Choosing an expense-splitting app: a checklist

Choosing the app is a five-minute decision that six people then live inside for a week, and switching mid-trip is genuinely painful, because the history doesn't come with you. So it's worth five real minutes.

Here are twelve questions, roughly in order of how much they'll annoy you if you get them wrong.

The three tests you can run in four minutes

1. Aeroplane mode. Turn it on, open the app. Do you see your data, or a spinner? Then add an expense. Does it save? Force-quit, reopen, still offline. Is it still there? Most shortlists get shorter right here.
2. ₹100 split three ways. The shares should be ₹33.34, ₹33.33 and ₹33.33 and they should total exactly ₹100. If you see ₹33.33 three times, the app is losing a paisa per split and you now know how it treats money generally.
3. Count the taps. From opening the app to a saved expense. Anything over about five and nobody will log the ₹90 auto, which means the ledger is wrong in exactly the small, frequent way that adds up.

The nine questions to ask before you commit

1. Shared costs only, or your own money too? Most splitting apps are for group expenses and nothing else. If you also want to know where your own month went, you either want one app that does both or you're accepting two.
2. Can it split by exact amounts and percentage? Not just equally. Rent by room size and a restaurant bill by what people ordered both need more than an equal split.
3. Does it simplify debts? Twenty IOUs should become three or four payments, and you should still be able to see the original expenses behind them.
4. Who pays for the app? If it shows ads, an ad network gets to know something about a finance app's user. That's the trade; make it knowingly.
5. What does the privacy policy allow? Read the sharing clause and the app-store data-safety label. Look for "partners", third-party analytics, and anything about training models.
6. Can you export everything as CSV? The exit is a feature. An app you can leave is an app you can trust for a year.
7. Does everyone need an account? Some apps let people join by link without signing up; others (SplitPocket included) need each member to have an account. Neither is wrong, but find out before you invite five people.
8. Does it get your currency right? Not just the symbol, but the decimal places and the digit grouping. ₹1,00,000 and ¥1,500 are both correct and both break naive implementations.
9. Will it be here next year? Who makes it, do they ship, and is there a way to get your data out if the answer changes.

Our answers, briefly

• Offline: reads come from your device, writes queue and sync. Aeroplane mode is not a special case.
• The paisa test: integer minor units and largest-remainder distribution, so every split reconciles exactly.
• Both halves: personal expenses and income with categories and monthly reports, alongside groups and splits.
• Splits: equally, by exact amounts, by percentage; simplified settle-up with the underlying expenses still visible.
• Business model: no ads, no data selling, no third-party trackers.
• Exit: CSV export, whenever you want it.
• Accounts: yes, every group member has one.

For a row-by-row comparison against Splitwise, Tricount and Settle Up, see the comparison page.

And one piece of advice about switching

Don't migrate an open group. Settle whatever you're running now, then start the next trip or the next month in the new app. Carrying half a ledger across is how you end up with two sources of truth and a conversation nobody enjoys.