Dolio vs Spliit

Most comparisons on this site pit Dolio against an app that shows ads or locks basics behind a paywall. Spliit is neither. Built by Montreal developer Sebastien Castiel because, in his words, the world needs a free and open-source way to share expenses, it shows no ads, requires no account from anyone, and publishes its entire source code under the MIT license. That makes this the rare comparison between two apps in the same camp — both free, both ad-free — and it comes down to two quieter questions: how each one stays free, and how deep the product goes when your group needs more than the basics. Here's an honest, source-checked look at both.

The short version

Spliit is a deliberately minimalist open-source project: create a group, share the link, split by percentage, shares, or amount — no accounts, no ads, no paid tier, ever. It runs on donations, and you can even self-host it. Dolio shares the no-ads principle but is a funded product: the free plan is unlimited and includes itemized per-item bills and account-free ghost participants, while the optional Pro plan (€2.49/month, or a 7-day pass from €0.99) pays for the service and adds receipt scanning that reads the line items off a bill and splits them automatically. Spliit's AI Scan (Beta) reads a receipt's title, category, amount, and date — the total, not the items. The table above resolves against live, dated facts, so it stays current as either product changes.

How each app stays free

Nothing free is unfunded — the difference is the funding model, and Spliit is admirably open about its own. The project accepts GitHub Sponsors and one-time donations (checked 26 July 2026), and founder Sebastien Castiel publishes the numbers: in his October 2024 stats post, he reported roughly $115 a month in hosting costs and wrote that "the donations aren't enough yet to cover all the project costs, but it's close!" That's a healthy open-source project — but your ledger depends on donations continuing and on one maintainer's time. Dolio makes a different trade: no plan shows ads, and the free tier is funded by people who choose Pro. Both models keep ads out; they differ in whose money keeps the lights on.

Where Dolio pulls ahead

• Receipt scanning that reads the whole bill. Spliit's AI Scan (Beta) reads a receipt's title, category, amount, and date — you still split the total yourself. Dolio Pro reads the line items and turns them into an itemized, split expense automatically.
• Itemized bills, free. Spliit splits by percentage, shares, or amount. Dolio does equal, fixed, weighted, and fully itemized per-item splits on the free plan — the dinner where three people shared a starter stops being a percentage estimate.
• Your group, your currency. Multi-currency support isn't in Spliit's feature list. Each Dolio group keeps its ledger in one of about a dozen currencies — euros for the flat, pounds for the London trip.
• Ghost participants with a future. Spliit's zero-account model means participants are names in a group. A Dolio ghost participant is also account-free — but they can claim their identity later and take over their history, or stay anonymous forever.
• Funding that doesn't depend on donations. Dolio's development and hosting are paid for by Pro subscribers, not by donations covering costs. If you'd rather support software with money than attention, both apps qualify — Dolio just makes it the business model.

Where Spliit wins

This cuts both ways, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Spliit is fully open source under the MIT license — around 2,800 developers have starred it on GitHub, and anyone can audit the code or run their own copy with Docker or a one-click Vercel deploy. Nobody ever signs in: in Dolio, ghost participants keep members account-free, but the person who creates the group does sign in — in Spliit, not even the organizer needs an account. There is no paid tier at all: recurring expenses (daily, weekly, monthly), categories, receipt photo attachments, and AI scanning are all free, and recurring expenses are something Dolio doesn't offer today. It's translated into eight languages. And since April 2025 it has an official iOS app — most directories still describe Spliit as web-only, which is out of date.

One name, three different apps

A note that saves confusion, because search results mix these freely: Spliit (spliit.app, two i's) is the open-source expense splitter this page compares. SPLIIT Pro (spliit.pro) is an unrelated group-orders app that publishes its own comparison articles — it is not the same product or team. And Spliiit (spliiit.com, three i's) is a French subscription-sharing service with no connection to either. If you arrived here researching "Spliit", the open-source app by Sebastien Castiel is the one in our table.

How we sourced this

We don't ask you to take our word for it. Every Spliit value in the comparison table is pulled from a primary source — Spliit's official website, its GitHub repository, its App Store listing, and the founder's own blog posts — and each cell shows its source and the date it was checked. Negative claims (like "no multi-currency") cite the official page that would list the feature if it existed. Re-verifying for this article also corrected our own data: we had recorded Spliit as web-only from its README, but its official iOS app shipped in April 2025, so we fixed the claim and noted it in the changelog. This is the same live facts system that powers our Dolio vs Splitwise and Dolio vs Tricount comparisons, and we re-verify claims on a schedule. Where a fact couldn't be confirmed from a primary page, we left it out rather than guessed.