Deleting an account is one of the few things software does that has no undo. This page covers the order to do it in, what happens to expenses other people can still see, and the mistakes that make people wish they'd waited an hour.
The single most important part is the first section. Everything else can be redone; that one can't.
Do this first: export every group
Deleting your account removes your access to your expense history, and support cannot retrieve it afterwards. Not "difficult to retrieve" — gone, from your side. If there's any chance you'll want to know who paid for what on that trip, export first.
Splitwise exports one group at a time as a CSV: open the group on the website → group settings → Export as spreadsheet. Repeat per group. Then actually open the files and check they contain rows, before you delete anything.
Our guide to the Splitwise export covers what each column means and the common failures — the mobile app emailing the file instead of downloading it, or the CSV looking like nonsense when Excel opens it with the wrong encoding.
Note that receipts you attached and comments on expenses are not in the export. Save any receipt images separately if they matter.
Then: settle or leave your groups
Outstanding balances complicate deletion, and leaving them unresolved is unfair to the people you owe or who owe you. Before deleting:
- Settle up what you owe, and record payments others have made to you
- Record the final balances somewhere outside Splitwise if anything is still outstanding — a screenshot is fine
- Leave the groups you're no longer part of
Splitwise may prevent you from leaving a group while you have a non-zero balance in it. If you can't settle in cash, agreeing with the group to zero it out with a recorded payment is usually the practical route.
What happens to shared expenses
This surprises people: deleting your account does not erase the expenses from other people's history. Shared expenses belong to the group, not to you alone. Your friends will generally still see the transactions, often with your name shown as a former or deleted member.
That's normal for shared-ledger apps — the alternative would let one person silently delete the record of money others are owed. But it's worth knowing that "delete my account" and "remove all traces of me from my friends' groups" are different things.
Deleting the account
As of July 2026 the option lives in your account settings on the website rather than in the mobile app — log in at secure.splitwise.com, open your account settings, and look for the delete or close account option, usually at the bottom of the page. You'll be asked to confirm, and possibly to re-enter your password.
Splitwise moves this control around between versions. If you can't find it, the web version is the place to look, and their help centre has the current location. Don't assume it's gone just because it isn't where a blog post said.
Deactivating instead
If you want to stop using Splitwise but aren't certain you're done with it, consider just removing the app and turning off email notifications rather than deleting. That stops the nagging without destroying anything, and leaves your history reachable if a dispute comes up six months later about who paid for the cabin.
Deletion is the right call if you specifically want your personal data removed. It's the wrong call if you just want the app to stop bothering you.
If deletion won't complete
- Blocked by outstanding balances — settle or zero them out with the group first, then retry.
- Blocked by group membership — leave every group, then retry.
- Option isn't visible in the app — use the website; account-level controls are typically web-only.
- Still stuck — contact Splitwise support directly and ask for account deletion. If you're in the EU, UK, or a jurisdiction with comparable privacy law, you can make a formal data deletion request, which they're obliged to process. In Canada, PIPEDA gives you a similar route.
A note on where you go next
If you're deleting because of the daily expense cap, the ads, or the $40/year subscription, there are free alternatives without those constraints — we compare the main ones here, including two we didn't build.
We make one of them. Splitpond reads the Splitwise export directly, so the history you just downloaded can become a working group with the same balances, and nobody in your group needs an account — you send a link. That migration takes about two minutes.
Whatever you choose, do the export before the deletion. It's the only step on this page you can't take back.
Splitwise's interface and account controls change periodically; details above reflect the service as of July 2026. Check Splitwise's own help centre for the current process.