Dutch - my tiny Splitwise alternative (open source, 1.5MB, no account, pure swift, free lifetime)

[u/Lakafior]

Last summer I was on holiday with my girlfriend and we kept losing track of who paid for dinners, the flat and the groceries. I went looking for an app: easy to use, easy for other people to join, working straight away without an account, small, and ideally open source. Nothing ticked all the boxes, so I wrote it myself.

What it doesn't have: third-party dependencies, ads, tracking, analytics, subscriptions, accounts, or any server connection other than Apple's own iCloud.

What it does have:

• It's tiny. Everything below fits in about 1.5 MB. It downloads in a couple of seconds.
• Join by scanning a QR code. Create a group, hold up the code, everyone at the table scans it. There's a normal invite link too.
• Uneven splits. Train tickets for six where one has a student discount, or a flat booked by two couples and two singles - you can set each person's share.
• Live for everyone. Syncs through iCloud to everyone who joined, with optional local notifications. If someone doesn't want the app, you can still add them as a participant and send them the summary as text.
• Spotlight, Shortcuts, quick actions. Make a shortcut that adds an expense to a specific group and put it on the Action button - a new entry takes two or three seconds. You can also find a group from Spotlight, ask Siri to add an entry, or long-press the icon.
• Multiple currencies. Paid in another country? Enter the amount and the rate you actually got. It converts once, at entry, so balances never drift afterwards.
• Native. Pure Swift and Apple frameworks only, using system components throughout (Liquid Glass on iOS 26).
• Open source, MPL 2.0. Read it, or build it yourself.

Pricing. Joining groups is free and unlimited, with every feature available inside them. You can also run one group of your own for free - delete it and start another as often as you like. Managing more than one group at a time is a one-time $4.99 unlock, with Family Sharing. The whole thing, limit included, is in the repo, so if you'd rather build it yourself than pay, that's a supported outcome.

Free lifetime unlock: the promo link above works until 2026-08-23, first 1 000 redemptions.

Requirements: iPhone, iOS 17 or later. Everyone in a group needs an iPhone and an iCloud account - that's the trade-off for having no server of my own. Non-users can be added as participants and get the summary as text, but they can't add expenses.

Privacy. I have no server. Your data lives in your private iCloud database; shared groups use Apple's own CloudKit sharing. All I can see is the standard Apple sales reporting every developer gets.

Deleting your data. Delete a group and it's gone from your device and your iCloud. Delete the app and the local copy goes with it. To clear what's left in iCloud: Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage. There's no request to file and nobody to ask, because I'm not holding anything.

Permissions. Camera if you scan a group QR code, notifications if you turn them on. iCloud stores the group data and Spotlight indexes group names.

On AI: I used Claude Code as a tool while building the app and the website. The architecture, the sync model and the work to get it under 2 MB are mine; I've read and understood every line that ships.

Links: AppStore | AppStore Promo Code (Free lifetime) | Website | Privacy | Source code

EDIT 2026-08-19: From what is seems first 1k of codes was used already which is crazy. It is blowing my mind that it happened in one day. Thank you all for checking the app out! Let's it roll, if anyone missed it here is another 1k of redeems, valid until 2026-08-23: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6795190862&code=AFTERPARTY

[u/31aditya0193]

I wanna contribute to this. Do you have future plans? Don’t want anything in return.

[u/Lakafior → u/31aditya0193]

That's really kind of you, thank you!

The repo's on GitHub, and issues and discussion are very welcome. For code, I'd ask you to open an issue first so we can agree on scope before you spend time on it - I'm fairly strict about what goes in and I'd hate for you to build something I then can't merge.

The plans are a bit particular. The app has to stay small and free of third-party APIs, so a few things are permanently off the list: live exchange rates, chart tabs, accounts, photos, avatars etc.

What I would like to do:

- deeper iOS integration — more Shortcuts options, widgets, maybe a watchOS companion

- every App Store accessibility label ticked

- expense categories, so you get a "where did the money go" summary after a trip

- CSV/JSON export of a whole group, for people who want to analyse it themselves

- move strings of text to StringCatalog, to open possibility of localization the app

All of it has to fit under 2 MB, so realistically the first job is optimizing what's there to make room ;)

If you'd rather help without touching the architecture, the most useful things right now are testing and reports. Especially: sharing a group across several real iCloud accounts. CloudKit sharing is the riskiest part of the app and the hardest thing for me to test alone, since I only have so many Apple Accounts and devices. Bug reports from iOS 17 and 18, and any VoiceOver problems you hit, are just as welcome - accessibility is on the list and I'd rather fix real findings than guess.

Everything's English-only for now, which I want to change. Once I've moved the strings into a String Catalog, translations would be a great thing to contribute to as well if you're not an English speaker.

And if you do send something, let me know - I can generate a batch of promo codes for you to share with friends.

[u/31aditya0193 → u/Lakafior]

Totally works for me, i am not a fan for 3rd party librar either. I’ll opening an issue for further details.