, onchain transactions can sync improperly, tokens can be imported with the wrong ticker. This causes negative balances, missing purchase history, or even excess balances which can all cause you to pay more tax than you owe or have reports that won’t hold up to audit.

2. Correct Categorization. Different categories in Koinly have different tax treatments. Ensuring that the transaction’s categorization matches what actually happened onchain is critical to accurate reports. Accidentally labeling a transfer as a withdrawal can create a taxable event and increase tax owed by resetting your holding period. Correctly categorizing airdrops is critical if you live in Australia where initial allocation airdrops aren’t taxed. This makes a huge difference.

3. Final Audit. This answers two questions: Are the final numbers correct and defensible? Has every possible strategy to legally save on tax been explored?

Expert Review is built for Layer 1, and it’s good at it. A Koinly team member goes through the data you imported and checks wallet completeness, hunts for missing data, and fixes the usual headaches like negative balances, missing purchase history, and mislabeled rewards, airdrops, ICOs, staking, and liquidity provision.

That’s genuinely useful, because most crypto tax problems start with bad data. Miss a wallet, import an exchange CSV the wrong way, or let a transfer show up as a sale, and the final report can be wildly off.

But Koinly draws an honest boundary on its own help page. Expert Review is not an accounting audit, and it doesn’t give tax advice. Koinly says the team’s expertise is data import. Hit a gray-area transaction, or a balance that doesn’t add up, and Koinly may ask for your input or point you to a tax advisor.

So the real question isn’t “is Koinly Expert Review any good?”

It’s this: does your problem stop at Layer 1, or does it run into Layers 2 and 3?

Koinly Expert Review vs CTME at a glance

Everything Koinly’s team checks in Layer 1, our review checks too. Then we keep going into Layers 2 and 3, the parts a software add-on was never built to reach. So the table below isn’t “this one or that one.” It’s “how far do you need to go?”

So when does Koinly Expert Review actually win? Honestly, one main case. You’ve got a single tax year, you’re confident doing your own return, and your account is heavy but self-contained, think 4,000+ transactions that are a pain to import but reasonably clean once they’re in. There, Koinly’s per-year review can come in under our reconciliation quote, and if you’re happy owning the final tax call, that’s a fair reason to pick it. For pretty much everything else (multi-year work especially), both the math and the expertise lean toward a done-for-you reconciliation. We’ll show you the math in a second.

What Koinly Expert Review actually covers

Koinly splits Expert Review into two jobs.

The first is data review. The reviewer checks whether your wallets are complete, hunts for missing data, and fixes the usual Koinly headaches like negative balances and missing purchase history.

The second is transaction cleanup. That covers tags for rewards, airdrops, ICOs, staking, staking rewards, and liquidity provision.

One thing worth understanding about that second job: the labels lean on Koinly’s automations and your own records. The Koinly algorithm applies labels that happen without Expert Review anyway. Then, the reviewer applies categories that match what you tell them and what’s already in the account. If your records are complete, that works well. If a staking reward, an airdrop, or a DeFi position never made it into your records, the label inherits that gap, because Expert Review reads your Koinly data, not the onchain transaction underneath it.

For a software-native service, that scope makes sense. If your report is wrong because the setup is wrong, a reviewer who knows Koinly’s import logic inside out is exactly who you want.

What CTME does differently

Start with the honest part: everything Koinly’s Expert Review does, our review does too. We fix the negative balances, the missing purchase history, the mislabeled rewards. That’s the baseline. The difference is what happens next.

We read the chain. When a DeFi wallet holds a balance that doesn’t match what actually happened on-chain, when a bridge hop lands as a phantom sale, when an LP exit vanishes or a dead exchange took your cost basis to the grave, importing the data cleanly doesn’t fix it. Someone has to trace the on-chain story and rebuild it. That’s Layer 2, and it’s most of what we do.

Here’s the part that surprises people: the deeper review is also the one that asks less of you. Expert Review’s cleanup leans on your records and your memory, so you stay in the loop confirming what’s what. Our reconciliation pulls the answers from the blockchain instead. In practice, the only question we usually come back with is “is this wallet yours?” And often we can answer even that ourselves, by following the on-chain trail to see whether a wallet you interacted with is one you forgot to add to Koinly. That single catch can swing a report by five or six figures. (Yes, we’ve seen it.)

We use Koinly, Awaken, and Summ too (they’re all near the top of our best crypto tax software roundup, and Koinly is the one we reach for most). But the software isn’t the finish line. The job is to reconcile the actual tax position: reviewing source data, tracking down missing wallets, repairing cost basis breaks, filtering out spam and non-taxable transfers, sanity-checking DeFi labels, and building crypto tax reports your accountant can actually work from.

So this isn’t Koinly’s experts versus some outside firm. It’s Koinly experts who stop at the import versus Koinly experts who also read the chain and hold tax licenses. Same software mastery. We just don’t stop where the import ends.

Our review team includes licensed tax professionals. For US clients, CPA partner review is available for advisory and filing. For Australian clients, we’ve got CA and registered tax agent support for filing and advisory. That doesn’t mean every question turns into a formal tax opinion. It means when a client needs a higher level of review, there’s a clear path to it. That’s Layer 3.

This matters most for whales and high-PnL traders. If you realized serious gains, the question stops being “is my import clean?” and becomes “what could I legally have done to pay less?” That’s where our US crypto accountant and Australian crypto accountant partners earn their fee, finding the strategy to get your bill down to the lowest number the rules allow. A software review, by design, will never do that.

CTME earns its keep when the Koinly output looks clean but is wrong in substance. We’ve had clients whose software reports showed enormous “gains” that quietly resolved into net losses once the missing context was added back. That’s not a knock on Koinly. It’s what happens when thousands of DeFi, LP, staking, and NFT transactions get imported without a human reading the story behind them.

“Koinly had reported MILLIONS in capital gains profit (although this was untrue). After Matt’s help, my capital gains was actually into the NEGATIVE. If you’d rather pay your money to the government, this wouldn’t be the service for you.”
–KayCee, verified review

Worth knowing: 1,012+ of the clients we’ve worked with came to us already using Koinly. So this isn’t theory. It’s most of what we do.

Pricing: a 3-year catch-up, side by side

This is the part the “Koinly starts at $49” headline hides. Expert Review isn’t the software plan. It’s an add-on that sits on top of a paid Koinly plan, and both are priced per tax year. So the real cost is two line items, every year, before anyone gives you actual tax advice.

For a single clean year, that can still be a great deal. The picture flips the moment you’re catching up on back years, which is exactly when most people come looking for help.

Here’s a realistic 3-year catch-up, side by side.

The Koinly Expert Review path:

• Koinly plan, per year: around $199 at the trader tier (current pricing here), so roughly $600 across three years.
• Expert Review add-on, per year: roughly $1,500 to $2,500 each, so $4,500 to $7,500 across three years. (Koinly’s Expert Review pricing is dynamic and climbs in busy season.)
• Running total: roughly $5,100 to $8,100.
• And you still own the final tax number, because Koinly says Expert Review isn’t tax advice or an accounting audit.

The CTME path:

• One done-for-you engagement covering all three years, quoted once. Hourly review starts at $1,500 total (not per year), covering the four highest tax-impact hours with a senior accountant who has 3+ years of crypto accounting experience. More time runs $250 per hour, and big reconciliations can be priced per transaction instead.
• Licensed tax professionals in the review path, with CPA or CA partner support if you want filing or tax strategy on top.

Same three years. One path bills you per year, twice over, and hands back a to-do list you’re still responsible for. The other prices the whole job once and hands back filing-ready crypto tax reports. For a lot of multi-year catch-ups, the done-for-you route comes in under the stack-it-up-per-year route, and the tax judgment is built in rather than left on your shoulders. (Both sides move with complexity, so treat these as ballparks, not quotes.)

One nuance on our per-transaction pricing, since it trips people up. Full reconciliations run as high as $0.50 per transaction on high-complexity accounts and as low as $0.10 per transaction on high-volume repetitive ones, think validators, miners, streamed rewards, TWAPs, and limit-order spam.

The point people miss: transaction count isn’t complexity.

A 60,000-transaction validator wallet can be easier to reconcile than a 2,500-transaction DeFi account with blown-up LP exits, missing basis, bridges, and dead exchange gaps. So we quote the reconciliation problem in front of us, not a flat rate that pretends every transaction weighs the same. Want to see how that stacks up against doing it all yourself in software? We break it down in crypto tax software vs hiring an accountant.

When Koinly Expert Review is probably enough

Expert Review may be all you need if:

• You’re set on using Koinly for the final report.
• You’ve got one tax year to file.
• Your issues are Koinly warnings, negative balances, missing purchase history, or missing labels.
• You mostly traded on centralized exchanges with clean data.
• You already have a CPA or tax advisor and just need the Koinly file tidied before you hand it over.
• You’re comfortable making the final call on gray-area treatment.

There’s also the pricing edge case worth naming: a single heavy year, say 4,000+ transactions that are complex to import but reasonably clean once they’re in, where you’re confident filing yourself. On that kind of account, our reconciliation quote can run higher than Koinly’s per-year review, so Expert Review may be the cheaper option. Fair enough. Some folks take that deal, file, and then bring the same account to us for an hourly gut-check anyway (more on that next).

In that lane, though, Koinly’s own team is the right team to clean the account.

When CTME is the better fit

CTME is usually the better call if:

• You want the full project done for you, not just reviewed inside software.
• You’ve got multiple years to catch up.
• Your portfolio value, realized gains, or tax exposure is high.
• You touched DeFi, bridges, staking, restaking, NFTs, LPs, perps, or on-chain derivatives.
• You’ve got old exchange gaps, missing cost basis, dead platforms, OTC trades, or self-custody transfers.
• Koinly spit out a number that looks too high, too low, or impossible to explain.
• You want licensed tax professionals in the review path.
• You need a package your CPA, CA, tax agent, or filing partner can rely on.

Simplest test there is: if you can point at a specific Koinly warning, Expert Review probably fixes it. If your real worry is “I don’t trust this tax number,” get a broader reconciliation quote.

Can you use both?

Sometimes that’s the smart move.

Already paid for Expert Review? Don’t toss that work. CTME can review the cleaned Koinly file, zero in on the highest tax-impact areas, and tell you straight whether it looks filing-ready or whether it needs deeper work.

This happens more than you’d think. Some of our clients came to us after an Expert Review, on our hourly rate, just to double-check the number before filing. And we’ve repeatedly found gaps the import pass couldn’t cover: a bridge that never got traced, an LP position that resolved wrong, cost basis that walked out the door with a dead exchange. Not because anyone did a bad job on the import. Because on-chain investigation is a different job from data import, and it’s the one we do all day.

That’s a natural fit for our hourly review. The first four hours go where they earn the most: your biggest gains, missing basis items, DeFi positions, suspicious disposals, and any transaction group quietly setting you up to overpay.

Find nothing major? Great, you file with more confidence. Find a problem? Now you know exactly where to look before the deadline.

What about a regular accountant?

You still need one. In the US, a CPA files and signs the return. In Australia, a tax agent handles lodgement. In the UK, an accountant may prepare the Self Assessment.

But here’s the thing most people learn the hard way: plenty of regular accountants won’t rebuild a crypto transaction history themselves. They ask for a Form 8949, a gains report, an income summary, a software export. Hand them a wrong export and they’ll file wrong numbers without ever knowing why.

CTME sits between the software and the filing pro. We build the crypto-native reconciliation so your accountant isn’t guessing.

Our recommendation

Use Koinly Expert Review when your problem stops at Layer 1: a relatively simple year where you need Koinly’s team to clean up import issues and you’re happy filing it yourself.

Use CTME when the problem runs deeper: multi-year catch-up, DeFi and on-chain complexity, high tax exposure, or you just don’t trust the number and want it reconciled and reviewed rather than tidied. Same Koinly account, cleaned up and then some, with accurate reports and no tax savings left behind.

For a high-value portfolio, that’s not a small distinction. If the final number drives a big tax bill, a filing deadline, audit risk, or just your ability to sleep before you send the report to your accountant, get a CTME quote before you assume a software add-on has you covered.

Across 1,410+ investors served and 6.7M+ transactions reconciled, the pattern is boringly consistent: the data was in software, but the answer still needed a human. (Don’t take our word for it. Read the Crypto Tax Made Easy reviews, or our client results.) Past results are historical and don’t guarantee future outcomes, but that’s the work.

FAQs

Is Koinly Expert Review the same as hiring a crypto tax accountant?

No. Expert Review checks the data imported into Koinly. Koinly says it’s not an accounting audit and doesn’t provide tax advice. CTME is a done-for-you reconciliation service with licensed tax professionals on the review team and partner review available for filing or advisory when you need it.

Is CTME cheaper than Koinly Expert Review?

Often, yes, especially for multi-year catch-ups. A 3-year catch-up through Koinly can run roughly $5,000 to $8,000 once you add a paid plan and an Expert Review to every single year, and you still own the final tax call. CTME quotes the whole job once: hourly review starts at $1,500 total for new and multi-year clients, with additional hours at $250/hour. The right comparison depends on your tax years, complexity, and transaction count, but the per-year stacking is what tips it for most people catching up.

Can CTME work from my Koinly account?

Yes. We can work from Koinly files, source data, exchange exports, wallet histories, and other crypto tax software outputs. Koinly is one of the tools we use most.

Should I buy Koinly Expert Review before hiring CTME?

Not necessarily. If your issue is clearly Koinly import cleanup, Expert Review may handle it. If it’s DeFi complexity, a multi-year catch-up, high tax exposure, or genuine doubt about the treatment, it’s often more efficient to get a CTME quote first.

Can CTME review my Koinly Expert Review result?

Yes. We can run an hourly review after Expert Review, focusing on the highest tax-impact issues and flagging anything that may need deeper reconciliation.

Keep reading

• The “Done For You” crypto tax report have a specialist reconcile and file it for you.

About the author

Matt Walrath

Founder of Crypto Tax Made Easy. Matt has worked in crypto tax since 2017, leading reconciliation work across DeFi, cost basis cleanup, exchange tax forms, and tax software reviews. CTME has reconciled 6.7M+ transactions for 1,410+ investors, and Matt has appeared with Binance and spoken at the Australia Crypto Convention.

Disclaimer: The information provided by Crypto Tax Made Easy is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional, financial, accounting, or tax advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.