How to split a restaurant bill
The whole method: tax and tip shared proportionally, tipping on the pre-tax subtotal, and what to tell the server before you order.
Scan a paper receipt or upload the PDF from an online order. Everyone opens one link and claims their own items — in a browser, at the same time, with no account. Tax follows the lines it was actually charged on, and every total shows its working.
No account needed to try · Two free bills as a guest
One walmart.com PDF, read line by line. Two people claim their own items from a single link — no account, nothing installed. The tax lands on the lines that were actually charged it, and every share is checked to sum exactly to the receipt.
74 seconds · nothing in it depends on the sound
A phone photo, an iPhone HEIC, a PDF emailed from the restaurant. The AI pulls out every line, the tax, and the tip — then checks its own arithmetic against the printed total.
Send the link to the group chat. Your friends type their first name and claim their items live, watching the totals move. No app, no account.
One line per person, plain text, pastes cleanly into iMessage or WhatsApp. Or keep a running balance here and mark it settled when they pay you back.
This is the real splitting engine, running on a made-up dinner. Tap the faces next to an item and watch what everyone owes change.
Moonbeam Diner
Route 66
Everyone owes
Adds up to exactly $97.47 — tax and tip shared in proportion, to the cent.
Go on, tap a face ↑
One person scans the receipt and drops the link in the group chat. Everyone opens it, types their name, and starts tapping. Faces pop in as people arrive, and each person's total updates on everyone's phone as they claim.
Nobody installs anything. Nobody makes an account. And nobody has to be the person doing arithmetic on a napkin while the table waits.
Start a live splitAt the table
Maya just grabbed the Onion Rings
The thing most split apps put behind a subscription is the one you came for: reading the receipt. Splitwise Pro is $4.99 a month, or $49.99 a year, and scanning is part of it. Here it is free — your first scan costs nothing, and after that a short ad unlocks the next one. Typing a receipt in by hand never costs anything, and there is no cap on how many bills or groups you make. One bill seats up to 30 people.
| EachSplit | Paid split apps | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0, no paid tier | Typically $4.99/month (~$50/yr) |
| Receipt scanning | Free first scan, then a short ad | Paid tier |
| PDF receipts from online orders | Yes | Rarely |
| Per-line tax rates | Yes | Rarely — proportional only |
| Item-by-item splitting | Yes | Often paid tier |
| Partial quantities | Yes — 2 of the 6 beers | Rarely |
| Live claiming from a link | Yes, no account needed | Rarely |
| Friends need an account | No | Usually |
Yes — free forever, and there is no paid tier to upgrade to. It is supported by short optional ads: your first receipt scan is free, and after that a short ad pays for the next one. A photo costs one ad, and so does a PDF of one or two pages; a longer PDF costs one ad per two pages, since that is what it costs us to read. Typing a receipt in by hand is always free, and so is everything else — groups, live splitting, balances, history.
Three things they do not do. EachSplit reads PDF receipts, so you can split a Walmart or Instacart order that never produced a piece of paper. It can apply the real tax rate each line was charged, instead of spreading one average across a basket where the food is zero-rated and the beer is not. And anyone you send the link to can claim their own items live, in a browser, without making an account. On top of that, receipt scanning is behind a paid tier in most of them — Splitwise Pro is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year — and here it is free.
No. Send them the link, they type their first name, and they tap what they had. Nothing to install, no sign-up. If they ever do make an account, everything they claimed comes with them. You do need a free account to start a live split — the bill has to have an owner who can still find it tomorrow — but that is the only place we ask.
Photos from any phone including iPhone HEIC, screenshots, and PDFs. Photos are turned the right way up automatically using the orientation your camera recorded. More usefully, it checks its own arithmetic — the line items against the printed subtotal, and the subtotal plus tax, tip and fees against the printed total — so you can see whether the numbers came through intact rather than having to trust that they did.
Proportionally, to the cent: if your items are a third of the bill, you pay a third of the tax and tip. When a receipt charges different rates on different things — groceries next to beer — you can switch to splitting tax line by line instead, and each line's own rate decides its share. The pool being divided is always the tax the receipt actually charged — rates set the proportions, never the amount — and if your rates do not account for all of it, the app says so on screen rather than quietly absorbing the difference. Either way every split is done in whole cents and checked to sum exactly to the receipt total; the app refuses to show a number that does not add up.
Yes. If the receipt says six beers and you had two, say so — EachSplit divides that line by share rather than by head count.
Yes. You can split two bills as a guest before we ask for anything, and when you do make an account those bills come with you. The one thing that needs an account is sending a live claim link, because other people's work ends up on that bill and it needs an owner who still exists tomorrow.
Some bills do not divide cleanly. These are the ones people ask about most.
The whole method: tax and tip shared proportionally, tipping on the pre-tax subtotal, and what to tell the server before you order.
Neither app can divide a paid order across several cards. Split the receipt instead, with the delivery fee, service fee and tip landing where they belong.
The receipt zero-rates the food and taxes the beer. Spreading one average across the basket quietly overcharges whoever bought the vegetables.
Share the basics, claim your own items, off one receipt — and no spreadsheet that gets abandoned in week two.
No paper receipt to photograph. Upload the PDF from your purchase history instead — fees, tip and substitutions included.
What the free plan now limits, what is behind Pro, and the cases where Splitwise is still the better tool.
All the guides · or just the tip calculator
Two free bills as a guest. If you decide to stay, everything you already split comes with you.
Split a bill