Features
What Splitmate actually does
Eleven things, each one checked against the app's own source rather than against its README or its release notes — and as of release 1.3.1. The last section is the other half: the list of things Splitmate does not do, so you can find out here instead of after installing it. Skip to what it does not do
One ledger, group and solo
Your share of a group expense turns up in your own spending automatically — your share only, never the whole bill you fronted. It is the reason Splitmate exists: the Me tab already knows about the dinner you split on Tuesday, without you entering it twice.
- Pay for three people and your own spending goes up by a third of the bill, not all of it. The rest sits in the group as money owed to you, so a round you paid for does not look like a month of overspending.
- The Me tab is one month at a time: a single figure for what you spent, over a feed grouped by day, with solo and split entries side by side. Step back through earlier months; the arrow stops at this one.
- Recategorise one of those mirrored rows and Splitmate stops overwriting your choice. Unlink it and it leaves the row alone permanently.
- Recurring expenses go into your own ledger only — rent, a phone bill, a weekly class — daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Each one either adds itself on the day or waits on the Me tab for you to tap Add. Groups are never charged on a schedule, and this is an Android-app feature: the browser has no personal ledger to put one in.
Split it the way it actually happened
The amount comes first, entered on your phone’s own keyboard rather than one Splitmate draws — description, date, an optional note and a category follow it. Pick a date after today and Splitmate refuses it, both in the date picker and again if one slips through some other way.
- Equal, Amounts, % or Shares, across whichever members were actually there — in the group’s own currency, chosen from over 40 currencies. Tap what is left of a split to give the remainder to someone.
- Every entry is either Just me or a group, picked from a single chip. The payer chip only appears once there is a group to pay for, and Splitmate will not save until you have said who paid. A new expense in a group starts from the payer and split that group used last time.
- Type the description and a tinted category chip fills itself in — from your own past corrections first, a built-in keyword list second, and, only if neither has an answer, whichever category the group itself has spent on most. It never overrides a category you tapped yourself.
- Fewer taps for the common cases: Today and Yesterday chips under the date, simple sums in the amount (type 120+45; there is a + key, because a number keypad has none), and Save & add another for a run of receipts. Close the form with something typed and it asks before throwing it away.
- On Android, long-press the app icon for an Add expense shortcut, or turn on the Quick add notification in Settings for one that sits in your notification shade. It is off until you switch it on, and Android may let you swipe it away. The browser’s home-screen icon offers the same shortcut where the browser supports one.
Read it first, then add to it
Tap an expense or a recorded payment and it opens to be read, not edited — Edit is a button inside, so a thumb landing on the wrong row changes nothing. An edit that moves the amount by more than half either way asks you to confirm it, and a changed expense is marked Edited, with the name of whoever changed it.
- Duplicate an expense from its view to start a new one from it — dated today, with you as the one who added it. It copies once; it does not repeat.
- Attach one receipt photo to an expense, from the camera or the gallery on Android, or your device’s own camera or file picker once you have signed in with Google in the web app. Every member of the group can see it, and any member can replace or remove it. The photo is shrunk and re-saved on your device before it goes up, which drops the location the camera recorded. Nothing reads it — Splitmate does not scan receipts, so you still type the amount.
- Comment on an expense — “was this the dinner or the drinks?” — and the person who added it, the person who paid and anyone who already commented get a notification with the start of your comment in it. Comments are shared with the whole group and need a connection.
- Delete on your own comment hides it from the group; it does not erase it, and the text stays on the server. Deleting the expense also removes its receipt photo and its comments from the server, within about two days. Receipts and comments are not end-to-end encrypted, the same as the rest of a group.
Know what changed while you were away
Open a group and what other people added since you last looked on this phone or browser is marked New, and what they changed is marked Edited by them. The Groups list says how many changes are waiting, so you can see which group moved before you open it.
- Tap any balance — a member’s, or your own position — and What makes this up lists the expenses and payments behind it. Its total is always the balance you tapped.
- Filter a group’s expenses by who paid, by category, by the ones you are in, or by this month, in any combination. Filters reset when you leave, so a forgotten one never hides anything next time.
- Search a group by description, amount, member or note, from one tap above the list.
- Every edit to an expense, a payment, or the group’s name and settings is kept in the group’s history: who changed it, when, and what it was before. Nobody can delete or rewrite that history, the person who made the change included.
Settle up in fewer payments
Splitmate works out who should pay whom so a tangle of balances clears in as few transfers as it can, then records the payment you actually made. It never moves money — and when the last balance reaches zero, the group throws confetti.
- The suggestion is computed on your own phone with no server involved, and it never needs more than one payment per person minus one. Every device in the group works it out identically, so nobody sees a different plan. Switch to Who owes whom to see the debts as they were actually run up instead.
- Record payment with the method you actually used — Cash, UPI or Other — for the full amount, half, or whatever part was paid. It takes one tap and offers Undo for a few seconds, and that is a label on a record of something that already happened, not a transfer Splitmate makes.
- If you owe someone in a rupee group, Pay via UPI opens your own UPI app with their UPI ID and the amount filled in, and Splitmate records nothing until you tell it you paid — what happens in that app, it cannot see. You type their UPI ID once; it is saved only on this phone or in this browser, and never sent to the group. It works the same in the web app once you have signed in with Google.
- If someone owes you, Send a nudge has Splitmate’s server send them a notification saying how much you are asking for — once per person per group per day. Remind is the other way: it writes a message and hands it to your Android share sheet, so it goes out from WhatsApp or SMS under your name.
A deadline you cannot quietly delete
Give a group a settlement date, an amount you are willing to be owed, or both, and anyone still short gets reminded. Then, for them, the settings lock.
- The lock needs two things at once: you owe money in that group, and a trigger is already live — the date has passed, or your debt is over the limit. Miss either and it is an ordinary editable form.
- Both arms lock together, because raising a threshold is exactly as easy as deleting a deadline. Editing the trigger away was the loophole; this is the thing that closes it.
- Reminders are local notifications the Android app schedules on your own phone — every four hours, daily, every two days, weekly, or a number of hours you pick with a floor of four — and none of them arrive between ten at night and eight in the morning.
Talk about it where the bill is
A thread for every group, and only groups: there are no one-to-one messages in Splitmate, so the only way anybody reaches you is a group you both joined. There is no user directory and nothing to search.
- Reply to a message, copy it, pin it to the top of the thread, or delete it for everyone, with typing indicators and delivery and read receipts on the ones you sent. Text only on either client, up to 2,000 characters — no voice notes and no files.
- A new message pushes a notification to the phone — unless you already have that thread open there, in which case it stays quiet. Open the thread the ordinary way and whatever was already sitting in the tray for it clears itself.
- Deleting for everyone leaves a tombstone rather than a hole: the text is erased on both sides and the row stays, so a conversation cannot be quietly rewritten. Messages are stored as ordinary text on the server behind access rules, and they are not end-to-end encrypted — treat a Splitmate chat like an ordinary group chat, not a secure messenger.
- Every group's chat is in the browser too, once you have signed in with Google. The browser keeps only the latest message of each thread for its chat list, and has no outbox, which is the difference worth knowing: a message that fails to send comes back into the box for you to try again, because there is no outbox to hold it and nothing to send it later.
One feed, not one per group
Every expense, settlement, edit, group rename, chat message and membership change — across every group at once, not one at a time — lands in a single feed, newest first, grouped by month and then by which conversation it belongs to. It is a tab of its own, alongside Groups, Chats and Me, not a screen tucked inside one group.
- A row about money — an expense added, a payment settled — renders as a tinted card with a category icon and a right-aligned amount. A chat message or someone joining or leaving is a plain, uncoloured line with neither, so what actually cost something is what draws the eye.
- Filter by type, category or person, in any combination — picking a category shows only the matching expenses, and picking a person shows only their activity, across every group at once. Tap a row to jump straight to the group or thread it came from; that marks just the one row read, and a separate button clears everything else in one tap.
- The newest 500 events are kept. Past that, the oldest are dropped to make room for new ones — not archived anywhere, just gone.
- There is a feed in the browser too, worked out from your groups; Just-me expenses, which are view-only there, never appear in it. It is not this one arriving there: this one is a table on the phone that is never synced, so a second client has nothing to fetch and works out its own from the groups instead. Two feeds, not one seen twice — which is why what you have already read on one of them does not carry to the other.
Charts & export, and Analysis
Charts & export is one screen off the Me tab, for the month you are looking at or any range you pick, filtered to just you, to all groups, or to one of them. Every group also has an Analysis tab of its own, beside Expenses and Balances, on the phone and in the web app, where you sign in with Google.
- A category donut whose legend adds up to exactly 100%. The percentages are apportioned against the total rather than rounded one by one, so they cannot quietly sum to 99.
- A cumulative trend line across the range, and — inside a single group — a bar per payer, so it is obvious who has been fronting everything.
- A group’s Analysis tab adds who paid against their fair share, month by month totals, its busiest days, its biggest expenses and who still has to settle up. It works in the group’s own currency; anything spent in another currency is listed underneath as its own total, kept per currency.
- Export exactly what is on screen as a CSV: nine columns, ISO dates, and plain numbers a spreadsheet will read as numbers. In a group, the export button sits at the top of Analysis and names the range it will write. On the phone the file goes to the Android share sheet; the web app saves it as a file instead. Export only, in one direction; nothing comes back in.
Trips, recaps and money in two currencies
Give a group a start and an end date and it becomes a trip: its Analysis tab gains a Trip view and a day-by-day list of what was spent. It is the same group either way — dates add a view, not a new kind of group, and they set no deadline.
- A Recap card sums up a month, or the whole trip: what the group spent and across how many expenses, its biggest day, its top expenses, and who still owes whom. Share recap hands that summary on as text, for wherever your group actually talks.
- In the Android app, turn on Monthly recap reminder in Settings and a notification on the first of the month says a group’s recap is ready. It names the group and the month, carries no amounts, and is off until you turn it on. The browser does not send it.
- A group can allow expenses in other currencies, for a trip abroad. Each expense keeps its own currency, and balances, settling up and totals are kept per currency and shown side by side — nothing is converted and nothing is added across currencies. Everyone in the group needs the latest version first: an older one shows wrong balances for those expenses, and the app says so before you switch it on. Nudges only ask for the group’s own currency.
No account, and no ads
No signup, no email, no password, no phone number, and no directory anyone can look you up in. You give it your name and a currency, and you are in.
- Expenses you log as Just me never leave the phone unless you turn on the optional backup in Settings, which starts off. Leave it off and they live only in a database on the device.
- Groups are the part that syncs: expenses, member names and profile pictures, settlements, chat, the edit history, and the receipt photos and comments every member of the group can see go to the cloud, which is what lets everyone stay square. The ledger still works offline in between.
- No ads, no advertising ID and no billing code. The Android app does send Google two things: seven analytics events — finishing onboarding, creating a group, sharing an invite, opening one, joining a group, adding an expense and settling up — none of which carries an amount, a name or anything you typed, and a crash report when the app fails. The privacy page lists exactly what each one holds.
The other half
What Splitmate does not do
- There is no iPhone app, and none is planned. Splitmate is an Android app. On an iPhone, use the web client instead: you sign in with Google, and everything you add or change there belongs to a group you are in. Its Me tab shows your share of the expenses in the groups you are in and, if you also log Just-me expenses on an Android phone with the backup turned on, those too — view-only, because they are added and edited on the phone. What the browser is, and is not
- It is not connected to your bank, and it never moves money. Nothing is ever paid from inside Splitmate. Pay via UPI only opens your own UPI app with the amount filled in; the paying happens there, and Splitmate records it as Cash, UPI or Other only when you say it happened. It never marks anything paid by itself.
- It carries no exchange rates and does no currency conversion. A group can allow expenses in other currencies, and then every balance and total is kept per currency, side by side, never added together. A total across groups that do not share a currency is suppressed rather than added up.
- Splitmate does not scan receipts. You type the amount. A receipt photo on an expense is a picture every member of the group can see, and nothing reads it.
- There are no budgets, and nothing repeats inside a group. Nothing sets a limit or compares against one. Recurring expenses exist only in your own ledger, in the Android app; a group is never charged on a schedule.
- Export only — nothing comes back in. Charts & export and every group’s Analysis tab write a CSV out. There is no path in the other direction: no file picker on any entry screen, and nothing that reads a spreadsheet.
- Chats are text only — no voice notes, no files and no reactions. That is true of both clients, and so is the 2,000-character limit on a single message. Deleting one for everyone erases the words and leaves the row where it was, so a conversation cannot be quietly rewritten.
- There are no one-to-one messages. Every conversation belongs to a group, on both clients, so the only way anybody reaches you is a group you both joined.
- Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. They travel over an encrypted connection and sit behind server-side rules, and they are stored as ordinary text, which means we could read them if we looked. Treat a Splitmate chat like an ordinary group chat, not a secure messenger. The privacy page says it in full
Getting it
Two ways in: Google Play, or your browser
On an Android phone, install Splitmate from Google Play — it is free, and Play keeps it updated. There is nothing on this site to download. The second way works in any phone browser, including an iPhone, since there is no iPhone app: open the web client and sign in with Google. It has your groups plus a view-only Me tab, and it keeps working without a connection for reading your groups and adding expenses, which sync once you are back.