Every subscription question comes down to the same thing: what does this cost per use, and would I miss it if it vanished. Bill splitting is unusually easy to measure that way.
So rather than list features, this guide gives you a way to decide in about a minute.
What you are actually paying for
Be clear-eyed about this. Most people who upgrade are not buying a feature, they are buying the removal of an obstacle.
The headline extras tend to be things like currency conversion, receipt scanning, charts, and the removal of ads. Useful, but rarely the reason anyone pulls out a card. The reason is usually that they hit a wall while trying to do the ordinary thing.
That is a legitimate thing to sell. It is also worth naming, because it changes the maths. You are not comparing feature lists, you are pricing your own convenience.
The ten second test
Answer these three, honestly.
- How many times did you split something last month? Count actual expenses, not intentions.
- Which paid features did you use, or would you have used if you had them?
- If the price rose by half again next year, would you still pay?
If you split more than about ten times a month and answered yes to the third question, stop reading and go and pay for it. It is good value and you will spend more than that on a single round of drinks.
If you split three or four times a month and could not name a paid feature you would use, you are paying a subscription to remove a limit that only exists because you are on the free tier. That is when it is worth looking around.
Cost per split
This is the number that makes the decision obvious. Take the annual price, divide by the number of expenses you log in a year.
| You log | Roughly per year | Feels like |
|---|---|---|
| 2 a week | Around 100 splits | A few cents a split, clearly worth it |
| 2 a month | Around 24 splits | Over a dollar a split, hard to justify |
| Only on trips | Maybe 40, in two bursts | Paying twelve months for two weeks of use |
That last row is the one that catches people. If your splitting is seasonal, a monthly subscription charges you all year for a tool you use in July and December. Check whether you can subscribe for a month and cancel, and set a reminder to do it.
Where Pro is genuinely good value
Three groups of people should pay without much agonising.
- Flatmates in a permanent shared household, where money moves every week all year
- Couples with mingled finances who track everything, not just the occasional dinner
- Anyone who travels in groups often enough that currency handling matters more than the price
In all three cases the app is doing continuous work, and continuous work is what subscriptions are for.
Where it is poor value
Equally, three groups should not feel bad about declining.
- Occasional splitters who want a running tally and nothing else
- One-trip groups who will never open the app again in November
- Anyone whose group has one person doing all the logging, because you are buying a subscription to subsidise everyone else's admin
The alternative nobody mentions
You do not have to choose between paying and being limited. The free tiers of different apps draw the line in different places.
Some apps put the wall around the core action, others put it around the extras. It is worth checking where each one draws it before you commit. We compared the field on the EconoGlance vs Splitwise page.
EconoGlance is free to start with expense adding that is not walled off, and Pro at a lower monthly price for the extras. That is our bias and you should weigh it accordingly, but the general point stands regardless of which app you pick: compare free tiers on the thing you do most, not the feature list.
The summary
Splitwise is a good app and Pro is fairly priced for heavy users. It is not a rip-off.
It is simply the wrong purchase for light users, who make up most of the people asking the question. Work out your cost per split, and the answer stops being a matter of opinion.
