Why people start looking
Almost every search for a Splitwise alternative traces back to the same three limits, and all three are on the free tier. There is a daily cap on how many expenses you can add. Receipt itemization, charts, search, and currency conversion sit behind Pro, which was $59.99 a year for one person and $89.99 a year for two when we checked in August 2026. The free tier also carries advertising.
None of that matters if you split a restaurant bill twice a year. It matters if you and a housemate are running a ledger that has to survive twelve months and a move.
Tricount
The closest thing to a straight swap for trips. Free, no advertising, and a group works without everyone signing up first, which is the part that actually decides whether a group uses the thing. It has no bank connection, so every expense is typed in by hand, and there is no personal finance side to it.
Pick it if the group is temporary and you want the lowest possible friction to get five people into one list.
Settle Up
Keeps the Splitwise structure almost exactly: groups, balances, a simplify-debts step. The free tier shows advertising and the paid tier removes it. Multiple currencies are included rather than gated.
Pick it if you liked how Splitwise worked and only want to change what you pay.
Splid
Works with no connection, which is the whole reason to choose it. Enter expenses on a hiking trip or in a country where your data plan does not follow you, and it reconciles later. Exports to PDF and spreadsheet.
Pick it for travel where connectivity is the constraint.
Spliit
Open source, and you can run your own instance instead of using the hosted one. There is no mobile app in the app stores; it is a web app you open in a browser.
Pick it if you would rather own the database than trust one.
Footnote
The difference here is where a split starts. In every app above, a shared expense begins as typing: someone remembers a charge, opens the app, and retypes the amount, the date, and a name for it. That is why real group ledgers end up with entries batched two months at a time and named inconsistently.
Footnote starts from the posted charge on your card. The amount, the date, the merchant, and the original currency are already there because the bank supplied them. You choose who it belongs to. Open any balance later and it walks back to the bank rows that produced it, which is what settles an argument three weeks after a trip.
Shared expenses are free, without advertising and without an expense cap. The other person needs no download and no account to see the split and respond to it. Splitwise history imports, so balances carry over rather than resetting to zero. There is a line-by-line comparison if you want the detail.
Questions that come up
Is there a genuinely free version of all this? Tricount and Spliit are free with no paid tier at all. Footnote's shared expenses are free with no cap or ads, and charges for the personal finance features on top. Settle Up and Splitwise both put the ad-free experience behind a subscription.
Tricount or Splitwise? Tricount for a trip, because nobody has to make an account. Splitwise for an ongoing shared household, because balances between the same people accumulate more cleanly.
What should I do before switching? Export first. Splitwise exports a group to CSV from the group's settings, and every app listed here reads a CSV of some shape. Settle up to zero before you move if you can. If you cannot, import the history rather than typing in the closing balances, because a balance with no expenses behind it is a number nobody can check later.