Lisbon, March
- Paella, Cervejaria Ramiro€0.00
- Taxi, airport → hotel€0.00
- Tile museum, 4 tickets€0.00
- Pastéis × many€0.50
Settle
€0.10
Splitwise alternative · no install for friends
Split bills with friends who refuse to download another app.
Pennypoke is a free group expense splitter that runs in your browser. Send a link, your friends open it in any chat — no signup, no install. Math, settle-up, done. No ads, no daily cap, privacy-first by default.
Free, unlimited. No install, no account by default, no credit card. Works on iOS, Android, desktop.
Trip to Lisbon
4 members · EUR
Balance
You owe Anna €0.50
Recent expenses
- Paella, Cervejaria Ramiro €0.00
- Taxi airport → hotel €0.00
Settle up · 2 transfers
→
Four steps, no app to install.
Open the web app, name the group, share an invite link in your group chat, log expenses as they happen. Pennypoke does the math.
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Open the web app
Go to pennypoke-app.pages.dev in any browser. Add it to your home screen for an app-like icon. No download, no account by default.
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Start a group
Name it —
Lisbon 2026,Apt 4B, whatever. Pick a default currency. Add the people you're splitting with: just names if you're using local-only mode, names plus emails if you want to sync across phones. -
Share an invite link
Tap Invite, copy the link, paste it in your group chat — WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, iMessage, anything. Your friends open the link, sign in with their email, they're in. Or send personal email invitations if you prefer.
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Log expenses, settle clean
Anyone in the group can log an expense: who paid, what for, how to split (equal, by share, by amount, by percentage). Pennypoke updates everyone's balance live and suggests the smallest set of transfers to settle up.
Less account, less lock-in, more privacy.
Splitwise is the default for a reason — it works, and it's been around since 2011. The trade-offs are the trade-offs of any standard SaaS: an account for everyone in the group, data on their servers, mobile banner ads on the free tier, and a daily expense cap with a cooldown that shows up mid-trip. Pennypoke leans the other way.
Splitwise
- Every friend has to install the app and make an account.
- Daily expense cap with a cooldown on the free tier; Pro at $5 / month or $40 / year per user clears it.
- Banner ads on the mobile free tier.
- Data lives on their servers, full session telemetry by default.
- Standard SaaS analytics: account events, IPs, device fingerprints.
Pennypoke
- Friends open an invite link in any chat, no install, no app store.
- No daily cap, no cooldown, no paywall on splitting.
- No ads. Anywhere. Ever.
- Local-only mode in your browser by default; sign in only to sync.
- No IPs, no analytics, no device fingerprints, no audit logs stored.
Splitwise pricing and free-tier behaviour verified on splitwise.com/pro and the Splitwise help center on April 30, 2026. We re-check monthly. See the full Pennypoke vs Splitwise comparison.
What it actually looks like, mid-trip.
Numbers ramp in like a real ledger settling. These three are anonymised splits people we know ran through Pennypoke this spring.
Apt 4B, April
- Rent, April$0
- Electric + internet$0
- Costco run, paper goods$0
- Plumber for the sink$0
Per person
$0.67
Friday at Lina's
- Two bottles, the good red€0.00
- Pizza, six pies€0.00
- Tiramisu, Lina paid€0.00
Each owes
€0.00
Architecture, not a promise
No IPs. No analytics. No dark patterns.
The splitter runs in your browser. Group your expenses with friends locally and they never touch our server. Sign in to share with friends across devices and your data goes to a Cloudflare D1 row stored under your email — nothing else. We don't store IP addresses, user agents, geolocation, device fingerprints, analytics events, or audit logs. Read the privacy policy; it lists every byte we hold.
The Telegram bot is even more minimal: stateless. Your message is parsed in memory, written to the Google Sheet you authorised, then the process ends. There's nothing to leak because there's nothing stored.
Read the full privacy policy · GDPR self-serve data export
Optional second product, for power users
There's also a Telegram bot for solo expenses.
The splitter does groups; that's the main product on this page. If you separately track your own day-to-day expenses in a spreadsheet — coffee, taxi, lunch, the occasional freelance receipt — we kept the original Pennypoke Telegram bot for that. Strictly optional. Skip this section if it's not your thing.
Text coffee 4.50, uber 18.90 eur, $45 dinner with Sam to @PennypokeBot. It parses amount, currency, and category in 38 currencies, then writes a row to a Google Sheet you own. Your columns, your formulas, your pivot tables — all kept.
Unlimited entries, receipt photo OCR included, no monthly cap. Free like the rest of it.
@PennypokeBot
Telegram bot, online
coffee 4.50
Saved $4.50 for coffee.
Food & Drink
Food & Drink
uber 18.90 eur
Saved €18.90 for uber.
Transport
Transport
/today
3 entries today, $27.80 total. Row 127 in your Sheet.
Free. All of it.
Pennypoke used to have paid tiers. They are retired, and everything that sat behind them is open to everyone. One plan, no upsell, nothing to cancel.
For comparison: Splitwise Pro is $5 / mo or $40 / yr (US) and its free tier carries banner ads plus a daily expense cap, Settle Up Premium is $20 / yr, Tricount is currently free. Competitor prices verified April 30, 2026 on each vendor's official pricing page.
Everything
The splitter and the bot, whole.
No account needed to split. No ads, no entry cap, no cooldown, no feature held back for a paid tier that no longer exists.
$0 / no time limit
- Unlimited groups, members, expenses
- Open invite links in any chat (WhatsApp, SMS, etc.)
- Settle-up suggestions that minimise transfers
- Unlimited Telegram-bot entries, receipt photo OCR included
- Export any group to JSON from the Account page
No card, no checkout, no trial that expires. Pennypoke is a small independent project, kept free and deliberately cheap to run. If it ever needs to charge, existing groups keep working and you will hear about it before anything changes.
Questions people actually ask.
How is Pennypoke different from Splitwise?
Two things. First, privacy: Pennypoke doesn't store IP addresses, user agents, geolocation, device fingerprints, or analytics events; group data lives in your browser by default and only syncs through our server if you choose to sign in. Splitwise is standard SaaS with full account and session telemetry. Second, friction: Pennypoke is a mobile-first PWA, your friends just open an invite link in their browser. No install, no account by default. Splitwise's free tier on mobile shows banner ads and has a daily expense cap with a cooldown; Pro at $5/month or $40/year per user removes both. Side-by-side comparison »
Do I need an account to split bills?
No. The web app at pennypoke-app.pages.dev runs entirely in your browser. You can create a group, add members as labels, and track balances without ever signing in. Sign in only if you want friends to log expenses from their own devices and have everything sync across phones.
How do I invite friends?
Tap Invite inside any group. You get two options: an open share link you can paste in any chat — the recipient signs in with their email to claim it — or an email invitation that sends them a one-time link. Open links are good for 7 days.
Do my friends need to install anything?
No. They open the link in their phone's browser. Add to home screen if they want an icon. Works in Safari, Chrome, Firefox — whatever they already have.
How does the splitter handle complex splits?
Equal, by share, by amount, or by percentage. Pick what fits, Pennypoke does the math. The settle-up screen suggests the smallest set of transfers to clear the group balance.
What about the Telegram bot, do I still need it?
The Telegram bot is the second product, optional. It writes solo expenses directly to a Google Sheet you own. Useful if you already track personal expenses in a spreadsheet and want a faster entry path. The web app handles group splitting; the bot handles solo logging. Both are free and neither needs the other.
What does it cost?
Nothing. Group splitting is free and unlimited, with no ads, no daily cap, no cooldown, and the Telegram bot has no monthly entry limit either — receipt photo OCR included. The paid tiers were retired in August 2026 and everything behind them is now open to everyone. There is no card to enter and nothing to cancel.
Can Pennypoke see my expenses?
Group expenses you create signed-out stay in your browser via IndexedDB. If you sign in to share with friends, group rows live on our server because your friends' devices need to read them — but we never store IPs, user agents, geolocation, device fingerprints, or analytics events. The Telegram bot side is stateless: messages are parsed in memory, written to your Google Sheet, then discarded.
What if Pennypoke shuts down?
Group data signed-out lives in your browser, you keep it. Group data signed-in can be exported to JSON via the Account page (GDPR Article 20 self-serve). Telegram-bot data is already in your Google Sheet, which you own. There's nothing held hostage.
Split bills, not friendships.
Free, unlimited, no account needed. Open in any browser, paste an invite link in your group chat, and you're settling up by tonight.
Or, separately, use the Telegram bot to log your own solo expenses to a Google Sheet.