Free Splitwise alternatives: what fits your group?

The right Splitwise alternative depends on what you need: a mobile app, no-account sharing, self-hosting, or a way to bring existing expenses with you. This guide compares four options and explains which parts of a Splitwise CSV can survive the move. We build Splitpond, so this is a comparison from a competitor, not an independent review.

The short list

• Spliit — free, open source, self-hostable, link-based. The pick if you want to own the infrastructure.
• Tricount — free mobile expense tracking, including custom splits, multiple currencies and Splitwise import.
• Splitpond — free core expense tracking, no-account group links and a previewed Splitwise CSV import.
• A spreadsheet — genuinely the right answer for a one-off trip. Don't dismiss it.

Reasons to consider switching

Start with the problem you want to solve. Switching apps is only useful if the new workflow addresses it:

• The daily expense cap. Splitwise currently documents up to four additions per day for free users. That can be awkward when one person enters a pile of trip receipts.
• Account setup. A group may prefer a browser link over creating individual accounts.
• Receipt scanning behind Pro. Compare the allowance and features you actually need before choosing a subscription.
• Portable records. Check both the export format and the new app's import limitations before moving.

Competitor documentation checked October 3, 2026: Splitwise Pro, Spliit features, and Tricount features. Availability and prices can change; confirm important features in the app before moving.

The alternatives, honestly

Spliit

Open source, free and link-based. Self-hosting lets you control your own infrastructure, although hosting, updates and backups become your responsibility. Its current site also lists an iPhone app and labels AI scanning and recurring expenses as beta features.

Check before switching if importing existing history is essential. Spliit's official repository lists Splitwise import as a possible future feature; community forks may differ. You can use its hosted service without running a server yourself.

Tricount

Tricount currently advertises free expense tracking without daily caps, custom splits, multiple currencies and a Splitwise importer. It is another option if you want to keep existing Splitwise history.

Check the export workflow. Its help pages describe changes to the old Premium export feature, while the official FAQ says support can help with CSV or ODF exports. That is different from having no way to obtain your data. See our Tricount alternatives guide.

Splitpond

Ours. Free and unlimited with that written down as a promise, link-based so nobody signs up, receipt scanning with five free attempts per group per calendar month, and a reviewed importer that reads a one-currency Splitwise CSV and rebuilds supported totals and balances to the cent.

Skip it if you need a native app, multi-currency groups, recurring expenses, or comment threads on expenses — none of which exist yet. We're the newest of these and deliberately the narrowest.

A spreadsheet

For a single trip with four people and fifteen expenses, a shared sheet genuinely beats all of the above: everyone can already use it, nothing to install, and the maths is one SUM away. Apps earn their keep when the group is ongoing, when splits get uneven, or when you want the settle-up worked out for you. If you just want the numbers today, our free split calculator does it without creating anything.

What actually survives the move

This is the part that decides whether switching is painless or a lost evening, and it's almost never written down. What follows comes from building a parser for Splitwise's export format — these are the things that surprised us.

Splitwise exports a group as a CSV with one row per expense and a signed column for each person: positive if the group owes them for that row, negative if they owe. That structure carries more than you'd expect, and drops a few things silently.

Three details that quietly break naive imports, and are worth knowing even if you migrate by hand:

• The last row isn't an expense. Splitwise appends a Total balance row summarising each person's net. Anything that treats it as another expense double-counts the entire group.
• Net changes are not a full payer breakdown. The member columns record paid-minus-owed amounts. A multi-payer expense can therefore lose its original gross contributions in the CSV. An importer must not present reconstructed allocations as an exact copy of the original split.
• Names do not transfer accounts. Member columns become names in the new group, not authenticated identities. Check the member list and who you share the new group link with.

None of this is a reason to stay. It's a reason to check the balances against the old app once after importing anywhere. Splitpond now previews warnings before it writes the group and blocks formats it cannot represent safely. For where the export button actually is and how to open the file without Excel mangling accented names, see the step-by-step export guide.

When you shouldn't switch

Genuinely: if your group is already on Splitwise, everyone has the app, and nobody is hitting the daily cap, stay. The hard part of switching has never been the software — it's getting four people to move at once, and a half-migrated group where two people log expenses in the old app is worse than either app alone.

Switching is worth it when one of these is true:

• You're hitting the cap often enough to notice, or someone is about to pay for Pro.
• The group is new — nothing invested, so there's nothing to migrate.
• Someone in the group refuses to make an account, which link-based apps solve outright.
• You want your data somewhere you can leave from later.

Moving, if you decide to

In Splitwise on the web: open the group → Settings → Export as spreadsheet. Keep that CSV regardless of where you land, and verify that it includes the records you need before deleting your Splitwise account. Splitwise also documents full-account export options in its export help.

To land it in Splitpond, choose the file in the Splitwise CSV importer, review the entries and warnings, then confirm. You get a group link with supported history, combined totals, and balances rebuilt to the cent. Send that link to the group; nobody registers. If you'd rather compare all four side by side first, we keep an honest comparison table.

Common questions