Splitwise is the app most people name first when a group needs to keep track of who paid what. It has been around since 2011, it works on iPhone, Android and the web, and most of the articles explaining it were written either by Splitwise or by an app that would like to replace it. This one falls in the second category: we make Banana Split. What we can offer instead of neutrality is method. Every claim about Splitwise below links to the page where Splitwise says it, and every number about how groups actually spend comes from 183,000 real groups tracked in our app.

The short answer. Splitwise is a shared-expense tracker: you create a group, log who paid for what, and the app works out who owes whom. It is good at that job. The free plan, though, is now a limited version of the product: four expenses a day, ads, no currency conversion, no search. Splitwise Pro removes those limits and costs the price of a coffee a month, shown in the app rather than on the website. It is worth it for a flatshare or a couple who will use the app for years and want search, receipt scanning or card import. It is not worth it for a single trip, where you would pay for a month to use it for a week, and where the free plan blocks in the middle of the first busy day.

What is Splitwise and who is it for

Splitwise is a free app, with a paid tier, for splitting expenses inside a group of people. Founded in the United States in 2011, it describes itself as a way to “keep track of your shared expenses and balances with housemates, trips, groups, friends, and family”. It runs on iPhone, Android and in a web browser, and it requires an account: every member of the group signs up with an email address before they can see the balances.

The people it is built for are the ones who share money over time. A flatshare paying rent and bills, a couple splitting groceries, a family organising a holiday, a group of friends on a trip. In our own data, those groups look very different from each other: 43% of groups are two people, and six groups in ten are finished within a week. That difference matters more than any feature, because the free plan suits one kind of group and not the other.

How does Splitwise work

The mechanism is simple, and it is the same one every expense-splitting app uses.

  1. You create a group and invite the members. Each one needs a Splitwise account.
  2. Someone logs an expense: what it was, how much, who paid, and how it is split. Splitwise offers “equal or unequal splits”, by shares, by percentage or by exact amount.
  3. The app keeps a running balance for each member: what they have paid, what they owe, and the net between the two.
  4. “Simplify debts” reduces the tangle to the minimum number of transfers. If A owes B and B owes C, A pays C directly.
  5. “Settle up” records a repayment, in cash or through a payment integration in the countries where Splitwise offers one.

That is the whole product, and it works. The difference between Splitwise and its rivals is not in how balances are computed, it is in what you are allowed to do before paying.

What the free plan really includes in 2026

Splitwise’s own help centre states the main limit plainly: free users can add up to 4 expenses each day. The count runs across all your groups and resets the next day. Most blog posts say three, Tricount’s comparison page says five, and the only source that counts says four.

Reading the Pro page tells you the rest, because everything listed there is, by definition, absent from the free plan:

  • Currency conversion. A free group can log expenses in several currencies but cannot convert them into one total.
  • Expense search, across your history.
  • Receipt scanning and itemisation, which is the fastest way to log a big restaurant bill.
  • Charts and graphs, and default split settings.
  • Card transaction import, in the United States only.
  • A totally ad-free experience, which tells you what the free plan looks like.

None of this makes the free plan useless. It makes it a plan for groups that log a few expenses at a time. We went through what the daily limit covers and four ways around it in a separate article.

Where does Splitwise publish the price of Splitwise Pro?

How much does Splitwise Pro cost

Splitwise does not publish the price of Pro on its website. The Pro page lists the features without a number, and the help centre tells you to “learn more in the Splitwise Pro section of your Account tab”. The price is only visible in the app, and it varies by country.

There is one public place where the amounts appear: the app store listings. On the US App Store listing, the in-app purchases section lists Splitwise Pro subscriptions from $2.99 to $39.99, with $4.99 and $39.99 the entries that correspond to the monthly and yearly plans most users see. On the European listings the same entries read €2.99 and €29.99. The listing does not label each entry, it only states that the subscription renews monthly or yearly, so check the exact amount in the app for your own country before you decide.

In other words, Pro costs about the price of a coffee a month, or a good meal a year. The question is not whether it is expensive. It is whether your group gets that much out of it.

Is Splitwise Pro worth it

It depends entirely on how long your group lasts and how many expenses it logs in a day. We can put numbers on both, because we counted them in 183,000 groups tracked in Banana Split since 2012, each with at least two members and five expenses.

Worth it: a flatshare or a couple that lives in the app. If your group has three years of history, search is worth money, and so is receipt itemisation when someone brings back a supermarket bill for the whole flat. In the United States, card import removes the logging chore altogether. For a group that will still exist in five years, a yearly subscription is cheap compared with the arguments it prevents.

Free is enough: a flatshare that logs calmly. In our groups older than six months, only 5% of active days go past four expenses. Rent once a month, a shared shop twice a week, the electricity bill when it lands. The free plan fits that rhythm, provided you accept the ads and never need to convert currencies.

Not worth it: a single trip. Here the free plan fails and Pro is poor value at the same time. 73% of our groups have at least one day with five or more expenses, and one expense in four is the fifth or later of its day. On holiday, breakfast, transport, lunch, a ticket and dinner make five before anyone suggests a drink. Paying a month of Pro to survive a week away works, but you are buying a subscription for a group that will not exist in ten days.

Not worth it: occasional use. A dinner every couple of months, a weekend a year. The limit never bites, the paid features never get used, and the account requirement is the only thing your friends will notice.

When Splitwise is not the right choice

A few situations where the app, free or Pro, is the wrong tool.

Your group crosses a border. Free Splitwise logs several currencies but does not convert them, so the balances stay in pieces. If two people paid in euros and one in yen, you either pay for Pro or you convert by hand. We covered the whole problem in splitting expenses in several currencies.

Someone in the group will not create an account. Splitwise requires one for every member. The friend who never installs anything is a real constraint, and an app that lets you add them by name alone avoids the whole conversation.

You want receipt scanning without paying. Splitwise’s scanner is a Pro feature, and it works from the camera only. If half your expenses arrive as a paper bill, that matters.

Your group is a trip. See above. The daily limit lands exactly on the situation the app is best known for.

Splitwise alternatives

The two names that come up are Tricount and, if you will allow us, Banana Split.

Tricount is the better free app for a trip or a one-off event: no daily limit, no account needed, currencies converted for free. It lacks recurring expenses, web access and several people paying one bill. We compared the two in detail in Tricount vs Splitwise, with a verdict by type of group.

Banana Split is the app we make, and we built it for the group that falls between the two: one that wants Splitwise’s features, recurring expenses, several people paying one expense, web access, without the daily cap, without a subscription and without asking everyone to sign up. It is free, and mixed currencies inside one group are part of the free app rather than a tier above it.

We keep an honest side-by-side table of Banana Split, Splitwise and Tricount, including the rows where a competitor does something we do not. If Splitwise fits your group, use it, it is a good app. If you recognised your group in the “not worth it” paragraphs above, download Banana Split and set it up before the next trip.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure about group behaviour in this article comes from 183,000 groups tracked in Banana Split between 2012 and August 2026, each with at least two members and five expenses, 3.8 million expenses in total, repayments excluded. The data is aggregated and anonymous, and it describes people who chose an app to track shared money, so probably groups that log more carefully than average. Everything about Splitwise comes from the pages linked in the text, read on 14 September 2026, and we will correct the article if Splitwise changes its offer.