Launching the app and loading the worked example
Checked against app build 2026-08-26-01-41 on 2026-08-26.
How do I open gains.tax?
Open gains.tax/app. It loads in a second or two and lands on the dashboard. Nothing has been sent anywhere, the app is now running on your machine.
Should I load the worked example first?
Yes, before importing anything of your own.
The built-in sample is five tax years of deliberately messy data, buys, sells, swaps, transfers, staking rewards, and the awkward cases that make crypto tax hard. It exists so you can see how the app treats real mess before trusting it with yours. Everything the sample shows, expanding a disposal to read its matching rule, watching the confidence score, downloading a report, works exactly the same on your own data.
What is in the sidebar?
The left sidebar is the whole map, eight destinations and nothing hidden behind them.
Dashboard for the overview, Transactions for every row you hold, Wallets for balances by location, Import for bringing data in, Reconcile for the items that need your eyes, Planner for the forward-looking tools, Reports for the downloads, and Settings for the licence, sharing, and preferences. The transaction count sits beside Transactions in the sidebar, the same number the free tier is measured by. The Planner’s questions have standalone versions too, sell now or after April and loss harvesting before April.
Dark mode is at the bottom of the sidebar, and the jump-anywhere search is one keystroke away, Cmd K on a Mac, Ctrl K elsewhere.
What should I learn to use straight away?
Two controls in the top bar, Undo and the confidence figure.
The Undo control reverses your last action, imports included, so nothing is ever one wrong click from disaster. The confidence figure beside it is the app’s own honesty meter, how sure the engine is about your numbers, explained fully in the confidence score.
When the sample makes sense, clear it and bring your own history, starting with your first report or straight to the import guide for Koinly and the other sources.