# Contamos vs Tricount: beyond splitting the trip

Tricount is the simplest way to split the costs of a trip: make a tricount, invite everyone, add what each person paid, and at the end it tells you who pays whom to square up. It is free, it needs no account to join, and for a week away it is hard to beat. Contamos is a different kind of tool for a different kind of group: people whose shared money does not end when the trip does.

## The short version

| | Tricount | Contamos |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Built for | Splitting a trip or an event between friends | A group that shares money on an ongoing basis |
| What it tracks | Who paid what, and who owes whom | Accounts the group holds, and the money moving through them |
| Lifetime | One tricount per trip or event | One ledger, for as long as the group lasts |
| Currencies | One per tricount, with conversion for foreign expenses | Balances per currency, never blended into one number |
| Budgets | No | Yes, per category or tag, per month (Pro) |
| Recurring transactions | No | Yes (Pro) |
| Export | CSV and PDF export were part of the old Premium plan and are not in the new app | CSV export of transactions on every plan |
| Bank statement import | No | Hand a CSV statement to your AI assistant; it runs a dry run first |
| AI assistant access | No | Claude or ChatGPT can read and write the ledger (every plan) |
| Price | Free (owned by bunq) | Free plan with limits; Pro at US$4.99 a month or US$29.99 a year |

Details are the public ones at the time of writing. Tricount's new app dropped its Premium plan, and with it some features, so check what the version you have offers.

## The real difference: an event or a ledger

A tricount is a container for one event. It starts when the trip starts, collects what each person paid, and ends with a settlement. That is a good model for an event and a poor one for a life: a couple's shared costs, a flat's rent and bills, a family's savings in two currencies, a side project's card. Those do not have an end date, nobody is "settling up", and the useful question is not who owes whom but how much is in the shared account and what it went on last month.

Contamos is built around that question. The group has accounts, each in one or several currencies. Money goes in as income or contributions and out as expenses, each transaction tagged with what it was for, and transfers move money between accounts. The result is a balance per account per currency, a dashboard for the month and a history that stays.

## Where Tricount is still the better choice

- **A trip, a dinner, a gift bought together.** Friends paid from their own pockets and want to square up at the end. Tricount does exactly this, for free, and the people you invite need no account. Contamos does not calculate who owes whom.
- **You want zero setup.** A tricount is created in a minute from a phone. Contamos asks you to set up the accounts the group actually uses, which takes ten minutes.

## Where Contamos wins

- **It does not end.** A ledger carries on month after month, so you can compare this September with last September, see a budget's progress, and keep the history of a group that has shared money for years.
- **Currencies that stay separate.** A trip through three countries, or a group in Latin America that keeps pesos and dollars, needs balances per currency. Tricount converts foreign expenses into the tricount's one currency. Contamos keeps every currency apart and stores the rate of the day on each transaction. Read [shared money in two currencies](https://contamos.xyz/en/blog/shared-money-in-two-currencies).
- **Budgets and recurring transactions.** A monthly budget per category or tag, and rules that record the rent or a subscription on schedule, both on Pro.
- **Import and export.** Hand a bank statement to your AI assistant and review its dry run before anything is recorded. Export your transactions as CSV whenever you like, on every plan.
- **Roles and an activity log (Pro).** Owner, admin and member roles, and a log of every change inside the team, so a shared ledger stays trustworthy as the group grows.
- **Your AI assistant can use it.** Contamos exposes the ledger to Claude and ChatGPT through MCP, on every plan: ask for the month's report, record an expense by chat, or hand the assistant a statement to import. See [AI assistants](https://contamos.xyz/en/docs/ai-assistants).

## Using both

Many groups do. The trip is a tricount; the flat is a Contamos ledger. If the trip is paid from a shared fund rather than from everyone's pockets, it fits better as an account in Contamos, which is what [a group trip in several currencies](https://contamos.xyz/en/blog/shared-money-in-two-currencies) describes.

## Who Contamos is for

Contamos is a shared ledger for everyone you share money with: couples, flatmates, families, siblings sharing a parent's costs, side projects, a long-running trip fund. It is free to start, needs no card, and works in every currency the money actually lives in. If the money you share outlives the trip, [start free](https://contamos.xyz/login).