draft: placeholder post
Why Splitwise's free tier broke group travel specifically
The cap isn't the problem. Batching six days of receipts on the seventh is.
In 2025 Splitwise capped its free tier at three expenses a day. For roommates splitting rent and a grocery run, that is generous. For a group trip it is a wall you hit before lunch.
A trip day is not three expenses. It is the taxi, two coffees, the museum tickets, lunch, the boat, dinner, drinks, and the late-night snack run someone covered for six people. Cap the entry rate and people stop entering, plan to catch up later, and then spend the first day home reconstructing a week of receipts from memory.
Caps punish exactly the moment of use
The lesson for anyone building money tools: never cap the core value action. A cap on the thing users came to do does not convert them to paid, it converts them to a spreadsheet.
This piece is a draft. The published version cites the pricing pages and the app-store reviews it draws on.