tricount

Tricount, made by bunq, is a group expense-splitting app built for the three situations where shared money causes friction: trips with friends, rent shared among roommates, and couples managing household costs together. It runs on iOS and Android, and it's free to download and use indefinitely. The core job is simple: everyone logs what they paid for shared expenses, the app calculates who owes whom, and it suggests the minimum number of transactions needed to settle up. With 21 million users across the world and a 4.8 rating in the App Store, it's one of the most widely adopted apps in the category.

The app handles money tracking through manual entry only. There's no bank connection, no Plaid integration, and no automatic import of transactions from your accounts. When someone pays for something the group shares, they open the app, enter the amount, add a description, say who paid, and mark which group members benefit. Everyone can add their own expenses to a shared trip, household, or roommate group. The app syncs instantly across all members, so as soon as one person logs an expense, the others see it in real time. If your internet drops, the app still works offline, and it syncs once you reconnect.

The app includes one feature that moves it beyond pure manual entry: if you have a bunq bank account and use the bunq card, transactions you make with that card get logged automatically into your tricount expenses. This works because bunq and tricount are connected through the same parent company. You can still add expenses manually and mix methods within the same group.

Tricount handles the core budgeting workflow through the envelope method it calls "books." Each book is a shared expense group with its own members, currency, and transaction history. You create a book for a trip, a household, or a roommates situation, invite your participants by sending them a link (they don't need to download anything to view it), and everyone adds expenses as they happen. The math happens automatically: the app splits amounts equally by default, but you can also split by percentage, by exact custom amounts, or exclude someone from a particular expense if they didn't participate. Once you're done with the trip or settlement cycle, the app calculates the final tally and suggests exactly who should pay whom to clear all debts with the minimum number of transactions.

The pricing is zero: tricount is free forever with no trial period, no limitations on trips or groups, and no freemium upgrade path. The site states "Download for free" as the only pricing information and shows no other tiers, payment plans, or premium features. There's no mention of a paid tier anywhere in the captured pages, and no signup wall or credit card requirement. This is a genuinely free app, which is unusual in the budgeting category.

Tricount is built for people who share money temporarily or as part of a relationship, not people managing a budget alone. It's ideal for friend groups taking vacations, couples splitting household costs, and roommates dividing rent and utilities. The app doesn't help you track your overall spending, set a budget, or manage your own income and expenses; it's narrowly focused on the settlement problem: figuring out who owes what when multiple people pay for shared things. Because everything is manual entry and there's no bank sync, it works for people who don't want to give an app access to their bank account or who are comfortable logging expenses by hand. The bunq card integration is a bonus for those in the bunq ecosystem, but the app works without it. The app supports multiple currencies, which makes it particularly valuable for travelers crossing borders. It works offline during trips without internet, which is another travel-focused feature.

Compared to alternatives in the space, tricount's strength is simplicity and speed. There's no onboarding, no features you'll never use, and no complicated setup. The tradeoff is that it handles splitting and settling up, and nothing else. If you need comprehensive household budgeting, shared financial goals, or recurring bill tracking, you'll need to use tricount alongside another tool. Tricount also doesn't connect to any payment apps, so when the app calculates that one person owes another, you still have to send that money yourself through Venmo, PayPal, or a bank transfer.

The app is developed by bunq, a major European fintech company, and has a large user base at 21 million users globally, which suggests it's stable and actively maintained. It's free, which means there's no payment risk or lock-in. The main limitation is the complete lack of bank integration: you're committed to manual data entry for every expense, which works fine for a week-long trip but is tedious for managing a household over months. The app is optimized for mobile use and invitation-based group sharing, so it's not designed as a personal budgeting tool or a replacement for a checking account.

One advantage tricount has over pure bill-splitting competitors is the bunq card feature. If you have a bunq account and use the bunq card for group expenses, the app can import them automatically, which means one person doesn't need to manually log every transaction. This turns tricount into a hybrid system for bunq users, combining automatic logging with manual entry for expenses that don't go through the card. For groups entirely outside the bunq ecosystem, this feature is irrelevant, but for European users and anyone with a bunq account, it's a significant convenience factor. Most other bill-splitting apps offer no automatic expense import at all.

Tricount also emphasizes privacy and direct payment. When the app calculates who owes whom, it gives each person a list of payment requests they can send directly from the app to settle balances. The app doesn't hold money, doesn't process payments, and doesn't take a cut. It's purely a ledger and calculation tool. This is both a strength and a limitation: it means tricount never touches your money, but it also means you still have to use a separate payment method (Venmo, PayPal, bank transfer) to actually move the cash. Some users prefer this separation; others find it cumbersome to complete the settlement outside the app.

The app works well for groups where everyone knows each other and the money doesn't stay complicated. Complex situations where someone is sometimes reimbursed in installments, or where credit is extended between members, aren't tricount's strong suit. The app assumes a fairly clean model: you pay for something, you log it, and you settle fairly soon. That works for road trips, vacation weeks, and shared meals, but less well for an ongoing household where overlapping debts might persist for months and someone might owe money on multiple fronts.

Tricount suits travelers taking group trips, couples managing shared household expenses over weeks or months, and roommates splitting occasional shared bills. It suits people who don't want to connect their bank account to a fintech app, or who want the simplest possible interface. It suits groups that want automatic expense logging via the bunq card and the bunq ecosystem. It doesn't suit solo budgeting, long-term household tracking over years, or anyone who values automatic transaction import from a checking account. It doesn't suit groups that need complex credit tracking or extended payment plans.

If your group already uses bunq and wants automatic expense logging, tricount is the natural choice. If you're looking for the fastest way to figure out who owes what during a vacation, it's hard to beat. If you need something more comprehensive for long-term household management, or bank connectivity with automatic import from checking accounts, you will need a different tool alongside it or instead of it; tricount offers neither. For a pure, simple, free bill-splitting tool with no financial data access, tricount remains a strong choice.