A free Splitwise alternative without the sign-up: what's really possible

You send the link to the group chat. “Let’s just use this, it’s free.”

Two people install it in the next ten minutes. One asks whether it needs their phone number. One says they’ll do it later, and does not do it later. One is on an old Android and reports that it “didn’t work”, with no further detail, ever.

By Thursday you’re back on the note in your phone, adding things up manually, and the app is still sitting on two people’s home screens doing nothing.

This is why people search for a splitting app without registration. It’s almost never about privacy paperwork. It’s about the fact that a shared expense app is only as good as the least willing person in the group — and every extra step loses somebody.

So let’s be straight about what “no sign-up” can and can’t deliver.

Three different things people mean

“I want a calculator, not an account.” Entirely reasonable, and entirely achievable. A restaurant bill split six ways at the table is arithmetic. A web page can do that with no account, no install and no data leaving your phone.

The catch is that it holds nothing. Close the tab and it’s gone. That’s fine for one dinner and useless for a week in Lisbon, because there’s nothing to come back to.

“I don’t want to hand over personal details.” Also reasonable. But this is a question about what an app asks for, not whether it asks for anything. A sign-in that’s just Apple or Google — no phone number, no address book access, no card — is a different proposition from a registration form that wants your mobile number “to find your friends”.

“I don’t want my friends to have to do anything.” The real one, and the honest answer is: you can get this close to zero, but not to zero. Here’s why.

The bit nobody explains

Shared balances that stay in sync need identity. There’s no way around it.

If your flatmate adds the electricity bill on their phone and you need to see it on yours a minute later, something has to know that the person adding it is a particular member of a particular group, and that you’re another one. That’s what an account is. It isn’t a marketing formality; it’s the mechanism that makes the numbers appear on more than one device.

Which means anything advertising “completely without registration” is doing one of these:

• It’s local-only. Nothing syncs. It’s a private calculator that happens to have a nice interface — genuinely useful for a single evening, no help at all for a trip.
• One person has an account and the rest get a link. Real and often good, but the balance still lives in one person’s account. If they stop using it, or lose their phone, the group’s history goes with them.
• It’s assigning you an invisible account anyway, tied to the device. Which works right up until you change phones, at which point everything is gone and there’s no way to recover it, because there was never anything to recover it to.

None of these are scams. They’re trade-offs, and they’re fine if you know which one you’re getting.

The realistic best case

For a group that runs longer than one evening, this is what genuinely low-friction looks like:

• Sign in with Apple or Google. One tap. No form, no password to invent, no phone number.
• No card, ever, at any point. Not even for a “free trial”.
• Invite by link. You send a link; they tap it. Nobody searches for anybody’s username, and nobody has to upload their contacts to find the people they’re already standing next to.
• Free for every member. This is the one people underestimate. If the app charges per person, every friend now faces a purchasing decision before they can pay you back, and you have converted a £14 debt into a sales pitch.
• In their language. An interface someone doesn’t read comfortably is friction just as real as a registration form — it’s simply less visible to whoever picked the app.

That’s about fifteen seconds per person, and fifteen seconds is a threshold most groups clear.

The other half of the question: does it stay free?

“Free” and “no sign-up” get searched together for a reason — they’re the same instinct, which is don’t put obstacles between me and the thing I’m trying to do.

So it’s worth checking, once, before you move six people onto something:

• Is there a cap on how many expenses you can add? A limit on adding expenses isn’t a premium feature being withheld, it’s the app itself being withheld. (More on that here.)
• Are there ads? And specifically, are they between you and your balances?
• Is receipt scanning included, or is it the thing you’re meant to upgrade for?
• Does multi-currency work without paying? It’s free until you leave the country, which is when you need it.
• What happens if you stop paying — read-only, locked, or deleted?

An app that answers those cleanly is free in the way people mean it. Plenty don’t.

Where Donget fits

Donget needs an account, and we’d rather say so plainly than claim otherwise. What it doesn’t need:

• No password to invent — sign in with Apple or Google, one tap.
• No credit card, at any point, for anything.
• No contact list upload. Share an invite link; whoever taps it joins.
• Free for everyone in the group. Nobody buys anything to settle up with you.
• 10 languages, including proper right-to-left for Persian and Arabic — so the app isn’t a barrier for whoever in the group didn’t pick it.

And then the parts that decide whether the group is still using it in March: unlimited expenses with no daily cap, no ads, free AI receipt scanning, five ways to split, multiple currencies in one group, and a settle-up that works out the fewest payments to make everyone even.

If you want it side by side, there’s a Donget vs Splitwise comparison, and a broader look at the best free Splitwise alternatives.

Getting a group onto it in one evening

The trick isn’t persuasion. It’s timing.

1. Do it while everyone’s together. Not in the group chat afterwards. At the table, after dinner, phones already out. Adoption at the table is near total; adoption by message is about half.
2. Log one real expense immediately — the one you just paid. An empty app gets deleted; an app showing that Marco owes you €23 does not.
3. Don’t explain the features. Nobody needs the tour. They need to see their own name and a number next to it.
4. Name it after something that already exists. “Flat 3B”, “Lisbon”, “Sunday football”. Groups named after a real thing get used. Groups named “Expenses” get abandoned.

The uncomfortable truth is that the app was never the hard part. Getting five other people to care for ninety seconds is the hard part — and the only reliable way to do that is to make it take fifteen seconds each and show them a number they recognise.

Download Donget free — one tap to sign in, no card, and nothing to pay for later.