Splitwise vs Tricount vs Settle Up vs SpndX: An Honest 2026 Comparison

Every group that splits money eventually has the same argument, and it is not about money. It is about which app to use. Someone already has Splitwise and does not want to move, someone in Europe swears by Tricount, someone technical insists on Settle Up, and one person is still maintaining a spreadsheet out of spite. This post compares the four options side by side, including our own, and says plainly where each one wins.

The short version: these apps differ far less in what they can do than in what they charge you for doing it, and how they behave when your phone has no signal. Those two things should drive the decision.

The comparison at a glance

Feature lists are easy to pad, so this table sticks to the things that actually change day-to-day use: what the free tier limits, whether ads interrupt you, whether logging works offline, and how each app handles more than one currency.

Splitwise: the default, and the reason people leave

Splitwise effectively created this category and still has the largest network. That is a real advantage and it should not be dismissed: if the other five people in your group already have accounts and balances, the cost of switching is not zero.

It also has the most complete feature set. Venmo integration, receipt scanning on paid tiers, recurring bills, and a mature web app are all genuinely useful, and the debt simplification has been reliable for years.

The problem is what the free tier became. Free accounts now hit a daily cap on how many expenses they can add, and ads sit between you and saving a receipt. For someone splitting a dinner once a month this is invisible. For a shared house logging groceries, or a group on day three of a trip, it is the reason people start searching for an alternative.

Pick Splitwise if: your group is already on it, you split infrequently enough that the daily cap never bites, or you specifically want the Venmo handoff.

Tricount: the clean European option

Tricount is popular across Europe and takes a deliberately minimal approach. Create a group, add expenses, settle up. There is no daily transaction cap, and the multi-currency handling is one of its genuine strengths, which is why it spread among travellers first.

The trade-off is depth. There is no support for recurring expenses, which makes it a poor fit for a shared household where rent and utilities repeat every month on different dates. It is built for a trip, and it is very good at being built for a trip.

Pick Tricount if: you want the simplest possible shared trip ledger, you are splitting a holiday rather than a household, and you do not need recurring bills.

Settle Up: the most capable free tier

Settle Up is the one power users tend to land on. Its free tier is unusually generous: weighted splits, multiple payers on a single expense, CSV export, a real web app, live exchange rate conversion, and offline entry that syncs when you reconnect.

The interface is more utilitarian than its rivals, and there are ads on the free tier. But on raw capability per pound spent, it is hard to argue with, and the offline entry genuinely works.

Pick Settle Up if: you want maximum features without paying, you do not mind ads, and you value a proper web app alongside the mobile one.

SpndX: offline-first, with no tier to upsell you to

We build SpndX, so treat this section with the scepticism it deserves and check the claims against the app. The design decision that drives everything else is that there is no premium tier, which means there is nothing to gate behind one.

The second decision is that the local database on your device is the source of truth rather than a cache. Most apps with an "offline mode" are queuing your input and hoping to send it later. In SpndX the write lands locally and completely, and the network only ever copies it outward if you have turned sync on.

• No daily limit, no ads, no subscription. There is no paid plan, so the free experience is the whole product.
• Genuinely offline. Splitting, reports, debt simplification, and currency conversion all run against the local database with the network off.
• No account needed. Guest mode is the full app. Groups are joined by QR code or invite link with no registration or email verification.
• Conversion stored per expense. Each expense keeps what you paid and its converted value at the time, so a trip total does not drift when rates move.
• Splitwise CSV import. Members, expenses, and balances carry across, so a switching group does not restart at zero.
• No bank linking. No Plaid, no aggregator, and no screen that asks for banking credentials.

Where SpndX is the wrong choice: if your group is deeply embedded in Splitwise and nobody will move, network effects beat features. If you specifically want built-in payment rails like Venmo, Splitwise does that and we do not. And if you want a mature desktop web app to do bulk editing in, Settle Up is ahead of us there.

Which one should you actually pick?

Rather than a winner, here is the decision by situation, which is how people actually choose.

The question nobody asks, and should

Before the feature comparison, there is a more useful question: what happens to this ledger if the company behind it changes its mind?

Every app on this list has either narrowed its free tier, added ads, or introduced a premium plan at some point. That is normal, and none of it is dishonest. But it does mean the app you choose today is not necessarily the app you will be using in two years, and the thing that determines how painful that is turns out to be whether you can get your data out.

Splitwise exports CSV. Settle Up exports CSV. SpndX imports Splitwise CSV and can write a local backup file you keep yourself. Whatever you pick, check the export path before you commit a group to it, because that is the thing you will need on the day you want to leave.

Getting a group to actually switch

The feature comparison is the easy part. Moving five people off an app they already have is the hard part, and it fails for social reasons rather than technical ones.

• Move at a boundary. Switch at the start of a trip or a tenancy, not halfway through. Nobody wants to check two ledgers.
• Bring the balances. Export the old group as CSV and import it, so the new app opens with the numbers people already agreed on.
• Do not ask for signups. Any app that needs five people to register will lose two of them. Use one that allows joining by link.
• One person can carry it. If the group will not adopt anything, one person running the ledger and sharing a settlement summary still works.

If you are coming from Splitwise specifically, we wrote a step-by-step guide to exporting and importing your data, and a breakdown of exactly what the daily limit caps.