Best Free Splitwise Alternatives in 2026 (Honestly Compared)
Splitwise's free tier keeps shrinking. Here are the best genuinely free alternatives for splitting bills and tracking IOUs — including where each one beats the others.
Splitwise earned its place as the default expense-splitting app, but its free tier has been shrinking for years — daily expense limits, ads between screens, and a Pro subscription standing between you and features that used to be free. If you're here, you've probably hit one of those walls. This post is part of our bigger guide to money between friends; here we'll focus on one question: what's actually worth switching to?
Full disclosure before the list: we make one of the apps below. We'll tell you exactly where the others beat us, because a comparison that always crowns its own author isn't a comparison — it's an advert.
What "free" needs to mean
A free expense app is only useful if the free part covers real life. Before switching, check four things:
- No entry limits. A group trip generates a dozen expenses a day. A daily cap on logging them is a paywall wearing a costume.
- No ads in the money. Ads between you and your balances get old fast.
- Friends don't need the app. If everyone must register before you can log "Sam owes me £20", most of your IOUs will simply never be logged.
- Your history stays yours. Export, or at least full visible history — not a ransom note.
PayMeLater — best for IOUs and friend debts
PayMeLater (that's us) is built around a simple idea: most money between friends isn't a group holiday — it's one person covering something for another. Every entry keeps its amount, reason, date and full change history, balances are green/orange at a glance, and your friends don't need an account, ever. It's completely free, no ads, multi-currency, on iOS and Android.
Where it beats Splitwise: no limits, no ads, no sign-up wall for friends, and the reason attached to every entry — so "wait, what was that £45 for?" stops being a conversation.
Where Splitwise beats it: enormous group graphs with debt simplification across twelve people, and integrations like Venmo built in. If your life is one big shared house with complex webs of who-owes-who, Splitwise's group model is genuinely strong. Our full head-to-head: Splitwise vs PayMeLater.
Splid — best for one-off group events
Splid does group events well: create a group, log expenses, get a settlement plan, no accounts required. It's free with small conveniences paid.
Strengths: dead simple, works offline, PDF export of the final tally. Weaknesses: it's event-shaped, not relationship-shaped. Once the ski trip is settled, the group is done — it won't track the ongoing £30-here-£15-there of an actual friendship.
Tricount — best for travel groups already in the Revolut world
Tricount (now owned by Revolut) is Splid's closest cousin: shared "tricounts" for trips and flatshares, with balances and a settle-up plan. Free for the core, with Revolut-flavoured extras.
Strengths: polished, popular in Europe, easy for big groups. Weaknesses: the Revolut integration is the point — if you're not in that ecosystem, the app keeps gently suggesting you should be. Ongoing one-to-one IOUs are, again, an afterthought.
Settle Up — best for long-running groups
Settle Up keeps persistent groups (a flatshare, a football team kitty) ticking along across months, with recurring expenses and multiple currencies.
Strengths: groups that never end, debt simplification, wide platform support. Weaknesses: the free tier carries ads, and like every group-first app, "just me and Priya" is a slightly awkward two-person group rather than a natural ledger.
The spreadsheet — best if you'll actually maintain it
A shared Google Sheet is genuinely free, infinitely flexible and survives any app shutting down. It's also the option most likely to be abandoned by week three, because every entry is manual, nothing reminds anyone, and the person who made the sheet becomes its unpaid accountant. We've watched this movie; we wrote about the ending in how to keep track of IOUs.
The honest summary table
| App | Truly free? | Friends need app? | Best at | Weakest at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PayMeLater | Yes — no ads, no limits | No | IOUs & friend debts with reasons | Huge many-person group webs |
| Splid | Mostly | No | One-off events | Ongoing balances |
| Tricount | Mostly | For full use | Travel groups | Non-Revolut users |
| Settle Up | With ads | For full use | Long-running groups | Two-person simplicity |
| Spreadsheet | Yes | No | Total control | Being maintained |
How to choose in ten seconds
- Mostly one-to-one IOUs and covering for each other? PayMeLater — it's what the app is for.
- One big trip, then done? Splid or Tricount.
- A permanent group with a kitty? Settle Up.
- You enjoy spreadsheets more than you enjoy people? The spreadsheet. We salute you.
Whichever you pick, the app matters less than the habit: log it when the money moves, keep the reason attached, and settle up like it's housekeeping, not a confrontation. The £60 was never the problem — the forgetting was.