Planazo vs Splitwise vs a group chat: which is best for group trips?

Great for quick chat and banter, and everyone already has it. The downside is that plans, addresses and who-owes-what get buried fast, and there's no single place to check the latest version.

Best for: small, simple trips where one or two people keep the details in their head.

A shared doc or sheet is flexible and free. But someone has to build and maintain it, it's fiddly on a phone, and expense maths is easy to get wrong.

Best for: very detailed planners who enjoy building their own system.

Splitwise is a well-known app focused on tracking and splitting shared expenses, and it's widely used for flatmates as well as trips. It isn't designed to hold your itinerary, map or photos, so you'll usually pair it with a chat or doc for the planning side.

Best for: groups who only need expense splitting.

Planazo is built specifically for group trips. It combines a shared itinerary, place search, booking costs, expense splitting with a 'who's up, who's down' balance, a group map with opt-in location sharing and a shared photo album — all in one trip. It's currently free.

Best for: groups who want planning and money in one place, without maintaining a spreadsheet.

Keep your group chat for chatting — no app replaces that. For the organising part, choose a tool that keeps plans and money together so nobody has to dig through messages to find the hotel address or work out who owes whom.