Is there an expense-splitting app that works without an account?

Yes. Instead of signing in, one person creates a group and shares a short code with the others, and everyone who enters that code sees the same expenses and balances on their own phone. Splitright works this way, and several other apps also let you start without signing up.

What do you lose by using a splitting app with no account?

You lose the things an account provides: there is no personal history that follows you to a new phone, no email recovery if the group's code is lost, no way to remove one member's access while keeping everyone else's, and no support team that can look your data up and hand it back. A group lives at its code, so the code has to be kept.

How does joining a group with a code work?

One person creates the group and the app produces a six-character code, which they send to the others in whatever chat the group already uses. Each person opens the app, types the code, and is in the same group. The code is the access credential, so it should be treated like a password and never posted publicly.

When is an account-based app like Splitwise the better choice?

When the ledger runs for years between the same people and the balances must survive a lost phone, a reinstall or a switch between platforms; when you need features a small no-account app does not have, such as receipt scanning, categories, export or a web app; and when the group needs to be able to remove one member, which a shared code cannot do.

A Splitwise alternative that needs no account

What people are usually asking for

People searching for a splitting app with no account are rarely making a philosophical point about data. They have a concrete situation: five people at a table, one bill, and one person who is going to end up creating an account, verifying an email and setting a password before anyone can be told what they owe. Sometimes there is a housemate who will not install anything that asks for a phone number, and the whole tally collapses onto whoever is willing.

So the question behind the question is: can we get to the numbers without an onboarding step for every person? The answer is yes, and the cost is real and worth understanding before you commit a group to it. This page is written by the makers of one such app, so treat the recommendation accordingly — but the trade-offs below are the same whichever no-account app you pick.

What an account is actually for

It is easy to read a sign-up screen as pure friction. It is not: an account does four specific jobs, and an app without one has to either do them differently or not do them.

It says which person you are: An account is a stable identity, so the server knows that this device and that device belong to the same human. That is what lets an app show you every group you are in, on any device you log into, and what makes “you owe Sam £12” a statement about a person rather than about a name typed into a list.
It lets you get back in: An email address is a recovery channel. Lose your phone, reinstall the app, switch from iPhone to Android, and your history is still there because it was never attached to the device.
It makes access revocable, per person: Because members are individuals, one of them can be removed without disturbing anyone else.
It gives support something to look up: When something goes wrong, a support team can find your data, because it belongs to an identifiable account.

None of those are tricks to collect your details. They are the reason account-based apps — Splitwise being the most complete product in this category — are the right tool for a long-running ledger between the same people over years.

What you give up

Take away the account and you lose those four things. Concretely, in an app where a group is a shared code:

There is no personal history that follows you. A group lives at its code, not under your name. Install the app on a new phone and it opens empty: you get your groups back by entering their codes again, not by logging in. Nothing syncs “your” account across devices, because there is no account to sync.
If the code is lost, it is lost. There is no email to send a reset link to, and no way for us to prove a group is yours, so we cannot look it up and hand it back. The obvious mitigation is to keep the code somewhere dull and durable — the group chat, a note, a pinned message.
Access cannot be withdrawn from one person. The code is the credential, so whoever holds it can open the group and edit it. You cannot remove one member's access while keeping everyone else's; in practice the answer is a new group with a new code.
Names are labels, not identities. Two people called Sam need distinguishing by hand, and nothing stops someone editing an entry attributed to somebody else. This model assumes a group of people who trust each other — which a trip, a dinner or a flat usually is.
You should not treat it as a permanent record. No account means no server-side recovery of anything, so it is a working tally rather than an archive. Keep anything you would be upset to lose somewhere else as well.

Worth being precise about one thing, because “no account” is often read as “offline”: Splitright is not offline-only. The shared group has to be shared, so its content sits in a hosted database (a Firebase Realtime Database in europe-west1) and is not end-to-end encrypted. What is missing is the account, not the server. Details are in our privacy information.

What you get

Nothing to sign up for, for anybody. The person who starts the group taps once; everyone else types six characters. There is no email verification, no password, no “continue with” button, and no moment where one member refuses and the plan quietly reverts to a spreadsheet.
No email address held anywhere. We do not have your address because we never asked for it, which means it cannot be leaked, sold, or used to email you. There is no password to be stolen either, because there is not one.
No profile that accumulates. There is no account record tying this trip to last year's flat share to your phone number. The groups are unconnected to each other and to you.
Nothing watching you use it. Splitright has no ads, no analytics SDK and no tracking. That claim is checkable by someone who is not us: Exodus Privacy, a non-profit that statically analyses Android apps for embedded trackers, examined the Google Play build in August 2026 and found 0 trackers — their report is here, and we can neither edit nor remove it.
Deleting it is simple. When there is no account, walking away is walking away: nothing has to be closed, and no retention policy applies to a profile that does not exist.

The honest summary is that the no-account model trades durability for immediacy. It is an excellent trade for a group that exists for a fortnight and a poor one for a ledger you want to keep for five years.

How a code-based group actually works

The mechanics take one paragraph. One person creates the group and the app produces a six-character code. They send the code to the others however they already talk — the group chat, a message, out loud across a table. Each person opens the app, types the code, and is in the same group, on their own phone, seeing the same expenses and balances. Adding an expense means saying who paid, how much, and who it was for; the app keeps a running balance per person and works out a small set of payments that clears the group.

Three habits make this work well:

Treat the code like a password to a shared document, because that is exactly what it is. Send it to the group, not to a public channel, and never post it anywhere searchable.
Save it where the group will still be able to find it in three weeks. A pinned message in the chat you already use is better than anybody's memory.
Use one group per thing — this trip, this flat, this dinner — and archive it when it is settled. Long-lived, sprawling groups are precisely the case where an account-based app is stronger.

There is a longer treatment of the model, including the alternatives people use instead (a shared spreadsheet, a group chat and mental arithmetic, one person paying for everything), in our guide to splitting expenses without making anyone sign up.

When Splitwise is genuinely the better choice

Often. Splitwise is account-based by design, and everything an account buys is exactly what the following situations need:

A ledger that runs for years between the same people — flatmates, a couple, a family. Balances that must survive a lost phone, a reinstall or a move from iPhone to Android want to be tied to an identity, not to a code somebody has to keep.
You need features we do not have. Splitright has no receipt scanning, no categories or spending charts, no CSV or PDF export and no web app, and we will not promise a date for any of them.
Somebody in the group must be able to be removed. Per-person access is an account feature.
You want the app everyone already has. When you are the person nagging five friends to install something, the incumbent's ubiquity is worth real money.

We have written out the comparison properly — six apps, every competitor claim taken from that vendor's own store listing or help centre and dated, and the places where a rival is better said plainly — on our comparison page. It is the page to read if you want the detail; there is no point in repeating it here, and several other apps also let you start without signing up.

Splitwise is a trademark of its owner. Splitright is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Splitwise or any other app named on this site. Nothing here should be read as a statement about another app's current prices or features — check their own listing.

Deciding in a minute

Which model suits the group you have in front of you.
If this is your situation	Pick
The group exists for a weekend, a trip or one evening	No account. The sign-up is the only hard part of the job.
Somebody in the group will not sign up for anything	No account. It is the difference between a tally and no tally.
You will still be settling with these people in two years	An account-based app. You want recovery and cross-device history.
You need export, receipts, categories or a desktop browser	An account-based app. We do not have these.
You would rather no company held an email address for this	No account. There is nothing to hold.
The group must be able to remove one member	An account-based app. A shared code cannot do it.

And a combination that works better than arguing about it: use a no-account app for the short-lived groups, where nine tenths of splitting actually happens, and keep an account-based app for the standing ledger with the people you live with.

What Splitright is, precisely

Splitright is free on iPhone, iPad (iOS 16.4 and later) and Android (7.0 and later). There is no account, no email, no password. No ads, no subscription, no in-app purchases in this release, and no tracking. You create a group, share a six-character code, and record expenses: split equally, by exact amounts, or by percentage, with the participants chosen per expense so an expense only some of you shared affects only those balances. It shows running balances in plain words and suggests the fewest payments that settle the group, in any of 20 currencies, across several groups at once, and a group can be archived when it is finished.

What it does not do, in one place: it does not move money, there is no receipt scanning, no categories or charts, no CSV or PDF export, no web app, and no recurring expenses. It is not a backup and there is no server-side recovery. The group code is the credential — anyone who has it can open and edit that group, there is no per-person login, and one person's access cannot be withdrawn.

Guides: splitting costs on a group trip, splitting rent and bills with housemates, and splitting rent unevenly. Questions or corrections: support.

Common questions

Is there an expense-splitting app that works without an account?: Yes. Instead of signing in, one person creates a group and shares a short code with the others, and everyone who enters that code sees the same expenses and balances on their own phone. Splitright works this way, and several other apps also let you start without signing up.
What do you lose by using a splitting app with no account?: You lose the things an account provides: there is no personal history that follows you to a new phone, no email recovery if the group's code is lost, no way to remove one member's access while keeping everyone else's, and no support team that can look your data up and hand it back. A group lives at its code, so the code has to be kept.
How does joining a group with a code work?: One person creates the group and the app produces a six-character code, which they send to the others in whatever chat the group already uses. Each person opens the app, types the code, and is in the same group. The code is the access credential, so it should be treated like a password and never posted publicly.
When is an account-based app like Splitwise the better choice?: When the ledger runs for years between the same people and the balances must survive a lost phone, a reinstall or a switch between platforms; when you need features a small no-account app does not have, such as receipt scanning, categories, export or a web app; and when the group needs to be able to remove one member, which a shared code cannot do.