Caravan vs Splitwise
Splitwise is the standard tool for tracking who owes whom, and it is used for far more than travel — rent, housemates, dinners, recurring bills. Caravan splits costs too, but as one tab inside a trip that also holds the itinerary, the tasks and the group's decisions. The real question is whether you want a dedicated ledger or the money attached to the plan.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Caravan | Splitwise |
|---|---|---|
| Day-by-day itinerarySplitwise is a shared-expense ledger by design; planning an itinerary is not something it sets out to do. | Full support | Not supported |
| Shared expense splittingBoth divide costs and net out who owes whom. Splitwise's ledger is ongoing and not tied to a trip; Caravan's is scoped to one trip and settles at the end of it. | Full support | Full support |
| Assignable tasks with due datesDelegating work is outside what Splitwise is built for. | Full support | Not supported |
| AI planning assistantSplitwise's paid tier includes receipt scanning. Caravan's assistant drafts itineraries, stays and points of interest from the trip's own data. | Full support | Partial support |
| Works offlineSplitwise's mobile apps cope with intermittent connectivity. Caravan is an installable PWA that queues offline writes and replays them on reconnect. | Full support | Partial support |
| Group polls and votingGroup decisions are outside Splitwise's remit — it assumes you have already decided and just need the maths. | Full support | Not supported |
| Flight details on the tripCaravan stores multi-leg flights entered by hand; neither tool imports bookings from your inbox. | Partial support | Not supported |
| Calendar export and subscription feedSplitwise holds no trip dates to export. | Full support | Not supported |
| Role-based group sharingBoth are multi-person by nature. Splitwise organises people into groups and friends; Caravan adds host, manager and member roles per trip. | Full support | Full support |
| Free planSplitwise's free tier covers everyday splitting, with extras in its paid plan. Caravan's free tier covers a small number of trips; unlimited trips and AI need a subscription. | Partial support | Full support |
full · partial · not offered. Feature details reflect publicly available information as of 2026-07-26. Check Splitwise's site for current details.
Pick Splitwise if…
- Most of your splitting is not travel — rent, housemates, recurring bills — and you want one ledger spanning all of it.
- Everyone you split with is already on Splitwise; that network effect is real, and getting people onto a second app is the hard part.
- You want a dedicated ledger and nothing more: no itinerary, no tasks, no workspace to keep tidy.
Pick Caravan if…
- The expenses belong to one specific trip and you would rather see them beside the itinerary than in a separate app.
- You also need the plan itself — destinations, stays, flights, key dates — plus tasks and polls for the group.
- You want the plan and the settle-up to travel together, including offline and as a calendar feed.
Questions people ask
Does Caravan replace Splitwise?
For a single trip it covers the same ground: who paid, how it was split, and a settle-up list with each pair's debts netted into a single direction. For everyday splitting outside travel — rent, housemates, ongoing bills — Splitwise is designed for that and Caravan is not.
Can Caravan simplify debts the way Splitwise does?
Partly. Caravan nets opposite-direction debts between each pair, so any two people only ever owe in one direction, and shows the resulting settle-up list. It does not reroute a debt through a third person the way Splitwise's simplify-debts does. Recording a settlement reduces the balance straight away.
Does Caravan handle more than one currency?
Each expense and settlement records its own currency, and Caravan converts amounts into the trip's base currency using European Central Bank reference rates. If a rate cannot be fetched it falls back to 1:1 and marks the totals as approximate rather than failing.
Also compare: Caravan vs Wanderlog · Caravan vs TripIt
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