TripCount Blog

Tricount alternatives in 2026: 6 apps for groups that need more than a ledger

· By Albert Ripol

Tricount has been the European answer to Splitwise for over a decade, and Bunq’s 2022 acquisition cemented its position as the default in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain. It is a good ledger — the math is solid, the network effect is real, and “everyone in my group already has Tricount” is a fair reason to use it. But the question “what’s the best app to split group trip expenses?” has new constraints in 2026: privacy, AI receipt scanning, multi-currency travel, regional payment rails (Bizum, Revolut), and the simple reality that owning the app belongs to a bank changes the trust calculus1. Here is the honest tour of six credible alternatives.

“Tricount is the European default and probably what most of your friends already have. We’re a competitor and we still think it’s a good product. This post exists because the category has moved and ‘just use Tricount’ leaves money, privacy and convenience on the table for a non-trivial share of groups.” — Albert Ripol, founder of TripCount

The scoring rubric

Six apps, scored 0-3 on five dimensions:

  1. Pricing for the things that matter (OCR, multi-currency, unlimited groups).
  2. End-to-end encryption of expense data.
  3. Multi-currency with live FX (rate captured at the moment of the expense, not at settlement).
  4. Payout rails (Bizum / Revolut / PayPal / IBAN / cash-only).
  5. Languages, especially regional EU coverage.

Scoring is opinionated and based on the apps’ own published documentation as of May 2026.

AppPricingE2EEMulti-FXPayoutsLanguagesVibe
TripCount3 (free + €3 one-time)3 (AES-GCM)3 (per-expense)3 (Bizum + Revolut + PayPal)3 (48 incl. regional EU)The 2026 alternative
Splitwise1 (Pro $5/mo paywall)02 (Pro only)1 (PayPal/Venmo)1 (~10 mainstream)The US leader
Settle Up2 (free + Premium one-time)01 (manual rate)02 (~30)The Czech indie
Splid2 (free with ads)00 (single currency)00 (EN + DE only)Lowest-friction onboarding
Spliit3 (free + open source)0 (hosted) / self-host21 (manual)1The open-source choice
Sesterce2 (free + paid tier)021 (manual + PayPal)1 (FR + a few others)The French alternative

The scoring is biased — TripCount is my product. The framing is honest: each app’s strength is real, and “best Tricount alternative” depends on what’s missing for your specific group.

1. TripCount — the 2026 alternative

TripCount is what I built because I couldn’t find an app that did all of the following at once: free AI receipt OCR, end-to-end encryption, one-tap Bizum payouts, live multi-currency FX, and Catalan as a first-class language. Cost is €0 for unlimited trips with a one-time €3 per group to raise OCR + media caps from 5 to 500. Hosted in Frankfurt on Hetzner; expense data is encrypted client-side with AES-GCM before it ever reaches the server2. See the full TripCount vs Tricount comparison for the side-by-side feature table.

Strengths: free OCR, Bizum/Revolut deep links, AES-GCM client-side encryption, 50 languages including 11 regional European ones, multi-currency with per-expense FX capture.

Limits: domain is days old (founded May 2026), so brand recognition is essentially zero. We’re trying to fix that.

2. Splitwise — still the US default

Splitwise is the US market leader; in 2026 it still has the largest network effect in the category. Receipt OCR is locked behind Pro at USD 5/month (£4 in the UK). Multi-currency conversion is also Pro-only. PayPal and Venmo are the only payout integrations — both weak rails in Europe. No end-to-end encryption advertised. About 10 mainstream languages.

Pick this if: most of your group is American, you need the network effect of “everyone already has the app”, and OCR isn’t worth USD 5/month to you.

Skip if: you’re in Europe and want Bizum or Revolut, you split a few receipts a month and don’t want to pay for OCR, or you care about end-to-end encryption.

See the full TripCount vs Splitwise comparison.

3. Settle Up — the Czech indie

Settle Up has been around since 2013, built by a small Czech team. The free tier is generous and the Premium one-time upgrade unlocks unlimited groups and exports. No AI receipt OCR. Multi-currency works but the FX rate is manual — you set it per expense. No native Bizum/Revolut/PayPal deep links: the “settle” view tells you who owes whom and you handle the payment outside the app. About 30 languages.

Pick this if: you want a free, no-frills ledger and your group is happy entering expenses by hand.

Skip if: you’re scanning more than a handful of receipts per trip, you need one-tap settle-up, or you want live FX.

See the full TripCount vs Settle Up comparison.

4. Splid — the German “no account” app

Splid’s selling point is friction-to-start: no account, scan a code, start splitting. Mobile only — there’s no web app. No AI features at all, single currency, two languages (EN + DE). For a 30-minute dinner with three people, Splid is excellent: the on-ramp is the fastest of any app in this list.

Pick this if: you’re a German-speaking group, the trip is short, and “let’s not create a new account” is a real constraint.

Skip if: someone in your group is on a desktop, you need OCR, you’re spending in multiple currencies, or you want to keep the trip data across phone changes.

See the full TripCount vs Splid comparison.

5. Spliit — the open-source choice

Spliit is an open-source web app (Apache-licensed) that handles the core ledger well. Receipt scanning exists but is less developed than dedicated OCR apps. No native end-to-end encryption on the hosted version — but you can self-host with docker compose up, which solves the trust question if you have the time. Multi-currency works. No one-tap payout links — you mark transfers as settled manually.

Pick this if: you’re a developer who wants to self-host, or you care about being able to audit the code.

Skip if: you want the hosted product to have privacy guarantees baked in, you don’t want to manage your own server, or you need OCR depth.

See the full TripCount vs Spliit comparison.

6. Sesterce — the French alternative

Sesterce is a French app with a clean model for managing both expenses and intra-group transfers (e.g., “I gave Mireia 50 € during the trip” counts as a transfer, not a shared expense). Generous free tier, paid upgrade for power features. No AI receipt OCR advertised. Multi-currency supported. Settle-up is manual + PayPal. Mostly French + English, plus a few others.

Pick this if: you’re a French or Belgian group and the “expenses + transfers + income” model fits how your trips work.

Skip if: you want AI OCR, you need Bizum, or you want end-to-end encryption.

See the full TripCount vs Sesterce comparison.

How to actually pick

Two heuristics:

  1. Network effect beats features in small groups. For a 2-3 person trip where everyone is already on Tricount, switching is rarely worth it. The benefit of better features doesn’t beat the cost of “convince two friends to install a new app”.
  2. Features win as group size and trip length grow. For 5+ people over 4+ days with multi-currency expenses, the difference between “AI OCR + multi-FX + one-tap Bizum” and “manual entry + manual FX + manual IBAN” is several hours of saved time and noticeably less post-trip arguing.

If your trips look like (1), Tricount or Splitwise is fine. If they look like (2), TripCount was built for you. Try the free split-bill calculator without signup if you want to test the math against your trip first.

FAQ

Q: Is Tricount really owned by Bunq? A: Yes. Bunq, the Dutch challenger bank, acquired Tricount in 2022. The app is still free with no in-app ads, but it’s now a customer-acquisition channel for Bunq’s banking products — payouts route preferentially through the Bunq ecosystem.

Q: Which Tricount alternative is free? A: Most of them. Splitwise is freemium (OCR behind paywall). Settle Up, Splid, Spliit, Sesterce and TripCount are all free for the core. TripCount adds a one-time €3 per group for raised OCR + media caps. None of these require a subscription.

Q: Which Tricount alternative has receipt OCR? A: TripCount has free AI OCR with a per-group quota. Splitwise has OCR behind Pro at USD 5/month. Spliit has basic receipt scanning. The other three (Tricount, Settle Up, Splid, Sesterce) don’t have AI-driven OCR as of May 2026.

Q: Which is the best Tricount alternative for European groups? A: For pure free-with-no-OCR, Tricount itself is hard to beat — the network effect is real. For groups that want OCR, multi-currency FX, end-to-end encryption and Bizum/Revolut deep links, TripCount is the closer 2026 fit. For everyone else, the table at the top of this post lists the strengths of each.

Q: Can I migrate my Tricount to another app? A: Tricount exports the tricount as CSV. Most alternatives accept manual entry that matches the same data model. For TripCount specifically, the CSV → paste workflow works for equal splits. Complex migrations: email [email protected].

Footnotes

  1. Bunq announced the Tricount acquisition in March 2022. Tricount continues to be developed under the Bunq umbrella; the financial implications of trip data sitting inside a regulated bank’s data perimeter are not, in 2026, fully understood from a customer perspective. ↩

  2. TripCount’s threat model and key handling are documented in the AI transparency and security pages at https://trip-count.com/ai-transparency. Zero-knowledge (where no escrowed envelope key sits on the server) is on the 2026 roadmap. ↩