coQuarters vs Splitwise
Looking for a Splitwise alternative? Here is an honest, feature-by-feature look at how coQuarters compares for a roommate household.
Try everything free for 30 days. No card. Then $39.99/year for your whole household, every roommate included.
The short version
Splitwise is a calculator for splitting money: a trip, a dinner, an IOU between friends. It is well known, the math is right, and it has a free tier, which coQuarters does not. If a ledger is genuinely all you need, Splitwise is a fine answer and you can stop reading here.
coQuarters is for the other case: an actual household, running month after month. It splits rent and bills and settles up the same way, but it also handles the parts Splitwise does not touch at all. Chores with rotation and a fairness view. A shared calendar carrying events, chores, and bill due dates. Recurring bills, a shopping list, a house board, and a weekly check-in. A document and deposit vault, and a printable move-out statement for the day the lease ends. There are no ads on any plan, it is a link rather than an app store install, and it works offline-first as a progressive web app.
The trade is straightforward. coQuarters costs money after a 30-day free trial, $39.99 a year for the whole household rather than per person, and there is no free tier waiting at the end of it.
Feature by feature
| Feature | coQuarters | Splitwise |
|---|---|---|
| What it is built for | Running one household month after month, money and everything else | Splitting money in a group, including one-off trips and IOUs |
| Splitting expenses | Even or custom splits, running balances, one-tap settle-up | Even or custom splits, running balances. This is its core job |
| Household chores | Built in: a shared chore pool with rotation and a fairness view | Not covered; it is an expense ledger only |
| Shared calendar | Built in: events, chores, and bill due dates, with a subscribe feed | Not covered |
| Shared lists & board | Built in: shopping list, house board, weekly check-in | Not covered |
| Move-out & deposit | A printable move-out statement plus a document/deposit vault | Not covered |
| Free tier | None. 30 days free with no card, then a subscription is required | Has one, with limits on how much you can log. Splitwise wins here |
| Ads | None, on any plan | Shown on the free tier to encourage upgrading |
| Install | A link. Works offline-first as a PWA, no app store required | App store install |
| Pricing | $39.99/yr or $4.99/mo, per household, one person pays for everyone | $4.99/mo or $49.99/yr Pro, per person |
Splitwise details are based on its publicly listed pricing and free-tier policy, which can change; check splitwise.com for its current terms.
Who each one is really for
Splitwise makes sense if all you need is a ledger shared across a loose group of friends, for trips, one-off group costs, or a friend group that does not live together. It is well known, it gets the math right, and it has a free tier, so the cost of trying it is nothing.
coQuarters is built for a household that actually lives together: two or more roommates sharing rent, bills, chores, the calendar, and the day-to-day logistics of one apartment, for months or years at a time. Because one subscription covers the whole household rather than each person separately, the price per roommate goes down as more people join, not up. In a three-person house, $39.99 a year works out to about $1 each a month.
Splitwise alternative FAQ
- Is coQuarters free?
- For 30 days, yes: the whole app, for the whole household, with no credit card. After that it is $39.99 a year (or $4.99 a month) for the household, and there is no free tier to fall back on. Splitwise does have a genuinely free tier, so if free is a hard requirement, Splitwise is the better fit and we would rather say that than waste your time. What you get for the $39.99 is one subscription covering every roommate, up to 12 people, with no ads on any plan, and you can export all of your data at any time.
- What does coQuarters do that Splitwise does not?
- Splitwise is built for splitting money, and it is good at it. coQuarters splits money too, but it is built to run an ongoing household: a shared chore pool with rotation, a household calendar covering events, chores, and bill due dates, a shopping list, a house bulletin board, a weekly check-in, and a move-out statement plus a document vault for the security deposit. Those are the parts of living together that a group-expense calculator does not touch.
- Does coQuarters hold or move our money?
- No. Like Splitwise, coQuarters only tracks who owes whom. When it is time to settle up, it builds a one-tap Venmo or Cash App link for the exact amount and you pay each other directly.
- Do I have to install anything?
- No. coQuarters is a progressive web app: open the link, add it to your home screen if you want an app icon, and it works offline-first. There is no app store account or download required to get started.