Most people track crypto in a browser tab or a phone app. A desktop app is a different trade off: the window stays open on a second monitor, prices update while you work, and nothing lives in someone else's database.
This guide walks through setting up a portfolio in Moonitor on macOS, Windows or Linux. The whole process takes a few minutes and does not involve logging into an exchange.
Before you start: how Moonitor gets your data
This is the part that surprises people, so it is worth saying up front.
Moonitor never connects to your exchange account. There is no API key field, no OAuth screen, no wallet address to paste. The app pulls public market prices from exchanges, and you tell it which coins you hold and how much. It multiplies the two.
That means two things:
- Your holdings are typed in by you and stored on your own machine. Nobody, including us, can see them.
- Balances do not sync automatically. If you buy on an exchange, you add that purchase in Moonitor too.
If automatic syncing matters more to you than privacy, Moonitor is the wrong tool and you should use a tracker that takes read only API keys. If you would rather not hand your balance history to a third party, keep reading. There is more detail in crypto portfolio tracker without API keys.
Step 1: install the app
Download Moonitor for your platform from moonitor.io. Builds are available for:
- macOS, both Apple Silicon and Intel
- Windows
- Linux
The free version lets you use Binance and Binance US, follow up to 3 markets, and track up to 2 assets per market. That is enough to see whether the app suits you before paying anything.
Step 2: add a market to follow
A market is a trading pair on a specific exchange, like BTC/USDT on Binance. Moonitor is organised around markets rather than around coins, because the price of a coin is always the price on some exchange.
Add your first market:
- Open the app and choose an exchange.
- Search for the pair you want, for example
BTC/USDT. - Add it.
The market appears with a live price, the 24 hour change, high, low and volume. You can add as many markets as your version allows and reorder them by dragging.
Step 3: enter what you hold
With a market selected, add your holdings for it. For each entry you record:
- The amount of the coin you own
- The price you paid for it
Adding the purchase price is optional, but without it Moonitor can only show what your holdings are worth now, not whether you are up or down. With it, you get profit and loss, and a weighted average across multiple buys. See tracking crypto profit and loss for how that is calculated.
Enter each purchase as its own entry rather than averaging them yourself. Moonitor does the averaging, and keeping the individual buys means the numbers stay correct when you add more later.
Step 4: read the totals
Once you have holdings entered, the app shows:
- The current value of each market's holdings
- Your total across every market
- Profit or loss against what you paid
- The weighted average price you bought at
Totals can be shown in US dollars, in Bitcoin, or in one of 16 fiat currencies. Denominating in BTC is a genuinely different way to look at a portfolio and is covered in tracking your portfolio in Bitcoin.
The window resizes down to something you can leave in a corner of a second monitor and still read at a glance:
Step 5: separate portfolios, if you need them
If you keep long term holdings apart from money you actively trade, or track a family member's coins separately, use more than one portfolio. Each has its own markets, holdings and totals. Switching between them changes every number on screen.
Keeping it current
Because nothing syncs automatically, a portfolio is only as accurate as your last update. In practice that means adding an entry when you buy and editing one when you sell. If you trade many times a day this is real friction and worth knowing before you commit.
For occasional buying and holding, which is what most people do, it is a couple of minutes a month.
Where to go next
- Supported exchanges covers the full list of 14 exchanges
- How to track your Binance portfolio walks through the most common setup
- Moonitor is also available for iPhone if you want the same portfolio in your pocket
