Getting the file
cTrader keeps closed trades under History in the bottom panel. The export control sits at the top-right of that panel and offers CSV.
Two things to set before exporting:
- The date range. Like most terminals, it exports the visible range rather than everything.
- The tab. History holds filled trades; Positions shows what is open right now.
Web, desktop and the broker-branded builds all place this in roughly the same spot, though the icon changes between versions.
The one thing that matters: Net or Gross
cTrader exports carry a P&L column, and depending on build and broker it is headed Net P/L or Gross P/L. They mean different things and the difference is money:
| Column | Contains | What a journal must do |
|---|---|---|
| Net P/L | result after commission and swap | use as-is |
| Gross P/L | result before costs | subtract the cost columns |
Get this backwards and nothing breaks visibly. Subtract commission from a Net figure and every trade reads worse than it was, by exactly one commission each; treat a Gross figure as final and your account looks better than your balance. Neither produces an error, and both produce a plausible-looking equity curve.
Our importer resolves it by looking at which heading is present: with a Net column it takes the value and records costs as already included, rather than deducting them a second time. If you are checking figures by hand, look at the heading before you do arithmetic.
Columns
Names vary a little between builds, but the shape is consistent:
Position ID · Symbol · Direction · Volume · Entry time · Entry price
· Closing time · Closing price · Commission · Swap · Net or Gross P/L
No stop or target. Unlike MetaTrader, a cTrader history export does not carry the stop-loss and take-profit levels that were attached to the position. Anything comparing intention against outcome — including our own intent vs execution — has nothing to work with here and will say so rather than invent a comparison.
Volume is in units, not lots, in most builds: 100,000 rather than 1.00. It is the same size expressed differently, and it matters only if you compare a cTrader export against a MetaTrader one by eye.
cTrader statements in HTML
Some brokers offer a statement as an HTML page instead of CSV. Those parse too — the format is detected from the file's contents, not its extension, so both a .csv and an .htm from the same account end up in the same place.
A note on our own history with this format
Worth stating plainly, because it is the reason this page is specific rather than generic: our cTrader parser was once written against a format nobody had verified, and the tests fed it the same invented headers, so everything passed while the parser could not read a real file. It was caught only when a genuine export was run through it.
The lesson stuck, and it is why these pages describe columns we have actually seen rather than columns we assume exist.
Checking the file
Drop the export into what overtrading costs you or the discipline check — both read it in your browser without an account. If the file parsed and the trade count matches what you expect, it will import anywhere.