EventSplit vs Tricount: What's Behind a Free App

Since June 2026, Tricount has been billed as completely free: the subscription was wound down, and there are no in-app purchases on the App Store. Next to Splitwise with its daily limits and Settle Up with its full-screen ads, that looks like an easy call — why even look at anything else.

Because somebody still pays for a free app. In May 2022 Tricount was acquired by the neobank bunq, and the monetization has been visible from the outside ever since: inside the app you can link a bunq account so purchases made with its card get added automatically, and the help center offers you a free credit card. It's a legitimate and common model, but it has two consequences for the product, and both are worth knowing before you drag your whole group in there.

"Settle Up Right in the App" Doesn't Work Everywhere

The main thing Tricount got from the bank is the promise of closing a debt without leaving the app. On the website it reads: "Send a payment request straight from the app and get paid directly to your bank account."

Now the fine print. Tricount's own help center says this about those request links: "This feature is available only in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium for now!" Not Europe — four countries. To receive money through it you have to connect your own bank account by IBAN, and payment goes through Bancontact, iDEAL or Sofort. A credit card works too, but then a 2.5% fee comes out of the person receiving the money back: you're owed $100, and $97.50 arrives.

What that means for a group in Austin, Toronto, São Paulo or Bangalore: the promised in-app payment collapses into exactly what their own glossary calls it — "a reminder sent to group members to settle their share." The separate feature that pulls card purchases in automatically only works for bunq customers, and bunq is a European bank: it holds no US banking license, having only filed an application in early 2026, a second attempt after withdrawing the previous one.

EventSplit picked the opposite side here — the user's side. We don't move money at all, and we don't plan to: how a debt gets paid is up to the people settling it, not up to the app.

That's not a cop-out, it's a realistic look at the world. There is an enormous number of payment systems and banks out there, and everyone already has their own habitual way of handing money over: Pix in Brazil, UPI in India, Venmo or Zelle in the US, a plain SEPA transfer or Revolut in Europe, a phone-number transfer inside your own bank somewhere else — and plenty of groups just settle in cash. All of it is instant, free, and works without us. Building one payment button instead would be telling users: the method you already use doesn't interest us, use ours — in four countries, with a fee.

We don't control the money, we control the deal. The app records who owes whom and how much, one side marks that they sent it, the other confirms they received it, and the debt is closed. How the money actually traveled — a transfer, a phone number, cash across the table — the app doesn't ask and doesn't restrict. Which is why settling up in EventSplit works the same in Austin, São Paulo, Bangalore and Amsterdam: there's nothing here to break.

Features Disappear Along With the Owner

The second consequence of the acquisition: the app moved onto the bank's infrastructure, and some familiar features stayed behind in the old version. CSV and PDF export, category statistics, personal mode, and saved custom split schemes all went away with Premium. In Tricount's help center, statistics and saved splits are still marked as "planned for a future update" — and have been since June. Export isn't promised back at all. App Store reviewers regularly call this a dealbreaker, most often the ones who ran a shared household in the app for years.

EventSplit has no export either — on that we're exactly at parity with Tricount, and pretending otherwise would be silly. What differs is something else: nobody bought us, and what happens next is decided by us together with our users, not by an owner from another industry. We're slower — but we only move in one direction.

Whoever Logs the Expense Picks Who Was In On It

This difference has nothing to do with the bank; it would exist even if Tricount had never been acquired.

Tricount splits an expense evenly, by shares, or by custom amounts. There's plenty of flexibility. But with any of those, one person enters the expense and that same person ticks the boxes for who took part in it.

It seems like a small thing — right up until a box gets ticked wrong. Someone left early and didn't have dessert, someone wasn't drinking the wine, someone took their own taxi. The person entering the expense isn't obliged to remember any of that: they weren't keeping track of who had what, they paid the bill and split it in a way that seemed reasonable.

Then comes the unpleasant part. To fix it, you have to notice someone else's checkbox inside someone else's expense, recall the details of that evening, and start a money conversation with your friends over a small amount. Most people stay quiet and pay. That silent "never mind, forget it" is the actual reason group expenses become a topic at all — not the arithmetic.

In EventSplit the decision is taken away from any single person: whoever paid logs the expense, and each participant marks for themselves what they personally took part in. A line item splits evenly only among the people who marked themselves into it. There's nothing to argue about — nobody decided anything for you.

We deliberately don't add percentage or share-based splitting, even though it would look more flexible. That math doesn't close: buy a liter of whiskey, have everyone name their portion, and the total comes to 600 milliliters — the remaining 400 goes on nobody's tab. So we kept one mode: a line item splits evenly among the people who marked themselves. It balances to the cent, and there's nothing to contest — everyone put themselves on the list.

The event creator can log an expense or mark participation for someone who dropped offline. But that's visible to that person and to the whole group, and they can correct it: by default everyone logs their own, and the exception stays in plain sight.

A Flat List vs. Structure

In Tricount, expenses live in a single list. For a dinner or a weekend that's enough. On a two-week trip with flights, lodging, a rental car, day trips and a dozen dinners, you get a feed of fifty-odd lines where, a week later, you can't tell which day was which or who even went on what.

EventSplit has nested event groups (Premium): the whole trip, days or legs inside it, events inside each day. You can look at the math for the entire trip or for a single day. It helps exactly when part of the group arrived late, someone left early, and not everyone went on the excursion — each of those stays inside its own day.

How a Debt Actually Gets Closed

In EventSplit the finish is one step: the event creator taps "Calculate," and each participant gets a push with a specific transaction — who sends how much to whom. Not a balance you have to interpret, but a ready list of transfers. The whole calculation is open to the entire group, not just the organizer — anyone can see every expense and who took part in what.

If the person owed the money has Premium, whoever owes it gets daily reminders until they send the money and confirm it. It's persistent — but it's the app doing the reminding, not you, and that's what saves you from writing to your friends about money yourself.

How the debt gets paid is still up to them and the recipient — the app isn't waiting for money to land in an account of ours, it's waiting for both sides to confirm. Agreed to send it to a card? Good. Handed over cash on the spot? Closed just the same.

What We Charge For

Since we're comparing against a free app, let's be direct about where we charge. The core flow is free and ad-free: create an event, log expenses, get the "who owes whom" math. The free tier's limits are up to 10 participants per event, one photo per event, no event groups, and no debtor reminders. Premium costs $3.99 a month or $39.90 a year and adds nested groups, up to 25 participants, up to 10 photos, and reminders.

We make money on subscriptions, not on walking you into a bank. Which is both why we can't afford to be free, and why we have nothing to sell you except the app itself.

Who It's For

EventSplit is built for a recurring group of three or more — people who travel together more than once, live near each other, or share a rental for a season. The install pays for itself once, and in return you get a calculation where everyone marked their own participation, a structure that doesn't fall apart on a long trip, and no promises that stop working outside the EU.

The Tricount details in this article were gathered from public sources — the help center, the website, and the App Store and Google Play listings — and are accurate as of August 10, 2026. Pricing and features change across all of these apps; if you're reading this later, it's worth checking with the original source.