For groups where nobody wants to sign up
Settle Up is a good tracker with an account behind it. That account is the part your friends stall on, and the reason they can see your email address.
Takes ten seconds. No email, no password, no download.
Settle Up has been doing this for years, and it is honest about what it is:
Settle Up keeps track of your gang's expenses – great for travellers, flatmates, couples and others.
The maths is not the reason people look for an alternative. Two lines from their own pages are.
Look at what the group has to hand over
Settle Up syncs through an account, and the account is identified by an email address. Their privacy policy says who else sees it.
Other users who are in the same group(s) as you can access your: Name, Email, Profile picture(s), Transaction & other data you enter into the app
That is the correct thing to disclose, and most groups will not care. Some will. A work trip, a stag do, a flatshare with someone you met last month. Those are the groups where one person quietly does not want to give six near-strangers their email address, and does not want to say so out loud.
Settle Up does have a way in for somebody who will not install anything:
No app required: Share a group link so friends can view the balance in their browser without downloading anything.
Friends can view the balance. Somebody who never signs up can watch the numbers move; adding an expense is what the account is for.
Where the two differ
| Peanut Split | Settle Up | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Open a link, type a name | An account, then invite by link or QR code |
| What the group sees about you | The name you typed | Your name, your email address and your profile picture |
| Cost | Free forever, no paid tier, no ads | Free to use, with parts of it behind a Premium plan |
| Chasing people | Nothing. Split will not remind anybody | Reminds group members and nudges them to settle |
| Netting debts | A short payment plan, always on | Transfers debts to cut the number of transactions; can be off |
| Currencies | 158 currencies, converted at the day's rate | Every currency, at a downloaded rate you can edit |
| Offline | New expenses queue on the phone; recording a payment needs a signal | Works with no signal and syncs when it comes back |
Settle Up rows are taken from settleup.io (homepage, /tips, /tos, /privacy_policy) and its US App Store listing, read in July 2026.
What moves across, and what stays
Settle Up data does not import into a room. Settle Up will pull the members and balances of a Splitwise group in for you; there is no equivalent coming the other way, no file to upload and nothing to connect.
What you carry over is the position: what each person is up or down today, one line per person, so four people is four lines. The people themselves carry nothing at all, because there is no account for them to make.
What stays is everything Settle Up kept for you: the itemised history, the receipt photos, the categories, the monthly ones that generated themselves. Leave that group open. All of it is still correct, and it is the only place that history exists.
Move at a boundary rather than in the middle. A trip is over on the last night; a flatshare is easier to move on the first of a month than on the nineteenth.
When Settle Up is the better tool
If your group is fine with accounts, Settle Up is the more complete product and you should use it. Some groups should not move at all.
Groups that go where the signal does not. Settle Up is straightforward about this, and the difference is not a small one:
No internet? No problem — it works offline and syncs when you're back.
Split needs a connection to open a room the first time, because the room lives on a server rather than inside the link. After that, expenses typed with no signal wait on your phone and go when it comes back. Recording a settle-up waits for a connection on purpose: a payment written down twice is worse than one written down late. A week on a trail belongs to Settle Up.
Groups that need somebody chased. Settle Up reminds group members automatically and nudges them to settle their debts. Split will not chase anybody, so there are no reminders and no nudges into the group chat, and nothing arrives on a friend's phone with your name on it. If what your group actually needs is a machine that does the asking every month, that is a feature and Split does not have it.
Groups with a standing arrangement. Rent, the bills, the subscription somebody fronts every month. Settle Up generates a recurring expense on its own and notifies everybody, stores receipt photos, sorts spending into categories and draws charts of it. Those sit behind its Premium plan, and its terms say so plainly: some parts of the service are paid, some are free. Group Premium is a one-time payment covering everyone in one group, which is the version to look at if you would rather not hold a subscription.
Groups bigger than twenty. A room holds up to twenty people. Above that, the choice is not between these two.
Settle Up also gives you a choice about the settling maths that Split does not. It transfers debts to cut the number of payments, then tells you what that costs:
It minimizes the number of transactions between people by transferring debts, so you might end up paying to somebody you don't directly owe.
You can switch that off in Settle Up and pay only what you directly owe. A room has no such switch. It nets, and the plan it hands back can route you through somebody you never bought a drink for.
No bank or wallet sits behind Split. Two people settle however they settle, cash or a transfer or whichever app both of them already have, and one of them taps to record it. Split does not check that it arrived and cannot.
That is the trade. Less product, and nothing asked of anyone who opens the link.
Try it on the next dinner
Send the link to the group. Whoever opens it can add what they paid from the first second.
Start a splitQuestions
- Do I need an account for Split?
- No. A room is a web link. Whoever opens it types a name and starts adding expenses. No app store, no account, no email, no password.
- Is Split free forever?
- Yes. Split is free forever, with nothing to upgrade to and no ads. Peanut makes it to introduce people to Peanut, which is how Split gets paid for.
- Can we bring our Settle Up balances across?
- By typing them, not by importing them. There is no file to upload and nothing to connect. Put in what each person is up or down today as one line each, and anything already settled in Settle Up stays settled there.
- How do I get back into a room?
- You reopen the link. Nothing to log in to, so the link is the key. Keep it in the group chat, and note that opening a room the first time needs a connection.