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Split Expenses & Settle Up — Fewest Transfers, Exact to the Cent

Add who paid for what and who it was for, and get the smallest possible list of payments that squares everyone up. Two things make this different from a typical splitter. First, money is handled in whole cents: 100.00 split three ways is 33.34 + 33.33 + 33.33, uneven shares use the largest-remainder method, and every balance adds back to exactly zero. Second, the settlement is the proven minimum, not a quick heuristic. The fewest transfers equals the number of people owed or owing minus the largest number of groups whose balances sum to zero, and this tool finds that partition exactly for up to 20 people. We checked it against brute force on hundreds of random groups; the common ‘biggest debtor pays biggest creditor’ shortcut needed extra transfers in about 6% of them.

How to use Split Expenses & Settle Up — Fewest Transfers

  1. Add everyone in the group.
  2. Add each expense: what it was, how much, who paid, and who shares it (tick people, set shares for uneven splits).
  3. Read each person’s balance — green is owed, red owes.
  4. Pay the transfers listed at the bottom; that list is the minimum possible.

Frequently asked questions

How is the minimum number of payments worked out?
If the balances can be divided into groups that each net to zero, each group of k people can settle in k−1 payments and never fewer. So the minimum is the number of people with a nonzero balance minus the largest number of such groups. Finding that division is a hard search problem in general; this tool solves it exactly with a bitmask search for up to 20 people owed or owing, and tells you when a larger group falls back to the greedy method.
Why not just pair the biggest debtor with the biggest creditor?
It is fast and usually fine, but it can tangle independent debts together. Load the weekend-trip preset: three activities were each paid by one person for a subgroup, so three payments settle it, yet greedy pairing produces four. In our tests on random groups greedy needed extra payments about 6% of the time.
Where does the extra cent go when a bill does not divide evenly?
To whoever has the largest fractional remainder, with ties going to the first person listed — the largest-remainder method. That guarantees the shares always add back to the exact receipt total. You can open "Exact per-person shares" to see every cent.
Can I split unevenly, for example rent by room size?
Yes. Tick who shares an expense and give each person a number of shares. The shared-flat preset splits rent 3:2:2 by room size and utilities evenly.
Does it handle someone paying for a thing they are not part of?
Yes — the payer does not have to be in the split. Buying a gift for two friends, for example, is simply an expense paid by you and shared between them.
Is my data stored anywhere?
No. All the calculation runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded or saved on a server.

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