Free tools · Settle up
Who owes who?
Enter what everyone paid toward the group's expenses. We'll split it evenly, work out each person's balance, and give you the fewest payments that settle everything.
Free · No account · Nothing saved
Settle up in 3 payments
- RileyAlex$48.87
- JordanAlex$18.87
- SamAlex$3.38
How settling up works
When a group shares expenses — a dinner, a weekend, a household month — people rarely pay in equal amounts. One person grabs the check, one covers the taxi, someone pays nothing. Settling up means answering two questions: what is each person's fair share, and what is the simplest set of payments to square everyone up?
The fair share is easy: divide the total by the number of people. Each person's balance is what they paid minus that share — positive means the group owes them, negative means they owe the group.
A worked example
Four friends spend $195.50 in total: Alex paid $120, Sam paid $45.50, Jordan paid $30, and Riley paid nothing. The fair share is $48.88 (two people pay $48.87 so the pennies add up exactly). Alex is owed $71.12, Riley owes $48.87, Jordan owes $18.87, and Sam owes $3.38. Naively that could be six different payments — but netting the balances settles it in three: Riley, Jordan, and Sam each pay Alex once, and everyone is square.
That netting step is called debt simplification, and it's the same algorithm Split! runs continuously across all your groups and friends — so by the time anyone asks “who owes who?”, the answer is already one tap away.
Frequently asked questions
How does the who-owes-who calculator work?+
Enter each person's name and how much they paid toward the group's shared expenses. The calculator totals everything, works out each person's equal share, and then computes the smallest set of payments that settles every debt. Everyone who overpaid gets paid back; everyone who underpaid pays their difference — in as few transfers as possible.
How does it minimize the number of payments?+
It uses debt simplification: instead of everyone paying everyone else back individually, it nets out each person's overall balance and repeatedly matches the person who owes the most with the person who is owed the most. For a group of N people this always settles in at most N−1 payments.
What if we didn't all share every expense equally?+
This calculator assumes everything was shared equally by everyone. If some expenses only involved part of the group — say only three of five people did the boat tour — use our trip expense splitter instead, which lets you pick who participated in each expense.
Does it handle amounts that don't divide evenly?+
Yes. When the total doesn't divide into whole cents, the calculator assigns the leftover pennies deterministically so the payments always add up to exactly the total — no rounding drift.
Is this calculator really free? Do I need an account?+
Completely free, no account, and nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere — the math runs in your browser. If you want your group's balances tracked over time, that's what Split! is for, and its core features are free too.
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