"Is premium worth it?" is the wrong first question. The better one is: what does a group trip actually require from an app, and is that thing free? Because for the core of group planning, the honest answer in 2026 is usually yes.
This is a head-to-head on free group trip planning apps versus paid ones: what "free" really means when apps use the word so loosely, what each one actually gates, and which features you should never have to pay for.
One thing up front: we build Trips Together, so factor in the bias. Trips Together is freemium, meaning there's a free tier and an optional paid one, and we'll be specific below about exactly which is which, including ours. Everything we say about other apps is sourced to their own pages and linked as we go. Pricing and tiers move often, so check each app's current pricing page rather than trusting a figure written down anywhere, including here.
The truth about "free" apps
Free group travel planning is everywhere in the app store, but the word does a lot of heavy lifting and doesn't always mean what you'd assume. Broadly, there are three versions of it.
Free forever. The core features cost nothing and always will. Wanderlog says as much in its own FAQ: "Our basic functionality of a document and map on which you can plan with your friends will remain free forever, for as many trips as you want to plan."
Free with limits. Free to use, but with a ceiling that bites at the wrong moment. Splitwise, the go-to free expense splitting app, is the clearest example. Its own help centre states: "Splitwise has introduced a daily expense limit for our free tier", and points to Pro as the fix: "You can subscribe to Splitwise Pro to immediately remove the daily limit. Alternatively, you can add more expenses as soon as the daily limit resets, or ask a friend to add the expenses on your behalf." Think about when that bites. Not at home logging one expense a week, but on day three of a trip with a breakfast, two taxis, a museum and a group dinner to add. We wrote about the ways around it, and they're clunky.
Free trial dressed as free. You get everything for a week or two, then the features you built your trip around slide behind a paywall.
None of these is dishonest, exactly, but they're not the same thing, and the app store lists them all as "free". The only way to know which one you're dealing with is to check what specifically is free before the whole group signs up and starts relying on it.
What a group actually needs
Strip a group trip down and there are really only four jobs an app has to do well:
- Decide where to go. A way for everyone to vote on a shortlist instead of one person deciding or the group chat going in circles.
- Build a shared itinerary. One live plan everyone can see and edit, not a doc that's out of date the moment it's shared.
- Split expenses. Track who paid for what and settle up without an accounting dispute.
- Keep documents and tasks together. Bookings, confirmations and who's-doing-what in one place.
Here's the good news for you, and the mildly awkward news for us: most of that is free across the board. Wanderlog gives you a collaborative itinerary and expense splitting on its free tier. Trips Together gives you voting, an itinerary and unlimited expense logging on its free tier. If an app charges you for a basic shared itinerary, that's the outlier worth questioning.
What each app actually gates
| Free tier covers | What's behind the paywall | |
|---|---|---|
| Trips Together | Destination and date voting, shared itinerary, unlimited expense logging and splitting (entered by hand), invite the group, export PDF | Receipt scanning, tap-to-split, email forwarding, live flight updates, offline itineraries, trip chatbot |
| Wanderlog | Collaborative planner, budget tool, expense splitting | Offline access, route optimisation |
| TripIt | Itinerary from confirmation emails you forward in, calendar sync, sharing | Automatic inbox scanning, real-time flight alerts, Seat Tracker, terminal and gate reminders |
| Splitwise | Expense splitting, with a daily limit on how many expenses you can log | Removing the daily limit, receipt scanning, ad-free use |
Sources, all first-party: Wanderlog's budget and expense splitting page, TripIt's own free vs Pro comparison, Splitwise's daily limit help article and the Splitwise Pro page. We've deliberately left prices out, because they move and vary by region and promotion.
The pattern worth noticing: apps that specialise tend to gate the thing they specialise in. Splitwise is the expense app that limits how many expenses you can log. TripIt is the itinerary app that charges for the alerts that make an itinerary useful mid-trip. Both are reasonable business decisions. They're just worth knowing before your group commits.
For a fuller, criteria-based ranking of the field, see the best group trip planning apps for 2026, and for the money side specifically, the best group trip budget app.
What's free in Trips Together, and what isn't
Since we're asking you to check everyone else's paywall, here's ours in full.
Free, with no card and no trial clock:
- Destination and date voting. The app suggests options based on the group's preferences and budgets, everyone votes, and it finds the date windows that work for the whole group.
- A shared, live itinerary. Flights, accommodation, activities and tasks in one plan everyone can see and edit.
- Unlimited expense logging and splitting. Log who paid what and see the running balance, with no daily cap. You enter the expenses yourself.
- Invite the whole group, and export the trip as a PDF.
Paid, if you want it (at the time of writing, £7.99 for a single trip, £4.99 a week, or £24.99 a year):
- Receipt scanning, so you photograph a receipt instead of typing it out, and tap-to-split, so you can divide it line by line instead of doing the maths.
- Email forwarding for booking confirmations, live flight updates, offline itineraries, and an AI trip chatbot on the subscription.
Read that list and you'll see the line we've drawn: the things that decide a trip are free, and what you can pay for is having the typing done for you. Unlimited expenses is the part we'd point at hardest, because it's the exact thing Splitwise's free tier limits. There's a full tour in the guide to everything the app can do. The account you create keeps the trip in sync across everyone's phones, which is the trade-off against a genuinely no-signup tool like a shared spreadsheet, where you lose the voting, the live itinerary and the splitting entirely.
So when is paying actually worth it?
For any of these apps, a paid tier earns its money when it removes work you're repeating, not when it unlocks something basic.
- If you log a lot of expenses on a trip, check whether your app limits that on free and what it costs to lift the limit. Ours doesn't limit it. Splitwise's does.
- If typing expenses in is the bit you hate, scanning a receipt and tapping to split is a genuine time-saver. That's what our paid tier is for, and we'd rather sell it honestly than pretend nobody should ever pay for anything.
- If you fly often, real-time alerts and gate changes are a real convenience. TripIt Pro does this well, and so do we, on our paid tier.
- If you'll be somewhere with no signal, offline access matters, and several planners including ours put that on the paid side.
What none of them should charge you for is deciding where to go, keeping a shared plan, or splitting the bill at all.
The bottom line
Free vs paid is the wrong framing for group trip planning, because the essentials shouldn't cost anything, and mostly they don't. The best free trip planner for groups is the one that gives you voting, a live itinerary and expense splitting without a paywall or a trial clock, and there's more than one honest answer to that.
Ours is one of them, and we've shown you exactly where our own paywall sits so you can judge it for yourself. Start planning your next group trip free, no card and no trial. If you're weighing specific apps, our honest 2026 ranking and Trips Together vs Wanderlog go deeper.