Notion vs spreadsheet vs a dedicated trading journal

Before building TradeTurtle, I kept my trades in Notion, with a position-sizing sheet on the side. Plenty of traders do the same, or use Google Sheets or Excel. Each option works up to a point. Here's an honest look at where each one shines and where it starts to hurt.

Spreadsheets (Google Sheets, Excel)

Good at:

• Free, and completely flexible.
• Formulas for risk, R and P&L are easy to add.
• Easy to export and share.

Harder:

• Formulas break when you insert rows or copy them wrong, and it's easy not to notice.
• Screenshots don't fit well in a grid.
• Stats by setup or emotion need pivot tables you have to build and maintain.
• Nothing stops you from entering a trade that breaks your risk rule; the sheet only shows it if you built a check.

Best for: traders who enjoy building their own tools and want full control.

Notion

Good at:

• Clean, pleasant to use, and good for notes and screenshots on each trade.
• Database views make it easy to filter by status, asset or setup.
• Templates are available to get started.

Harder:

• Formulas are limited and awkward for calculations that depend on earlier trades, like balance before a trade, risk % or drawdown.
• Charts and stats need workarounds or extra tools.
• Position sizing usually lives somewhere else, so the plan and the journal drift apart.

Best for: traders who care most about notes and screenshots, and are happy to do the maths elsewhere.

A dedicated trading journal

Good at:

• Calculations built in and tested: risk, R, fees, drawdown, expectancy.
• Stats and breakdowns without building anything.
• Often a position sizer or planner in the same place as the journal.

Harder:

• Usually a monthly subscription once you're past a free tier.
• Less flexible: you work the way the app works.
• Your data lives in someone else's service, so check you can export it.

Best for: traders who want the numbers without the maintenance, and who trade often enough that the admin adds up.

Side by side

	Spreadsheet	Notion	Dedicated journal
Cost	Free	Free or paid	Free tier, then paid
Setup effort	High	Medium	Low
Position sizing from your stop	Build it	Separate	Often built in
Risk rule checked on every trade	Build it	Hard	Often built in
Stats by setup and emotion	Pivot tables	Workarounds	Built in
Screenshots	Awkward	Good	Good
Flexibility	Very high	High	Lower

Moving your history

Whichever you choose, don't start from zero. A journal gets more useful with every trade in it. Most tools, TradeTurtle included, can import a CSV. Notion databases export as CSV from the ••• menu (choose "Markdown & CSV", unzip the file and use the one ending in _all.csv), and spreadsheets can be downloaded as CSV directly.

What I chose

I built TradeTurtle because I wanted the plan and the journal in one place: size every trade from the stop, check it against my risk rule automatically, and see results in R by setup and emotion without maintaining formulas. It's free for your first 20 trades, so you can import your history and compare. See how to keep a trading journal for what to record, whichever tool you use.