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Apps to split a bill by item: 6 ranked on tax and tip

October 7, 2026 · 13 min read · Dimesum Engineering

An equal split overcharged Noah $11.52 at a dinner where he skipped the wine. Six ways to split a bill by item, ranked on whether the tax, tip and discount follow what each person had and what stays on record afterwards.

An equal split overcharged Noah $11.52 at a dinner where he skipped the wine. Four friends, one $184.32 dinner, and a bottle only two of them shared: that is the bill every app to split a bill by item is built for. Dimesum ranks first here because it carries each line to the people who had it and then shares the tax, the tip and the discount by what each person ate.

We make Dimesum, so read the ranking with that in mind. Every other app below is described from our own market research, dated August 2026, and nothing in it rates one app over another by stars. The test is the same for all six: does the bill come out right to the cent, and what is left once the plates are cleared?

The dinner that every itemised split has to get right

Here is the bill we run through every app. Emma, Lucas, Sofia and Noah eat out.

Starters to share cost $24. Emma has a $36 steak, Lucas a $16 burger, Sofia a $24 salad and Noah a $24 pasta. Emma and Lucas share a $36 bottle of wine.

That is $160 of food and drink. The restaurant takes 10% off for a weekday booking, which is $16.

Sales tax of 8% then applies to the $144 left, which is $11.52. They leave a $28.80 tip. The bill is $184.32, and Noah pays it.

Split equally, each person owes $46.08. That is the number most tables reach for, and it is wrong for three of the four. Noah ate a $30 share of the food and paid toward a bottle he never touched.

What each person really had

Start with the lines. The $24 of starters names nobody, so it divides equally: $6 each. The wine names Emma and Lucas, so it divides between them: $18 each. Every other line names one person.

Emma's subtotal is $6 plus $36 plus $18, which is $60. Lucas comes to $6 plus $16 plus $18, which is $40. Sofia and Noah come to $30 each. The four subtotals add to $160, the food on the bill.

Tax, tip and discount follow the plates

The adjustments then divide in the same proportion as the subtotals, 60 to 40 to 30 to 30. Emma carries $6 of the discount, $4.32 of the tax and $10.80 of the tip. Lucas carries $4, $2.88 and $7.20. Sofia and Noah each carry $3, $2.16 and $5.40.

Emma owes $69.12. Lucas owes $46.08. Sofia and Noah owe $34.56 each.

Add them: $69.12 plus $46.08 plus $34.56 plus $34.56 is $184.32, the whole bill. Noah paid $184.32 and his own share is $34.56, so the other three owe him $149.76.

The equal split asks Noah and Sofia for $11.52 too much each, and lets Emma off by $23.04. Over one dinner that is awkward. Over a year of Fridays it is the reason someone stops coming. The method behind the table, with a dish only two people shared, is written out step by step in how to split a restaurant bill fairly, so we won't repeat it here.

What we ranked on, and why stars are not on the list

Four questions decide whether an app splits a bill by item well.

Can a line belong to some people and not others? Do the tax, tip and discount follow what each person had? Does every share add back to the total to the cent? And when the dinner is over, is the bill part of a running record, or does it vanish once the money moves?

We left out store ratings, install counts and review counts on purpose. They say how many people downloaded an app, which is a different question from whether it divided your dinner correctly. Every competitor fact below comes from our own market research, cut on 22 August 2026, and says so where it matters.

If you are choosing a general bill splitting app rather than one for itemised bills, our bill splitting apps compared ranks eleven on a wider set of tests. For the case where your group already lives in Splitwise, Splitwise alternatives covers the switch.

1. Dimesum: every line, and the record after

Dimesum treats an itemised bill as an ordinary expense that carries its lines. The expense keeps a split rule at the top, equal by default, and each line can name the people who had it. A line that names nobody is shared by the top rule. A line that names two people is carried by those two and nobody else.

Adjustments sit under the lines the way a receipt prints them: discounts, taxes, tips and fees, in order. A percentage applies to the running total at its own place in that list, so Dimesum keeps the order you typed. It then shares every adjustment by each person's subtotal, so someone who ordered nothing pays no tax and gets no discount.

The total is worked out from the lines rather than typed. Mistype the burger and you fix the burger line; the total follows. Every share comes out of the largest remainder method, the apportionment rule that guarantees the shares add back to the total exactly, and each line, each tax and each tip rounds on its own.

When a bill splits into a cent that will not divide, somebody carries it. Which person is decided by a fixed hash of the bill, so the same bill always gives the same answer and the odd cent lands on different people across many bills. Our engineering note on why the app's total differs from your spreadsheet shows that cent in a worked table.

What happens after the dinner

The split lands in the group's ledger, next to the rent and the taxi from last week. Balances are kept per currency, so a dinner in yen on a trip never gets added to a dinner in dollars at home; we wrote up the money bugs a second currency causes and how we avoid them. When the group settles, Dimesum works out the payments in at most one transfer fewer than the number of people, per currency, as described in how to settle up group expenses.

An edit restates the whole split and keeps the old version in the history. If someone realises the wine was $42, the change is a new entry on top of the old one, and anyone can see what moved. The reasoning is in why an edit must restate its split, and the ledger underneath is described in the append-only ledger behind every split.

The honest limits

In Dimesum today you type the lines yourself. A reader that turns a photo of a receipt into lines is built, but it is not switched on, and we would rather you heard that here than found it out at the table. Our history with automatic reading is told in why we deleted our expense parser.

The web app is live at app.dimesum.com, and the Android and iPhone apps are in closed testing. The ledger is free, with no daily limit on bills. Someone who has no account can still see their share: a quick split hands out a link or a QR code that opens in any browser, and taking a seat means signing in there. Our guide to splitting a bill with someone who doesn't have the app covers how a seat is taken.

2. Apple Cash receipt split in iOS 27: one receipt, inside Apple Cash

Apple announced on 1 June 2026 that iOS 27 would split a bill from a photo of the receipt. The flow in Apple's newsroom announcement runs like this: scan the receipt, the items are identified, each person picks theirs, tax and tip are apportioned, and everyone pays with Apple Cash. As of August 2026 it was due to ship with iOS 27 in the fall.

It works per receipt. There is no running balance between dinners, so a group that eats together every Friday starts from zero each time and keeps the history somewhere else. Apple Cash is available in the United States only, and the feature runs on Apple devices, so a table with one Android phone or one visitor from abroad has a person who cannot take part.

Who it fits, as a matter of fact rather than praise: a table where everyone is in the United States, everyone has an iPhone and Apple Cash, and the dinner will never be part of a longer tab. A table where any of those is false needs a second record anyway.

3. Splitwise: itemising sits behind Pro

Splitwise Pro is where receipt scanning and itemisation live, as of August 2026, along with unlimited expenses, currency conversion, charts and search. US in-app prices for Pro have ranged from $2.99 to $39.99 across current and older tiers, and regional prices vary. A free account does not itemise.

The free tier also has a daily limit. Splitwise's help centre says a free account can add up to 4 expenses each day, as of 7 October 2026.

Reviewers have described meeting it since at least 6 September 2024, when a Hacker News comment said free accounts had been throttled to four a day, and an App Store reviewer in Great Britain on version 26.6.3 wrote that "after your 4th expense it says 'daily limit reached'". Our explainer on the Splitwise daily expense limit collects what is known.

One more dated fact belongs here. On the Splitwise feedback forum, the most voted request on 22 August 2026 was to apply a payment to an expense or pay for individual items, with 985 votes and marked under review. Stay with Splitwise for itemised bills if everyone in your group already pays for Pro; the two apps are set side by side in Dimesum vs Splitwise.

4. Spliit: receipt scanning in an open-source app

Spliit is an open-source group expense app that runs in a browser or on a server you host yourself. It ships receipt scanning with AI. Our source does not record whether a scanned line can be assigned to some people and not others, or how tax and tip are shared, so we don't claim either.

Its money is thin and public. The project reported about $1,300 of income in a year, with 92% of it coming from the founder's own donation, as of August 2026. Whether that matters depends on how many years of dinners you plan to keep in it.

5. Tab: a free receipt scanner with no stated business model

Tab is a free group expense app that ships receipt scanning, according to our August 2026 research. How it makes money is not published. Its Android app had not been updated since May 2023 as of 22 August 2026, which is more than three years by the time of this post.

Our source records nothing about how Tab divides a line between two people or shares tax and tip, so the table leaves those cells blank rather than guessing. If a scan is all your table needs, that is the fact to weigh against an app that has gone quiet.

6. A spreadsheet: free, exact, and only as good as its formulas

A sheet can split a bill by item. One column per person, one row per line, a SUMPRODUCT for the subtotals, and the tax and tip divided by subtotal. Our shared expense tracker template gives you the starting grid, and the split expenses calculator method shows the arithmetic in full.

The trouble starts at the cent. Divide $36 of wine three ways and the sheet shows $12.00 each, fine.

Divide $40 three ways and each cell shows $13.33, and the three cells add to $39.99. The sheet lost a cent, and nobody in the group will agree who should find it. The spreadsheet or app question is mostly about moments like that.

Apps our source says nothing about itemising

Several group expense apps have no itemised split in our research. Tricount, Splid and Settle Up appear in it for their pricing and ownership, never for splitting a bill by item. We would rather leave them out of the ranking than credit or fault a feature we could not check.

The same goes for the bank features. Venmo Groups, Revolut Group Bills and Monzo Split keep running balances, and the research records nothing about lines or receipts in any of them. If your table is choosing for a trip rather than a dinner, start with the best apps to split travel expenses instead.

How to pick in one dinner

Take one real receipt and run it through the app before you trust it. Pick one with a shared plate, a bottle only some people drank, a discount and a tip. Then check three numbers.

1. Add every share. The total must equal the bill to the cent.
2. Find the person who had the least. Their tax should be smallest too.
3. Change one line. The shares should move, and the old version should still be visible.

If an app fails the first check, the cent went somewhere you cannot see. If it fails the second, the light eater is paying tax on other people's food. If it fails the third, the next argument about the bill will have no record to settle it. The longer version of this method, for any bill, is in how to split a bill.