Is Tricount free or paid? What's free, and what bunq offers around it
Yes, the Tricount app is free. The question people are really asking is somewhere else: now that it belongs to a bank, what comes with it?
5 min read
Yes: the Tricount app is free, with no subscription. Its publisher describes it as “100% free with no ads or limits”, and the old paid tier, Premium, was removed with the new version of the app. Creating a group, sharing the link, logging expenses and seeing who owes what costs nothing, and the people taking part do not have to create an account.
What has changed is everything around it. Tricount belongs to bunq, a Dutch bank, and the app now features bunq services: a free payment card, a travel eSIM, payment requests. None of it is required in order to share expenses, but it is what people find when they install the app, and it is what makes them type “is Tricount free or paid” into a search engine.
Is Tricount free? What the publisher says
On the app's Google Play listing, the publisher writes “No ads, no limits, no subscriptions”. Its website calls the app “100% free”. Its help centre confirms that the Premium tier was dropped with the new app, and describes use without monthly fees.
What stays free, according to those same pages:
- groups, up to 50 people, and no maximum number of expenses;
- splitting equally, by shares or by amounts;
- several currencies, with conversion;
- photos of receipts and invoices;
- offline entry, which not every app offers.
What went away with Premium, according to the help centre: sorting expenses, personal mode, and above all exporting the balance to CSV and PDF. To get an export, the help pages now point to bunq support. For a trip with friends, that changes nothing. For the end of a flatshare or an agreement between separated parents, where the balance has to leave the group as a document, it is worth knowing before you start.
What bunq offers around it: card, account, eSIM
Tricount now presents itself as “tricount by bunq”, and its help centre says the app runs entirely on bunq's infrastructure. bunq, for its part, offers Dutch bank accounts, which it presents as covered by the deposit guarantee scheme.
What follows from that inside the app:
- a free payment card, virtual and prepaid, usable with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Every payment made with it is added to the chosen group by itself. To get one, the help pages describe an identity check, a phone number and a tax identification number;
- a bunq account: asked what happens after signing up for the card, the help centre states that newly registered users also automatically receive a bunq account;
- a travel eSIM, presented on the app's listing;
- payment requests, so you can be paid back directly.
None of this is illegitimate, and a group is perfectly free to stick to the balance. But if your criterion is not handing your group expenses to a bank, or not opening an account just to share a weekend away, that is information that matters, and it reads better before you install than after.
Our sources, checked on 18 September 2026: the Tricount listing on Google Play, the Tricount website, its help centre and the bunq website.
What Kotisso does not do
Kotisso is the app we publish, and it does not do everything Tricount does. Before comparing, the limits:
- you have to create an account to take part, where Tricount does not require it;
- no iOS app: Kotisso is on Android through Google Play, and opens in the browser;
- no offline entry: the app opens without a network so you can read the figures again, but logging an expense takes a connection;
- it does not move money: no card, no account, no payments between members. It counts, and the transfers happen elsewhere.
That last point is a choice, not an oversight: Kotisso connects to no bank. Its balance is free in full, with no limit on expenses or on people taking part, with the four splitting modes, currency conversion and export of the balance to spreadsheet and PDF. There is also a paid tier, at €2.99 per month or €24.99 per year, for conveniences that do not touch the figures: more than two groups open at once, history shown beyond twelve months, statistics for a group and a profile picture. To split in proportion to income, the calculation is set out here: How to split expenses by income.
Which app for which situation
Nobody in the group wants to create an account. Go with Tricount. That is its real advantage: neither Splitwise nor Kotisso allows it.
You will often be without a network, hiking or abroad without a data plan. Tricount, or Splitwise, both of which log expenses offline.
A flatshare that lasts for years, with reminders and a long history: Splitwise is still the most complete for that, provided you accept the daily limit of its free version or pay for the subscription.
The balance will have to leave the group: the end of a flatshare, an agreement between separated parents, a reimbursement that has to be justified. You need a PDF export. Kotisso gives it free; with Tricount, you ask support for it.
You do not want a bank in the loop. Kotisso, or a plain shared spreadsheet.
For the full table, spreadsheets included, see our comparison of expense sharing apps, checked the same day.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tricount really free? Yes. According to its publisher, the app is free, with no subscription and no limit on expenses. The old paid tier, Premium, was removed with the new version.
Do you have to create an account to use Tricount? Not to take part: the comparison published by the publisher says no sign-up is required. For anyone who does sign up, the help centre states that a free card and a bunq account are granted on registration.
Is the Tricount card compulsory? Not for sharing expenses: expenses can still be entered by hand. The card is there to add the payments made with it automatically.
Is Tricount safe? Tricount is published by bunq, which presents its accounts as Dutch bank accounts covered by the deposit guarantee. That guarantee covers the money deposited with bunq; a group's balance, on the other hand, is only a calculation.
Does Tricount export the balance to PDF? Not directly any more. CSV and PDF export was part of Premium, removed with the new version; the help centre suggests asking support for it.
Tricount or Splitwise? Tricount if nobody wants to create an account and you do not want a daily limit on expenses. Splitwise for long-term use, accepting the sign-up and the limit of its free version, or paying for the subscription.
Is there a free equivalent to Tricount? Tricount is free itself. Among the other options, Kotisso keeps the whole balance free with no link to a bank, but asks for an account and has no iOS app; a shared spreadsheet stays free, at the cost of typing on a phone.