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Multi-currency expense splitting apps: 9 ranked on one test

October 7, 2026 · 13 min read · Dimesum Engineering

An app that converts every bill at one rate on the day decides, without asking, who carries the next move in the exchange rate. Nine apps ranked on keeping a balance per currency, with a London and Tokyo trip worked both ways.

Split ¥25,000 three ways and nobody pays ¥8,333.33. Yen has no minor unit, so one person pays ¥8,334 and two pay ¥8,333. Dimesum keeps a separate balance for every currency, in that currency's own smallest unit, and never picks an exchange rate on the group's behalf. That is the test this list ranks on.

Multi-currency expense splitting apps fall into two camps. Some hold a balance per currency and leave conversion to the group. Others turn every bill into one home currency the moment it is typed, at whatever rate applied that day. The difference looks like bookkeeping until the rate moves, and then it is money somebody did not agree to lose.

Two ways an app can hold a second currency

The first way is a balance per currency. A yen dinner adds to each person's yen balance, a pound flat adds to their pound balance, and the two never meet unless the group asks them to. At the end, the yen debts are paid in yen and the pound debts in pounds, or the group agrees one rate, out loud, and folds them together.

The second way is one rate at entry. The app asks for a home currency, converts every foreign bill as it is entered, and from then on the record holds only the converted figure. It looks tidier, because every balance is one number. The cost is hidden in the rate: it was fixed on the day of the bill, by the app or by whoever typed it, and it does not move when the currency does.

The London and Tokyo trip, worked both ways

Aiko, Jonas and Mei spend a week together: four nights in London, then three in Tokyo. Jonas lives in London and Aiko in Tokyo, which is why the currency question matters to them more than to most groups. Five bills, all split three ways.

Kept per currency

In pounds, the group spent £705, so each share is £235. Jonas paid £540 and is owed £305. Mei paid £165 and owes £70. Aiko paid nothing in pounds and owes £235.

In yen, the group spent ¥123,400. Aiko's share is ¥41,133, Jonas's is ¥41,134 because he carries the odd yen from the sushi, and Mei's is ¥41,133. Aiko paid ¥96,000 and is owed ¥54,867. Jonas paid ¥2,400 and owes ¥38,734, and Mei paid ¥25,000 and owes ¥16,133.

Four transfers clear it. Aiko pays Jonas £235 and Mei pays Jonas £70. Jonas pays Aiko ¥38,734 and Mei pays Aiko ¥16,133. Each debt is paid in the currency it was spent in, at the exact figure on the receipts.

The method behind those four payments is in how to settle up group expenses.

Converted at one rate on the day

Now enter the same bills into an app set to pounds, with the yen bills converted at ¥200 to the pound. The hotel becomes £480, the sushi £125 and the day passes £12. The trip now costs £1,322, and three-way shares come out at £440.67, £440.67 and £440.66.

Mei owes £150.66 and the app tells her to pay Jonas £111.33 and Aiko £39.33. Two transfers, both in pounds, which looks better. But the record now says Aiko paid £480 for a hotel she paid ¥96,000 for, and two weeks later the pound buys ¥195.

At that rate £480 is ¥93,600. The ¥2,400 gap is real money that Aiko handed over at the hotel desk, and the app decided who carries it without asking anyone. The rate could as easily have moved the other way. The point is that a rate fixed on day one turns every later movement into an unrecorded transfer between friends.

The receipt says yen, the card statement says pounds

Mei paid for the sushi with a pound card. The receipt says ¥25,000. Her statement, a few days later, says something like £127.40, because her bank applied its own rate and perhaps a fee. Which number goes in the group's record?

The receipt. The group shared a ¥25,000 dinner, and that is the debt. The gap between ¥25,000 and whatever Mei's bank charged is the price of the card she chose, and a group can agree to share it, but only as a separate, visible line. Folding the card's rate into the bill hides one person's bank fee inside everyone's share.

This is also where a spreadsheet and an app start to disagree. The sheet holds the statement figure, the app holds the receipt, and the totals never match. We went through that exact argument in why the app total differs from your spreadsheet. The fix is the same in either tool: record what was spent, in the currency it was spent in, and convert once, on purpose.

Yen has no minor unit, and code that forgets it is off by a hundred

ISO 4217, the standard that gives each currency its three-letter code, also gives each one a minor unit: the number of decimal places it uses. The euro, the pound and the dollar have 2. The yen has 0, and the Kuwaiti dinar has 3. The current list is published by SIX, the ISO 4217 maintenance agency, and its list one, dated 17 September 2026, gives JPY a minor unit of 0.

Money code that assumes every currency has cents multiplies by 100 somewhere. For a yen amount that is a hundredfold error. We found that exact constant in three places in our own code during a currency audit on 21 August 2026, including a page that showed a ¥6,000 debt as a rupee amount one hundredth its size. The full account is in six money bugs in multi-currency expense splitting.

The worst of those six was a settlement engine with no currency on its balance record. A ¥300,000 debt and a ₹500 debt summed to zero, and the engine paired a yen creditor with a rupee debtor. We deleted that engine. The lesson for anyone choosing an app is cheaper than ours: enter a yen bill and a euro bill in the same group, and look at what the settle screen proposes.

Whole-unit currencies also change how a split rounds. ¥25,000 shared by three people leaves one yen that has to land somewhere. Dimesum splits by the largest remainder method in whole yen, so the shares always sum to the bill, and the odd yen rotates from bill to bill instead of landing on the same person every time.

Groups splitting in Japan meet this on every bill, which is why our guide to bill splitting apps in Japan starts there. Why small rounding choices add up to a balance nobody can explain is in why shared balances never add up.

Five tests for any app that claims more than one currency

None of these needs a trip. Make a test group with two friends, spend ten minutes, then delete it.

1. Enter a bill in yen and a bill in euros, and look for two balances per person instead of one blended figure.
2. Find where the app gets its exchange rate, and check that you can see the rate and change it.
3. Split ¥10,000 three ways and check that the shares are whole yen that sum to ¥10,000.
4. Ask the app to settle, and check that every proposed payment names its currency.
5. Edit the yen bill's amount and check that the history keeps the old figure, which is the test from why an edit must restate its split.

An app that passes all five will not surprise you on the last night of a trip. An app that fails the first one is a single-currency app with a currency picker, and the travel list of best apps to split travel expenses ranks on the same failure from the trip's side.

Multi-currency expense splitting apps, ranked

We rank on what an app's published material says about the five tests, as checked in August 2026. Only two apps on this list have anything published that we could check on currency handling: ours and Splitwise. The rest our sources say nothing about, so we list them alphabetically below the line, because a ranking we cannot support would be invented.

1. Dimesum

Dimesum keeps every balance per currency. Money is stored as whole minor units with its ISO 4217 code, so a yen amount is whole yen and a euro amount is whole cents, and floating point never touches it. Every bill is an entry in an append-only ledger, so a corrected rate leaves the old one on record. A group can read its balances folded into one currency at rates it agrees, and a bill with no rate yet says so instead of borrowing one.

Settling partitions by currency and clears a group in at most one transfer fewer than its people, per currency, and every settlement names the currency it clears. It is free, with no daily limit on bills, and it never holds money. The web app is live; the Android and iOS apps are in closed testing.

2. Splitwise

Splitwise records expenses in over 100 currencies. As of August 2026, converting between them is a Pro feature, alongside unlimited expenses, receipt scanning, charts and search. US in-app prices for Pro sit at $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, $29.99 and $39.99.

Two currency facts come from Splitwise's own channels. Its public feedback forum lists "default currency per group, not per profile" among its 20 most voted requests, at 309 votes and under review on 22 August 2026. Of its 150 most recent App Store reviews across six storefronts on that date, 69 gave 1 or 2 stars, and currency was a named complaint in 3 of those. If the paywall is why you are reading, see Splitwise alternatives.

Monzo Split

Monzo Split keeps unlimited expenses on a running balance inside the Monzo bank app, with partial settlement, and guests join by link. Our source does not say how it treats a bill in a second currency. Run test 1 before a trip.

Revolut Group Bills

Revolut Group Bills keeps a running balance for 2 to 20 people inside Revolut, with Smart Settle, and people without Revolut can join on the web. Revolut's terms say it does "not currently charge a fee." Our source does not cover a second currency inside one group. The bank features are compared in when your bank's split feature is enough.

Settle Up

Settle Up sells a subscription and a pass for one group that any member can buy for everyone, from $5.99 a week up to $149.99 for life, as of August 2026. Our source does not cover its currency handling.

Splid

Splid is a one-time $3.99 purchase with no ads and no subscription. Its Android app was last updated on 23 August 2025, as of our check on 22 August 2026. Our source does not cover its currency handling; both are compared in Splid and Settle Up alternatives.

Spliit

Spliit is open source and runs in a browser or on your own server. It reported about $1,300 of income in a year, 92% of it the founder's own donation. Our source does not cover its currency handling.

Tricount

Tricount is owned by the bank bunq and is free, its Premium tier removed. Our source does not cover its currency handling. More in Tricount alternatives.

Venmo Groups

Venmo Groups keeps running balances for up to 30 people, simplified, in the United States only, and every member needs a Venmo account. Our source does not cover a second currency.

Folding into one currency, when the group wants one number

Per-currency balances answer the question "what do I owe in yen". Some groups also want "what do I owe, in total", and that question has no answer until somebody picks a rate. The honest app makes the picking visible.

In Dimesum the rate sits on the bill, where everyone can see it, and a group can switch its balances screen to read folded into one currency. Say the London and Tokyo group writes ¥200 to the pound on its yen bills. Jonas's yen debt of ¥38,734 then reads as £193.67. His pound credit is £305, so folded, he is owed £111.33 overall.

Folding is a reading, and the ledger underneath still holds ¥38,734 and £305. If Aiko and Jonas decide to swap their two debts for one payment, £235 against £193.67, Aiko pays Jonas £41.33 and the group has agreed the rate out loud. If they would rather each pay in the currency of the debt, nothing was lost by looking. A group that wants a neutral source for its rate can read the ECB euro reference rates on settle day and write that figure down.

Stay where you are if your group never leaves one currency

Everything above matters only when a second currency turns up. A flat in Berlin that pays rent, power and groceries in euros will never meet the rate problem, and any app that keeps a correct ledger in one currency is enough. The general ranking for that case is bill splitting apps compared.

If your group already pays for Splitwise Pro, conversion is inside what it pays for, and the remaining question is the rate it uses and when. For a trip run as one occasion, a ski week or a wedding abroad, our guide on how to split costs for a group event covers deposits paid months ahead in one currency and spent in another. The step-by-step version for a whole trip is how to keep track of who owes who on a trip.