What is Tricount and how does it work? Free, no sign-up, and where it stops
Tricount is a free app for splitting group costs, owned by the bank bunq: start a tricount, share a link, log who paid, and it shows who owes whom. How it works, what it costs, and its limits.
Someone in the group has already made “a tricount” and dropped the link in the chat. You tap it, the app asks which name is yours, and a list of expenses appears — the house, the supermarket run, the fuel. If you have never used it, the obvious questions follow: what is this, is it really free, and what happens to the money?
Tricount is a shared ledger, not a payment app. It records who paid for what, works out who owes whom, and suggests the fewest payments to settle. The money itself moves however your group normally moves it. Once that is clear, everything else about it makes sense.
What Tricount is
Tricount is a free app for splitting costs in a group: a trip, a flatshare, a weekend away, a birthday present. It started in Belgium and was bought by bunq, an Amsterdam-based bank, in a deal announced in 2022; the app now presents itself as “tricount by bunq”. It is especially popular across Europe, and in many friend groups there it is simply the default.
A single group in Tricount is called a tricount. It has a name, a list of participants, a currency, and a list of expenses. That is the whole data model.
How a tricount works, step by step
- One person creates the tricount. Give it a name and a currency and type the participants’ names. No account is needed to start.
- Share the link. Everyone else opens it, picks their own name from the list and can start adding.
- Log each expense as it happens. Amount, what it was for, who paid, and who shares it. You can divide it equally or unevenly and attach a photo of the receipt.
- Watch the balance. Tricount keeps a running total per person: how much they paid against how much of the spending was theirs.
- Settle up. At the end it proposes a short list of payments that brings everyone to zero. You pay each other by bank transfer, cash or whatever you use, and mark the payments in the tricount.
Expenses can be added offline and sync when you are back online, which matters in the mountains or on a ferry.
A worked example: one weekend, four friends
Ana, Ben, Chloé and Dev rent a house for a weekend. Four expenses go into the tricount, each shared equally by all four:
| Expense | Paid by | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| The house | Ana | 300 € |
| Groceries | Ben | 84 € |
| Fuel | Chloé | 60 € |
| Dinner out | Dev | 196 € |
| Total | 640 € |
Each person’s share is 640 € ÷ 4 = 160 €. The balance is what they paid minus that share:
| Paid | Share | Balance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ana | 300 € | 160 € | +140 € |
| Ben | 84 € | 160 € | −76 € |
| Chloé | 60 € | 160 € | −100 € |
| Dev | 196 € | 160 € | +36 € |
The balances add up to zero, as they always must. Tricount then suggests three payments: Chloé pays Ana 100 €, Ben pays Ana 40 €, Ben pays Dev 36 €. Four expenses, three transfers, and nobody had to work out who owed whom for the fuel. Why the count comes out so low is explained in how debt simplification works.
What Tricount costs
Nothing. Expenses are uncapped, currencies are included, and every participant uses it free. The app shows some ads, and because it belongs to a bank it also offers a link to bunq: if you bank there, payments with your bunq card can be added to your tricounts automatically. Neither is required to split a bill.
That is the main contrast with Splitwise, whose free plan allows up to four expenses a day and keeps receipt scanning, currency conversion and itemized splitting for a paid tier. Splitwise vs Tricount puts the two side by side, and if you used the old paid tier, what changed in Tricount covers what went with it.
Currencies
A tricount has one main currency, and you can log each expense in the currency you actually paid in; Tricount converts it into the tricount’s currency for the balance. For a trip across a border that is exactly what you want. The method behind it — one home currency, convert once at settle-up — is in how to split bills across currencies.
Where Tricount stops
Tricount is deliberately simple, and three things follow from that.
It does not read receipts. You can attach the photo, but the amount is typed by hand. On a weekend that is fine. On a flatshare where three people shop every week, it is usually why logging quietly stops.
It splits an expense as a whole. There is no way to assign the lines of a bill to the people who had them. If one person skipped the wine, you work out the numbers yourself and type them in, or they pay for wine they did not drink. How to split a restaurant bill shows the arithmetic.
No account means a looser grip. Starting without sign-up is Tricount’s best feature for a one-off trip. For a group you will keep for years, it matters more that the data is attached to someone who can get back into it.
Does everyone need to install it?
No. Participants are names in the tricount, so one person can keep the record for someone who never installs anything and simply send them their total. The people who want to add expenses or check the balance for themselves need the app. The same trade-off applies to every splitting app, and how to split expenses when not everyone will install an app covers the options.
Where Donget comes in
Donget works the same way at its core — a shared record, balances, and Settle up proposing the fewest transfers — and it is also free, with no cap on expenses and no ads. It adds the two things Tricount leaves out: Scan receipt with AI turns a photo of the bill into a draft expense with the items listed, and Items and Costs assigns each line to whoever had it. People join through an Invite link and pick their name, and Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu lay out right-to-left.
Where it loses: it is mobile-first, its network is smaller than Tricount’s, and beyond a guest mode limited to two groups you sign in with Google or Apple. If the full field is what you are weighing, Tricount alternatives compared goes app by app.
Frequently asked questions
What is Tricount?
A free app for recording shared expenses in a group. It keeps a running balance for everyone and suggests the payments that settle the group. It started in Belgium and is now owned by the bank bunq.
Is Tricount free?
Yes: no cap on expenses and multiple currencies included. It shows some ads, and it has no receipt reading or item-by-item splitting at any price.
Do you need an account to use Tricount?
No. You can start a tricount without an account and invite the others by link. The trade-off is that the group is tied less firmly to a person.
Does everyone in the group need the Tricount app?
Only the people who want to add expenses or check the balance themselves. One person can log everything for a friend who never installs it and send them the total.
Can Tricount scan receipts?
No. You can attach a photo, but nothing reads it. Apps that read receipts include Donget, free, and Splitwise, on Pro.
Can I move my Splitwise groups to Tricount?
Tricount advertises an import of existing expenses from Splitwise. Either way, settle the open balances first so the new group starts from an agreed number.
The bottom line
Tricount is a free, uncapped ledger that anyone can join from a link, and for a weekend of equal splits it is hard to beat. It stops at typing: no receipt reading and no line-by-line split. If your group needs those, you do not have to pay for them.
Download Donget free and let the receipt fill in the expense — no cap, no ads, and item-by-item splitting included.
