The best bill-splitting apps in 2026

Five apps, compared on the things that actually decide it: what the free tier costs you, how currencies behave, and whether the app makes you pay someone you never shared a bill with.

The short answer

At a glance

A dash means we could not verify it from a primary source and would rather leave it blank than guess. Ratings are US App Store, September 2026.

1. Splitwise — the default everyone already has

Splitwise is the app your friends already have, and that is a real feature: shared ledgers work better when nobody has to be talked into installing anything. It is also the only app here with itemised receipt OCR, and in some countries it imports bank transactions directly. For an open-ended balance between two people who keep lending each other money for years, its friend-ledger model is still the best design in the category.

The free tier is the problem. Splitwise caps free users at four new expenses per day, and its own help centre suggests waiting for the limit to reset or asking a friend to add the expense for you. Ads run on free. Expense search is behind Pro. And currency handling is genuinely poor: by default Splitwise keeps a separate balance per currency, so you see "you owe $12.45 and you are owed £8.72", and even Pro's converter is a one-shot action that doesn't apply to expenses you add afterwards.

Its 4.0 App Store rating against 4.8–4.9 for everything else in this list is partly a base-rate effect — it has four to fifteen times the review volume and a long history of monetisation changes — but the gap is not nothing.

Pick it if you need bank import, itemised OCR, or simply need the app everyone already has. Skip it if you add more than four expenses on a good day and won't pay to fix that.

2. Splitt — the best one for a trip that crosses currencies

This is ours, so read it with that in mind. Splitt is free with nothing metered — no daily expense cap, no ceiling on groups or on how many people are in one, no history window, no ads. On top of that it does two things nothing else in this list does by default.

It has who pays next, which reads everyone's balance and names the person furthest behind, so the group evens out without anyone keeping score out loud. And it keeps balances pairwise — it never nets the group together, so it never tells you to pay someone you didn't share a bill with.

It also converts 44 currencies automatically on entry, with rates refreshed through the day, so a trip across three countries is still one number; reads receipts with the camera; and works offline.

The catch: there is no Android app yet (one is in development), no web app, and it's English-only. If anyone in your group is on Android, pick something else from this list.

Pick it if you want pairwise balances, automatic conversion and a nudge on who pays next. Skip it if anyone in the group is on Android.

3. Tricount — the best one for a mixed-platform group

Tricount was bought by the Dutch bank bunq, and when the app was rewritten, Premium was discontinued outright. Existing subscribers were compensated. What is left is a genuinely free app: no expense caps, no subscription, no hidden tier.

The catch is what went with Premium. CSV and PDF export, Personal mode, statistics and saved custom splits were all removed in the rewrite — statistics and custom splits are promised back. Export in particular is the thing people notice missing. The other change is that the classic no-signup Tricount is gone: you now create an account and verify a phone number.

Pick it if you want the most app for zero money and don't need to get your data back out. Skip it if export matters or you object to handing over a phone number to split a dinner.

4. Splid — the best one for a group that won't sign up

Splid's signature feature is the absence of an account. You create a group, share a link, and everyone is in — no email, no phone number, no password. It also has no ads on the free tier, converts automatically across 150+ currencies, and handles genuinely awkward splits well, including multiple payers on a single expense.

Its weakness shows up on long trips. There is no way to sort or filter the expense list, which reviewers repeatedly complain about — more than one says they gave up and moved to a spreadsheet. There is also no web app and no iPad version, so there is no big screen to do the cleanup on.

Pick it if you're organising something for people who will use the app once and never again. Skip it if the trip will run to hundreds of expenses you later need to find.

5. Settle Up — the broadest platform coverage

Settle Up has the widest platform coverage in the category: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and a real web app. Nobody gets excluded, and you can do bulk editing on a laptop. Its free tier is also the most generous of the paid apps — unlimited expenses, offline, multi-currency with live rates, debt simplification and CSV export by email all cost nothing.

What costs you is attention: the free tier shows an ad after every third expense, a cadence reviewers single out as intrusive. The pricing is also the most complicated here, with a personal subscription alongside group passes priced by trip length, up to a lifetime group tier.

Pick it if your group spans iPhone, Android and a laptop.Skip it if ads every third expense will drive you out of the app.

What none of them do well

Having read a few thousand reviews across all five, the same gaps keep showing up:

• Searching a long expense list. Splitwise puts search behind Pro; Splid has no sorting or filtering at all. Nobody does retrospective querying of a trip well for free.
• Getting your data out. Splid charges for Excel, Settle Up gates Excel, Tricount deleted export entirely. Complete, free, structured export exists nowhere.
• Control over debt simplification. Only Splitwise documents a toggle. Everyone else nets the group with no documented way to opt out — and users say, repeatedly, that they don't want to pay someone they never bought anything with.
• Sync you can trust. Tricount reviewers report slow propagation and balances that disagree between two phones; Splitwise reviewers report losing half-typed expenses. For an app whose only job is an agreed ledger, that's the worst possible failure.

Read next

• Splitt vs Splitwise — the daily cap, currencies and what Pro actually unlocks
• Splitt vs Tricount — free-with-no-caps against free with scanning and live rates
• Splitt vs Splid — no account against no spreadsheet