Splitwise Launches iPhone and Android Apps

Cambridge, MA (September 19th 2011) – Splitwise, a fast-growing Web tool that helps roommates organize shared expenses, has launched free mobile apps for both iPhone and Android.

Splitwise allows roommates to track apartment spending on utilities, rent, grocery trips, and other expenses by creating a free account on Splitwise.com. The app organizes shared expenses onto one page, analyzes historical spending, sends an email summary of debts, and calculates the simplest way for roommates to pay each other back.

“With the release of these mobile apps, roommates can now easily input expenses when they occur, such as at a furniture store, in the grocery checkout isle, or when settling a bar tab,” said Splitwise Co-founder and Harvard graduate student Jonathan Bittner. “We want it to be as easy as possible to keep track of how much your roommates owe each other.”

Open as a public beta since mid-April 2011, Splitwise already has over 10,000 registered users, hundreds of thousands of hits, and is a finalist in the prestigious MassChallenge business start-up competition. The site was popularized through its free “fairness calculators,” which give impartial sharing advice to roommates and friends based on survey analysis. They include a rent-sharing calculator, a used-furniture valuation tool, and a calculator for the appropriate contribution when staying as a guest.

“In the next few months, we’ll be working on international currency support and other frequently requested features,” said Bittner. “But what we’re most excited about is helping people keep track of debts between friends who don’t live in the same apartment. In that spirit, we’ll be launching a travel-oriented sharing service very soon.”

About Splitwise

Splitwise (formerly: SplitTheRent) is on a mission to make sharing expenses simple, organized, and fair. The site was cofounded by Jonathan Bittner, an astrophysics graduate student at Harvard, and Ryan Laughlin, a Yale senior studying computer science.

The site has made headlines (NYT, WSJ, AOL, Freakonomics) and received hundreds of thousands of hits since February 2011, when it debuted its innovative “rent-splitting calculator,” which divides rent fairly among housemates based on the size and quality of each bedroom. Since the launch of its bill-sharing tool for roommates, it has been received favorably by personal finance experts (Yahoo! Finance) and web-tool devotees (Lifehacker, MakeUseOf).