questions we hear a lot.

splitmax is an iOS app that turns a restaurant receipt into a shareable link. You scan the receipt, pick or let the app detect every line item, and send a link to your group. Each person opens the link in their browser, taps what they had, and pays you through Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, or Zelle.

It replaces the napkin-math moment at the end of a meal where someone has to figure out who ordered what, how much of the tax and tip each person owes, and how to chase down four Venmo requests over the next 48 hours. The whole process takes about 90 seconds end-to-end for the organizer, and under 15 seconds per person for everyone else.

No. Only the person organizing the split needs splitmax. Everyone else opens the shared link in their browser — Safari, Chrome, whatever — and taps their items there. No download, no signup, no email required on their end.

This was a hard design decision early on. Most bill-splitting apps require everyone in the group to install and sign up before the split can happen. That fails in practice because the person who ordered the cheapest thing is the least motivated to install a new app. We made the organizer do the work so the rest of the group doesn’t have to.

Very accurate on modern, well-lit, printed receipts — we typically get every line item right on 95%+ of receipts from US chain restaurants and most sit-down spots. Handwritten receipts, very thermal-faded paper, and receipts with diner-codes (“BRG/CHZ”) can require a manual edit. We show the extracted items before you share the link, so you can fix anything that looks wrong in a tap.

If the scan keeps getting a specific place wrong, email us a photo at support@splitmax.app — we use real failures to improve the model.

splitmax is free forever. The free tier includes unlimited scans, unlimited group splits, and every payment handle we support (Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, Zelle). There’s one small banner ad in the app.

If you’d prefer no ads and a small Pro badge next to your name, Pro is $1/month or $5/year with a 1-month free trial. You can cancel from your App Store subscription settings at any time. The price is intentionally low — splitmax isn’t a service that needs to charge you every month.

Currently: Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, and Zelle. You set your payment handles once in settings, and splitmax generates pre-filled payment links for whichever apps you’ve enabled. Your group taps their preferred app from the shared link and the payment amount is already typed in — they just confirm.

We’re evaluating support for Apple Cash and international wallet apps (Wise, Revolut, PayPay in Japan, Alipay). If there’s a specific one you need, email us and we’ll consider adding it.

No. Receipt photos are sent to an OCR service to extract line items, then deleted. We don’t maintain a database of receipts, meals, or transactions. Your group’s splits are stored as itemized data (not images) for the short window before everyone pays, and auto-expire after 30 days.

We also don’t store your payment app credentials. splitmax generates a Venmo/Cash App/PayPal/Zelle deep link with the amount pre-filled — the actual transaction happens inside that app, not ours. For full details, see our privacy policy.

Yes — splitmax works on any itemized receipt. Grocery stores, coffee shops, bars, hotel room service bills. We optimize OCR for restaurant receipts since that’s the most common case, but line-item extraction works on anything with a clear format.

For more ongoing splits (shared rent, utilities, recurring bills), splitmax isn’t the right tool — we focus on one-off splits among a group. For that you probably want Splitwise. For moments at a table or at checkout, we’re faster.

splitmax tells you, at a glance, who has paid and who hasn’t. You can nudge un-paid members with a one-tap reminder that re-sends the payment link. We don’t automatically charge anyone — payments only move through the user’s preferred payment app, so the person who owes always has to confirm.

If someone refuses to pay, that’s outside splitmax’s scope. We don’t do collections, charge-backs, or force-transfers. The product exists to make the math clean and the payment frictionless — not to handle conflict resolution.

Yes. Any item can be marked as shared, then split among a subset of people rather than the full group. So if three of you ordered the $28 nachos and one person didn’t touch them, the nachos divide three ways, not four. Same for shared bottles of wine, appetizers, and group entrees.

For a longer explanation of why this matters and how we handle edge cases (alcohol tax, auto-gratuity, discounts), see our guide to fair restaurant splits.

The app works on any receipt, in any currency — the OCR extracts line items regardless of locale. Where it gets complicated is payment: Venmo, Cash App, and Zelle are US-only. PayPal works internationally. If your group is abroad and everyone has PayPal, you’re fine. Otherwise the organizer can take the total and settle with the group outside splitmax — the split math still works.

We’re actively looking at adding Wise, Revolut, and region-specific wallets to make international splitting a first-class workflow.

Inside the splitmax app, open Settings → Upgrade. You can pick monthly or yearly. Pro is handled through Apple’s in-app purchase system, which means your subscription is managed in iPhone Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions. Cancel or downgrade from there at any time — you keep Pro benefits until the end of your billing period.

If you signed up with a family member’s Apple ID and need to transfer the subscription, Apple’s support team can help. We can’t modify subscriptions on our end because the billing is entirely on Apple’s side.

Some casual places (food trucks, bars running a bar-tab, etc.) print a receipt with just the subtotal, tax, and tip. splitmax still works: you can manually enter the items, or fall back to an even split with per-person assigned amounts. The app’s not useless without OCR — it’s just faster with it.

If you regularly deal with a restaurant whose receipts don’t itemize, ask the server for an itemized version at payment — most POS systems can reprint one with a button press.

The free version is paid for by ads. We keep them minimal — one small banner inside the app, ads on the public marketing pages and guides. Nothing on the scan screen, the split screen, or the shared link your friends open. Ads stay out of the critical path of splitting a bill.

If you’d rather not see any ads, Pro removes them for $5/year. The free tier and Pro tier share every feature — ad removal is the only real difference, plus a small Pro badge next to your name.

In the app, Settings → Account → Delete Account. This permanently removes your profile, payment handles, and any active or past splits you organized. Receipt photos are already auto-deleted after OCR; past splits auto-expire after 30 days. Deletion is irreversible and takes effect immediately.

You can also email privacy@splitmax.app to request a full data export or deletion. We respond within 7 days. See our privacy policy for the full policy.

Email support@splitmax.app with a screenshot or video if you can, plus the approximate time it happened and the version of splitmax you’re running (Settings → About). The more context, the faster we can reproduce and fix it.

If you’re seeing a receipt that keeps getting parsed wrong, please include a photo of the receipt. OCR failures are almost always a pattern we haven’t seen yet, and the only way we fix them is by seeing the actual images.