No app here is objectively "the best" — the right pick depends on whether you're managing a shared house, splitting an overseas trip in multiple currencies, or just need to divide up a dinner bill without downloading anything heavier than necessary. We'll call out what each is actually known for.
The apps
Probably the best-known name in this space, built around tracking ongoing balances between a group over weeks or months rather than settling up after every single expense. It requires an account and syncs your data to the cloud so everyone in the group can see the shared ledger. It offers a free tier with a paid subscription that unlocks extra features like currency conversion and receipt scanning.
A solid alternative aimed at the same use case — running group balances, IOUs, and recurring shared expenses — with support for multiple groups and currencies. It also requires an account and cloud sync so balances stay consistent across everyone's phone, with a free tier and an optional paid upgrade for larger groups.
Popular specifically for group trips, where a handful of friends rack up shared costs — accommodation, fuel, groceries — over several days and want one final settlement at the end. Like the others, it's account-based and cloud-synced, and is generally free to use for typical group sizes.
Our own app, built for a different moment: splitting a single bill right now, without setting up a group first. No account, no cloud sync — everything stays on your device, with no ads or trackers, and it works fully offline. Enter a total, split it evenly or by custom amounts with smart rounding, and use PayID to get paid back fast. It's free to download, and it keeps a local history of past splits so you can look back without needing an account to do it.
Plenty of people skip apps altogether and just do the maths in their head or on a calculator, then send money via a bank transfer app. It works, but it puts all the effort — the division, the rounding, the remembering who's paid — back on you, every single time.
Free tier vs. paid tier
Most of the group-balance apps follow a similar pattern: a free tier that covers the basics — adding expenses, splitting a group, seeing balances — and a paid tier that unlocks extras like currency conversion, receipt scanning, or higher group limits. For most casual use, the free tier is usually enough; the paid features tend to matter more for people managing larger, more complex groups over longer periods, like an extended group trip with a dozen participants and several currencies in play.
LOCKEDIN Split Bill doesn't follow that model at all — there's no free tier and paid tier distinction because there's no subscription. The app itself is free, full stop, which fits its scope: it's built to solve one problem (splitting a bill and getting paid back) rather than to be a growing platform with more tiers to unlock over time.
What actually matters when choosing one
The feature lists start to blur together after a while. These are the questions actually worth asking:
- Are you splitting one bill, or managing an ongoing group? If you're tracking a multi-week trip across a group of six, an app built around persistent balances and multi-currency support earns its keep. If you're splitting tonight's dinner, that's more setup than you need.
- Do you want your spending data on a server, or just on your phone? Cloud sync is convenient for keeping a group in sync, but it also means your spending history lives somewhere outside your device. If privacy matters more to you than shared visibility, that narrows the field fast.
- How fast can you enter a bill mid-dinner? This is the one that matters most in the moment. Open the app, type the total, and see how many taps it takes before you have a number to read out to the table.
- Does getting paid back actually happen quickly? Working out who owes what is only half the job — someone still has to transfer the money. If you're in Australia, an app built around PayID means a phone number or email is enough to get paid, instead of hunting down BSB and account numbers.
- Do you need an account at all? If you just want to split a bill once and move on, creating an account and a group for it can be more overhead than the split itself.
Try LOCKEDIN Split Bill
Free to download. No account, no ads — split any bill in seconds and get paid back faster with PayID.
The bottom line
Splitwise, Settle Up, and Tricount are all genuinely good at what they're built for: managing ongoing group balances over time. If that's your situation — a shared trip, a long-running group tab — one of them is probably the right call. If what you actually need is a fast, private way to split a single bill and get paid back quickly, that's exactly the gap LOCKEDIN Split Bill was built to fill.