Shibiki vs a trading spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a fine place to start. But it only ever records what already happened — it can't compute your edge with any rigor, and it certainly can't stop the trade that blows your prop-firm account. Here's the honest side-by-side.
| Spreadsheet | Shibiki | |
|---|---|---|
| Trade logging | Manual entry — easy to skip | Auto-synced from your broker |
| Edge stats (expectancy, profit factor) | Build the formulas yourself | Live, with a Wilson confidence interval |
| Real-time risk enforcement | A sheet can't stop a trade | Hard limits pushed to your broker |
| Daily-loss / drawdown alerts | Manual, after the fact | Live — before you breach |
| Consistency-rule tracking | Manual math each day | Tracked automatically |
| Multi-account / prop copier | Copy-paste per account | One master → every prop account |
| Mobile | Clunky | Native |
| Weekly upkeep | Hours | Minutes |
| Cost | Free — but costs your time | Free plan; paid tiers to scale |
Where a spreadsheet is fine — and where it breaks
If you take a handful of trades a week on one account and you're still learning, a spreadsheet teaches you the discipline of writing things down. Keep using it.
It breaks the moment real money and real rules are involved. A sheet can't tell you, at 10:32 on a Friday, that you're $180 from breaching a trailing drawdown — and it can't do anything about it if you are. It can't run one master strategy across four prop accounts without you re-keying every fill. And its "expectancy" is a formula with no sense of whether 22 trades is enough to trust. That gap — from recording to enforcing — is the whole point of Shibiki.
FAQ
Can't I just use a good template?
A template fixes the layout, not the two things that actually matter: automatic, accurate data (no manual entry) and acting on it in real time. Those need software connected to your broker.
Is it worth paying when a spreadsheet is free?
Shibiki has a free plan, so you can compare directly. The paid tiers pay for themselves the first time enforcement stops a tilt trade from failing a funded account — or the first Sunday you don't spend reconciling four accounts by hand.
See also: expectancy calculator · drawdown calculator