Who owes who, and how much?
Put in who paid for what and it works out the shortest list of transfers that squares everybody up. Any number of people, split evenly.
- Free, forever
- No account
- No bank connection
- Nothing leaves your browser
Who is in this?
What did somebody pay for?
$289 between 3, so $96.47 each
2 transfers squares it.
- Jo$96.46Alex
- Sam$0.47Alex
- Alex put in $193.40+$96.93
- Sam put in $96-$0.47
- Jo put in $0-$96.46
And in thirty days?
Nobody wants to do this every month.
Pairly keeps the list. Every subscription and every bill in one place, totalled, with what is left to spend. Two minutes to set up, and there is no bank login at any point.
The math, in one paragraph
Everything paid, added up, divided by the number of people: that is each person’s fair share. Subtract what somebody actually put in and you get their position, positive if they are owed and negative if they owe. The positives and the negatives always cancel out exactly, which is a useful thing to know because it means any disagreement is an arithmetic error rather than an opinion.
Why the fewest transfers matters
The obvious approach, where everybody settles with everybody, grows fast: four people means up to twelve payments and about nine minutes of banking app. The approach used here always sends the biggest debtor to the biggest creditor and repeats, which typically settles four people in two or three transfers. The same money moves, fewer times.
Fine for a weekend. Not for a household.
This works nicely for a trip, a dinner or a one-off. It stops working for the bills, because the bills are not an event: rent, power, internet and groceries arrive on different days, change amounts, and land on whichever card was nearest. Nobody keeps a running settle-up for that by hand, which is why most households quietly stop and one person ends up covering more without either of them meaning it.
Pairly keeps that running in the background: every bill, who paid it, and one sentence saying who owes who this month. It can split evenly like this page, or by what each of you earns. Set one up in two minutes, free, with no bank login.
Sharing with people you live with rather than travel with? There is a page for roommates and one for couples who keep separate accounts.
Questions people also ask
- How do you work out who owes who?
- Add up everything that was paid, divide it by the number of people, and that is each person's share. Anybody who paid more than their share is owed the difference; anybody who paid less owes it. The only clever part is deciding who pays whom, and the trick there is to always send the biggest debtor to the biggest creditor.
- Why so few transfers?
- Because everybody paying everybody is the naive answer and it is enormous. Four people can generate twelve transfers that way. Sending the biggest debtor to the biggest creditor until one of them is square, then repeating, usually settles a group of four in two or three payments. It is the same total money, moved fewer times.
- Can I split unevenly?
- Not on this page. It splits everything evenly, which is right for a trip or a house where everybody is doing the same thing. Splitting by what each person earns needs everybody's salary, and asking four people for their income to settle up a taxi is worse than the problem. Pairly does the proportional version for a household that has agreed to it.
- Is this the same as Splitwise?
- For settling one set of expenses, it does the same job and it does not cap you or show you ads. What Pairly is actually for is the other thing: the bills that repeat every month rather than the ones from a weekend away.
- Does anything get saved?
- No. It runs entirely in your browser, there is no account, and refreshing the page clears it.