Equna vs. Tricount: Why a travel app isn't a relationship app

In Europe, Tricount is the classic for splitting money among friends. Quickly add a few people, drop in expenses, done — anyone who's ever settled a trip with friends or a stag party knows it. Since the acquisition by the Dutch neobank Bunq (2022), Tricount has moved even further in the "smart settling" direction.

But Tricount is, at heart, a travel and group app. If you're a couple, running a family or splitting child costs as co-parents, the same things are missing again — the ones that hurt every month in everyday life.

Last week I put Equna up against Splitwise. A lot of that applies here too — but Tricount has enough peculiarities to deserve its own article.

1. Equna is built for exactly two adults

Tricount thinks in groups. You create one "Tricount" per occasion — the trip in July, the flatshare, the stag party. For each expense you pick again who's involved, who paid, who carries how much.

Equna is a two-person app. One group, two adults, plus your kids. Period. That saves three or four clicks per expense — and mentally a lot more:

• No selection boxes per expense — the app knows it's about the two of you.
• A single split ratio (e.g. 50/50 or 60/40), set once, applies automatically.
• No ten parallel "Tricounts" for household, kids, holiday, gifts — everything is in one place.

If what you want isn't "distributing money among many" but sharing everyday life with one person — then this reduction is exactly the right thing.

2. Children are their own area, not "another participant"

In Tricount you have to either add kids as additional participants (which feels odd, because a five-year-old doesn't pay anything), put them as a note in the description, or open a second Tricount just for child costs.

Equna has "Child" as its own expense area — alongside "Shared" and "Personal" as an equal. Two things follow from that, which simply aren't designed into Tricount:

• A separate split for child costs: Maybe you split the household 50/50, but child costs differently because one parent earns more. In Equna you set this once.
• Individual children with names (premium): If you have several children, you can assign expenses to a specific child — school trip for Lea, winter jacket for Max — and see at the end what was actually spent on whom.

After a separation in particular, that's a huge difference. No retroactive sorting, no improvised hashtags in the description.

3. Monthly closing instead of an open balance

Tricount is built on the model "an occasion begins, runs, ends — then you settle". For a trip this works perfectly: trip over, draw the balance, everyone transfers, archive the Tricount.

For a relationship or co-parenting, this model works less well. You don't have a clear "trip ends" — your life doesn't end (hopefully) in July. What happens in practice: the Tricount keeps running and running, the balances get messy, at some point someone hits "Settle all", and then it keeps running again.

Equna does it differently. There's a clear monthly rhythm:

1. During the month, you log expenses.
2. At month-end, each of you confirms the month once.
3. Once both have confirmed, the month is archived (as a snapshot with all details), and Equna tells you: "A owes B exactly €X" — once, clearly, closed.
4. The next month starts with a clean slate.

A month is a month. What's paid is paid. What's unclear, you clarify before the close — not in an open balance that's been running for two years.

4. Disputes are a real workflow

In Tricount you can comment on or edit expenses. If something doesn't sit right, you either write a comment, or you just change it. A real conflict workflow doesn't exist.

In Equna you can dispute an expense and trigger a clarification. As long as open clarifications exist, the month can't be closed. That forces contested items to the surface instead of letting them vanish in a silent comment field.

Sounds like more friction — but the net result is less friction. Conflicts you address early don't escalate.

5. Split changes need both voices

In Tricount any participant can change an expense or its split at any time. No confirmation, no question.

Equna does this deliberately differently. Whoever wants to change the split (e.g. from 50/50 to 60/40) sends a proposal. The partner gets a notification and has to approve before the new split takes effect. Until then, the app keeps calculating with the old one.

Sounds like a small thing. In a relationship it's the opposite. Money only works harmoniously when nobody feels someone is quietly moving things.

6. Joint savings goals — not just splitting, but planning

Tricount splits. It doesn't save.

Equna Premium has joint savings goals: holiday, new sofa, emergency fund, renovation. At the end of the month, Equna automatically notices if you've stayed under your budget and suggests booking the surplus into a shared goal. You confirm — the bar fills up.

"We're getting by with money" becomes "we're building something together". A different mental model than pure settling-up.

7. Budgets instead of just balances

Tricount shows you what you've spent. It doesn't show you what you intended to spend. There are no budgets, no thresholds, no answer to "how much do we still have for groceries this month?".

Equna has a full budget system:

• Three areas: Personal, Shared, Child — each with its own overall budget.
• Per category (premium): Separate limits for groceries, rent, leisure, etc.
• Budget groups (premium): Several categories under one pot, e.g. "Fixed costs" = rent + utilities + internet.
• Annual budgets (premium): For insurance or other yearly items.
• Warnings: At 100 % (free), additionally at 80 % and 90 % (premium).

That's a different tool. Tricount tells you where you stood in the past. Equna helps you correct course in the current month.

8. Data protection: Frankfurt with our own OCR

On data protection, the gap to Tricount is smaller than with US providers — Tricount belongs to Bunq (Netherlands), so it's EU-based and GDPR-compliant. Equna still goes a step further:

• Servers: IONOS in Frankfurt. Your data is in Germany.
• Receipt recognition (OCR): runs on our own server with PaddleOCR. Your till slips do not go to Google Vision, AWS or any other cloud provider.
• Personal expenses: exclusively on your device, in an encrypted local database (SQLCipher AES-256). They never reach our servers — not even as a backup.
• No tracking: no Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, no ad cookies.

Tricount meets EU standards. Equna tries to take a stance beyond that.

9. Ad-free. On purpose.

Tricount Free shows ads. That's legitimate, someone has to pay for the servers.

Equna Free shows no ads. We're funded by users who voluntarily upgrade to premium — and if one of you upgrades, the subscription applies automatically to both partners. Fair sharing should feel fair on the paying side too.

10. A premium model with no bank lock-in

Tricount is now part of Bunq, and some of the more interesting premium features — like "Smart Settle" — are tightly tied to Bunq accounts. If you're not a Bunq customer, you'll see little of that.

Equna is bank-independent. Premium costs €4.99 a month (or €49.99 a year) — and applies to both partners. No account lock-in, no upsell to a banking product you didn't want.

When Tricount is still the better choice

I want to stay honest here. There are situations where Tricount is clearly superior:

• A trip with friends that lasts two weeks and is then done.
• A flatshare of 4+ people with people constantly moving in or out.
• Spontaneous group settling without a long-term context — stag parties, weekend trips, pizza night.
• Bunq users who want Smart Settle integrated directly into their account.

Tricount is built for these cases, and it's very good at them. Using Equna in a flatshare of five would be like using a family calendar for a road trip — possible, but beside the point.

When Equna is the better choice

Equna is built for the cases where money isn't settled but lived together:

• Couples in a shared household who want a clean view of rent, groceries, utilities and everything in between.
• Co-parents after a separation who want to split joint child costs fairly, transparently and without arguments.
• Blended families who have to bring several constellations under one roof.
• Newly cohabiting couples who want clear structures early so money doesn't become a sore topic.

For exactly these situations Equna is built — with a clear monthly rhythm, a dedicated children area, two-sided approvals, joint savings goals, budgets, and servers in Frankfurt.

In closing

Tricount is brilliant for what it was built for: fast, light group settling. If you're flying to Italy in two weeks, stay with Tricount.

But if you're not sharing a trip but a life — if you have children, a shared household, or as separated parents are looking for a fair solution — then you need something that's more than an expense app.

That's Equna. Not "better" in the abstract sense, but built for your situation.

If you have questions or want to share your own experience: contact@equna.eu. I reply personally.

— Patrizio