SplitEase - I Built an AI-Powered Bill Splitter So My Roommates Would Stop Owing Me Money
This is a submission for the MLH x DEV Writing Challenge What I Built SplitEase (live at split.elitecrew.online ) is a zero-paywall expense-splitting platform for roommates, friend groups, and trips — built to kill the awkward "I'll pay you back later" conversation for good. The idea came from a very real, very annoying problem: tracking hostel bills, flat rent, and trip expenses across a…
SplitEase, a zero-paywall expense-splitting platform for roommates, friend groups, and trips, was created to eliminate the "I'll pay you back later" conversation. The platform simplifies tracking of expenses like hostel bills, flat rent, and trip costs by providing a centralized location where all group members can see who has paid, who owes, and how to settle up with minimal transfers.
Key features of SplitEase include unlimited groups and members, quick splitting modes for equal, percentage, shares, or exact amount splits, flexible splitting options, QR, link & email invites for instant group creation, real-time group chat with payment and settlement records, minimum-transfer settlement suggestions to simplify multiple bills into fewer transfers, receipt photos for itemized expense data, and a live balance dashboard with spending charts. The app ensures secure login using OTP, TLS in transit, and encryption at rest.
SplitEase is free, with no per-member fees, trial period, or feature gates. It operates as both a web app and a mobile app on Google Play, developed using Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion, Recharts, Axios for frontend; Node.js, Express, MongoDB via Mongoose, JWT authentication, Socket.io for real-time chat and balance updates for backend; Firebase, Cloudinary for image storage, Nodemailer for emails, OpenAI and Google Gemini for AI & OCR in the in-app assistant, and Tesseract.js for optical character recognition on receipt photos.
The infrastructure also includes Firebase Quality Assurance with Jest test suites, CodeQL static analysis, and CI running fast-check property-based security tests.
Developed at an MLH hackathon, SplitEase was born from the need to address a recurring issue in group finances. The hackathon's time constraints pushed the team to focus on essential functionalities - splitting, settling, and chatting - rather than less critical "coming soon" features like multi-currency support, CSV export, or UPI payouts. This disciplined approach to scoping continues to influence the ongoing development of SplitEase.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
