Trip Expense Settler
Every expense from the whole trip in, the shortest list of payments out.
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The trip
Every expense is converted to this currency before anyone owes anything.
Expenses
Who owes who
Nobody owes anybody — either nothing has been entered yet, or everyone has already paid exactly their share.
Per person
| Person | Paid | Their share | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Person 1 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Person 2 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Person 3 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
A positive net means the group owes that person; negative means they owe the group. The column always adds to zero, because every expense is divided down to the last cent — remainders go to the earliest participant rather than disappearing.
Send it round
The whole trip is packed into the link itself, so there is nothing stored anywhere and the link cannot expire. That does make it long — a trip with dozens of expenses can produce a link some chat apps will wrap awkwardly, and the CSV is the safer way to send a big trip on.
Your file never leaves your browser during processing
How it works
To work out who owes who after a group trip, list each expense with who paid it and who it was shared between — this page nets everyone off and shows the fewest payments that settle the group, in any currency, without uploading anything.
Each expense is divided between the people who shared it, in whole cents, and credited to whoever paid. That gives every person a net position: what they put in, minus what they consumed. Someone who paid for two dinners and a taxi but ate nothing extra ends up positive, and the group owes them; someone who paid for nothing ends up negative by exactly their share. Those positions always add to zero, because every cent of every expense is assigned to somebody — including the odd cent when a bill does not divide evenly, which goes to the first person in the split rather than quietly disappearing.
Turning those positions into payments is where most splitting tools stop short. Paying each debt back directly can take a surprising number of transfers — with five people it can be a dozen — and almost all of them are unnecessary, because debts chain: if A owes B and B owes C the same amount, A can simply pay C. This page finds the shortest possible chain. For groups of up to twelve people still owing something it is a proven minimum rather than a good guess: the search finds the largest number of subgroups whose balances cancel out among themselves, and a group of that shape can never be settled in fewer than one payment less than its size. Beyond twelve people the exact search becomes too slow to run while you type, so a near-minimal result is used instead and the page says so rather than quietly changing what it is claiming.
One expense can have more than one payer. Two of you covering a lunch between you is ordinary and it is worth entering as it happened: tap “more than one person paid” and record what each of you actually put in. The alternative — splitting it into two expenses — gives the same answer only if both halves are given exactly the same list of people to share between, and that is precisely the step that gets missed. The total of the row is always the sum of what the payers put in, so the two figures cannot drift apart.
Expenses can be in any currency. Each one keeps the currency it was paid in and is converted into whichever currency you are settling in, using a rate you enter. No rate is fetched from anywhere — partly because that would be a network request inside a page whose whole promise is that it makes none, and partly because the rate that actually settles a trip is the one your card charged on the day, which appears on a statement rather than in a live feed.
The shareable link contains the entire trip. There is no database behind this page, so the state is encoded into the URL itself — which means anyone you send it to can open it, edit it, and send it back, and the link cannot expire, cannot be deleted, and exists nowhere except in the messages you sent it in. A long trip makes a long link, so there is a CSV download as well.
FAQ
What if two people paid for the same thing?
Use “more than one person paid” on that expense and enter what each of them put in. The expense stays one line, split between whoever shared it, and both payers are credited with what they actually paid. Entering it as two separate expenses works too, but only if you give both of them the same list of people — which is the easy thing to get wrong.
How do you calculate who owes who after a trip?
Add up what each person paid and what each person’s share of the shared expenses comes to. The difference is their net position, and the payments that settle the group are the ones that bring every net position to zero. This page does that and then shortens the list of payments as far as it can go.
Is this really the smallest number of payments?
For up to twelve people with a balance, yes — provably. Above that the exact search would be too slow to run as you type, so the result is near-minimal (never more than one payment per person) and the page tells you when that has happened.
Can different people pay in different currencies?
Yes. Each expense records its own currency, and you enter the exchange rate you were charged. Everything is converted into the currency you chose to settle in.
Do I have to include everyone in every expense?
No — that is the point of the "split between" row on each expense. Three of you shared a taxi, everyone shared the flat, two of you had the expensive dinner. Only the people you tick pay a share.
Is any of this stored or sent anywhere?
No. Every figure is calculated in your browser and nothing is uploaded. The shareable link works by packing the trip into the URL, not by saving it on a server, so there is no record of it anywhere.
What happens if an amount does not divide evenly?
The remaining cents go to the earliest people in the split rather than being rounded away, so the shares always add back to exactly what was paid. The difference is never more than one cent per person.