About expense-sharing tools and us

Decents was first imagined near the end of 2022 and development began in 2023. At the time, we simply could not find an expense-sharing tool that fit our needs, so we decided to build a service closer to the way we wanted to split expenses.

Along the way, we tried several services, or tools. The difference was mostly about experience. Some were genuinely impressive and supported features we did not expect. Others... well, every product has its long-time users.

The conclusion first

If you are like our users and have these needs:

1. You do not want to install another app
2. The people splitting expenses are not always fixed members of a messaging group
3. Friends of friends may not understand Chinese, while you still want a native Chinese interface
4. You do not want to create a group chat with too many unfamiliar people
5. You need multi-currency calculation
6. You want ledgers that are easy to share and join, while still keeping permission control
7. You want it to be fully free
8. You do not want ads to break the visual experience
9. You want support to be easy to reach and friendly

Then Decents group ledgers are the best fit.

Three tools that were impressive at the time

Split Dragon Baby

Its strengths are polished visuals and a large user base. The main reason it did not fit us was that it requires binding to a LINE group.

If 99% of the people you split expenses with are always the same members in the same LINE group, it is still a great choice.

Tricount

This is probably one of the strongest international expense-sharing apps. Its strength is that it is an app and has most of the expected features. Its weakness is also that it is an app, which makes flexible invitations and registration more friction-heavy. Its Chinese experience is also not as friendly.

If your members do not change often, you do not want to bind everything to LINE, and everyone is willing to install an app, it is worth using.

Splitwise

At the time, it was probably Tricount's main competitor. It also had most of the expected features, but with more limits, including paid features. As of late 2025, it does not seem very actively maintained.

It was popular four or five years ago, but today we would not strongly recommend it.

If you have another tool you like, feel free to message us on Instagram: @decents.

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Decents' weaknesses

Yes, we will talk about our current weaknesses directly. It is better to be honest about the parts we still need to improve.

Some feature gaps simply need more time, for example:

1. Image uploads: users have asked for this for a long time. Believe us, we also want receipts inside ledgers. We plan to add this after the business model is more settled. Technically, aside from security validation to prevent unsafe uploads, it is not too complicated. The real difficulty is storage cost.
2. Groups: Decents currently uses the ledger as the management unit, which is different from some of the other strong tools. We originally wanted to support looser, more flexible expense-sharing groups. Still, we have received plenty of complaints (or suggestions) from people whose use cases are mostly with the same group of people.

Some weaknesses are design tradeoffs. The most direct consequence is: choosing the web brings limitations.

Installing an app is just too much friction, so from day one we built Decents as a web-first service.

For easier access, you can also add Decents to your home screen.

But a pure web approach means dealing with strict mobile browser behavior, which creates a few annoyances:

• Login sessions may be cleared often: if you frequently use Decents on mobile, you may find yourself signing in again the next day. Login is already simple, but we understand that it is still annoying.
• Offline editing is almost impossible to make reliable: with limited resources, temporary data can be cleared by the system at any time. If offline edits only survive for a few hours, it is probably better not to offer the feature at all.

We do not currently have the development capacity to support a native app. If we can support one in the future, these problems may go away.