Should I Build It Should I Build It
04 May 2025
Payments

I’m building a web app MVP to simplify splitting restaurant bills for ...

...groups. Waiters upload a bill photo; OCR extracts items/prices and detects quantities. Guests scan a session-specific QR code, enter name/color, then assign items in real-time (e.g., claiming 2 of 3 Cokes). Shared items (e.g., pizza) can be split by portion or amount. Names display under claimed items with quantities. The app tracks claimed/unclaimed items, calculates suggested tips, and displays individual totals. Goal: eliminate group payment friction through clear, collaborative bill division.

Confidence
Engagement
Net use signal
Net buy signal

Idea type: Competitive Terrain

While there's clear interest in your idea, the market is saturated with similar offerings. To succeed, your product needs to stand out by offering something unique that competitors aren't providing. The challenge here isn’t whether there’s demand, but how you can capture attention and keep it.

Should You Build It?

Not before thinking deeply about differentiation.

Your are here

You're entering a crowded space. Many apps and websites already simplify bill splitting. The good news is that there's clear interest in these solutions, as evidenced by the number of similar products (28) available. This also means that competition is high. The average number of comments (5) on similar product launches indicates medium engagement. Since there's no significant net use or buy signal available, it's hard to make a conclusion. To break through, your app needs a unique edge. Focus on making your app stand out by offering something competitors aren't providing and thinking deeply about differentiation.

Recommendations

  1. Thoroughly analyze existing bill-splitting apps. Identify their pain points and shortcomings. Look at the reviews and comments from the similar apps to see what people liked and didn't like, e.g. Splitwise was criticized as requiring upgrades, Billsplit's manual entry process for unequal splits was cumbersome. This will inform your strategy for differentiation. Since "Doesn't split tax and tip in the US" was a common criticism, you should address this.
  2. Focus on 2-3 key differentiators. Consider unique features (e.g., advanced tax/tip handling, integration with restaurant POS systems), a superior user experience (faster OCR, more intuitive interface), or a niche focus (business travelers, specific restaurant types).
  3. Explore niche markets. Is there an underserved group with specific bill-splitting challenges? For example, splitting bills among coworkers, or people with dietary restrictions who ordered different meals? Tailor your app to their needs.
  4. Prioritize a seamless user experience. Based on the feedback to similar products, ease of use is very important. Pay close attention to the OCR accuracy, the intuitiveness of the item assignment process, and the clarity of the final bill breakdown. Make it as frictionless as possible.
  5. Develop a strong brand and marketing message. Highlight your app's unique value proposition. Focus on the specific problem you're solving and how you're doing it better than the competition. Instead of general advertising, start with Product Hunt, Hacker News, Reddit, and other relevant online communities.
  6. Launch an MVP quickly to gather user feedback. Get your app in front of real users as soon as possible. Based on the Product Hunt launch, make sure that you include screenshots. Iterate based on their input. Aim for a loyal group of early adopters who can advocate for your product.
  7. Consider integrations with payment platforms like Venmo or Zelle. This was a common request among users of similar apps. Streamlining the payment process can significantly enhance the user experience. Also, explore integration options with restaurant POS systems to automate bill uploads.
  8. Address concerns about transaction fees and international payments early on. Transparency about fees is crucial. If you plan to support international payments, ensure your app can handle different currencies and comply with relevant regulations.

Questions

  1. How will you ensure your OCR technology accurately extracts data from diverse restaurant bill formats, especially considering variations in font, layout, and print quality?
  2. What specific strategies will you employ to acquire and retain users in a highly competitive market with numerous existing bill-splitting apps?
  3. How will you handle disputes or disagreements among users regarding item assignments or splitting methods, and what mechanisms will be in place to resolve these issues fairly and efficiently?

Your are here

You're entering a crowded space. Many apps and websites already simplify bill splitting. The good news is that there's clear interest in these solutions, as evidenced by the number of similar products (28) available. This also means that competition is high. The average number of comments (5) on similar product launches indicates medium engagement. Since there's no significant net use or buy signal available, it's hard to make a conclusion. To break through, your app needs a unique edge. Focus on making your app stand out by offering something competitors aren't providing and thinking deeply about differentiation.

Recommendations

  1. Thoroughly analyze existing bill-splitting apps. Identify their pain points and shortcomings. Look at the reviews and comments from the similar apps to see what people liked and didn't like, e.g. Splitwise was criticized as requiring upgrades, Billsplit's manual entry process for unequal splits was cumbersome. This will inform your strategy for differentiation. Since "Doesn't split tax and tip in the US" was a common criticism, you should address this.
  2. Focus on 2-3 key differentiators. Consider unique features (e.g., advanced tax/tip handling, integration with restaurant POS systems), a superior user experience (faster OCR, more intuitive interface), or a niche focus (business travelers, specific restaurant types).
  3. Explore niche markets. Is there an underserved group with specific bill-splitting challenges? For example, splitting bills among coworkers, or people with dietary restrictions who ordered different meals? Tailor your app to their needs.
  4. Prioritize a seamless user experience. Based on the feedback to similar products, ease of use is very important. Pay close attention to the OCR accuracy, the intuitiveness of the item assignment process, and the clarity of the final bill breakdown. Make it as frictionless as possible.
  5. Develop a strong brand and marketing message. Highlight your app's unique value proposition. Focus on the specific problem you're solving and how you're doing it better than the competition. Instead of general advertising, start with Product Hunt, Hacker News, Reddit, and other relevant online communities.
  6. Launch an MVP quickly to gather user feedback. Get your app in front of real users as soon as possible. Based on the Product Hunt launch, make sure that you include screenshots. Iterate based on their input. Aim for a loyal group of early adopters who can advocate for your product.
  7. Consider integrations with payment platforms like Venmo or Zelle. This was a common request among users of similar apps. Streamlining the payment process can significantly enhance the user experience. Also, explore integration options with restaurant POS systems to automate bill uploads.
  8. Address concerns about transaction fees and international payments early on. Transparency about fees is crucial. If you plan to support international payments, ensure your app can handle different currencies and comply with relevant regulations.

Questions

  1. How will you ensure your OCR technology accurately extracts data from diverse restaurant bill formats, especially considering variations in font, layout, and print quality?
  2. What specific strategies will you employ to acquire and retain users in a highly competitive market with numerous existing bill-splitting apps?
  3. How will you handle disputes or disagreements among users regarding item assignments or splitting methods, and what mechanisms will be in place to resolve these issues fairly and efficiently?

  • Confidence: High
    • Number of similar products: 28
  • Engagement: Medium
    • Average number of comments: 5
  • Net use signal: 25.6%
    • Positive use signal: 26.1%
    • Negative use signal: 0.5%
  • Net buy signal: 0.5%
    • Positive buy signal: 1.0%
    • Negative buy signal: 0.5%

This chart summarizes all the similar products we found for your idea in a single plot.

The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.

The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.

The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.

Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.

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Hey HN! I frequently pick up the tab for restaurant bills and, as the only one with DashPass, group delivery orders too. I always found it a pain to figure out how much people owed me afterwards, and existing solutions annoyed me with all their additional friction and overhead (I counted 8 clicks and 5 full screen changes just to add a single line item!).I decided to take matters into my own hands and built SimplySplit. It's clean, responsive, mobile-friendly, and makes splitting bills super fast. Also it has dark mode because why not :)I appreciate you reading through this and would love any feedback or feature requests (and if you like it, leave a like on ProductHunt! https://www.producthunt.com/posts/simplysplit). Hope this tool is a pleasure to use and solves a problem that you had!

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Hi HN!Last year, my friend and I decided to build an app for splitting payments with friends.We were on a group vacation and trying to split a bunch of bills every day, but Splitwise's clunky UX and ads kept getting in the way. So we decided to build an app for ourselves that's simpler and just does what we need.We built Quicksplit as a side project - as always, building it took longer than we initially expected :)It's ad-free and always will be. You can add payments in different currencies, add friends (without them needing the app), and manage tabs for vacations, events, or living expenses.Quicksplit is a native iOS app (web app coming next!) - it's built with SwiftUI, plus a touch of UIKit for navigation and to fill in some SwiftUI gaps. The backend API is written in TypeScript and running on Deno.Deno ended up being an interesting choice! It's great when it works (and has improved massively in the past year), but there was still some friction. For example, needing to switch database drivers due to issues with TLS support (which has since been fixed) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯We're running on Fly.io and Supabase (for Postgres). We considered a bunch of managed and unmanaged hosts (like Render, Railway, Hetzner; serverless databases like Planetscale and Neon). We landed on Fly.io and Supabase because they have generous free plans, are simple to scale up if needed, the latency is good, and it saved us from spending an evening gluing together bash and yaml scripts ;)Give it a try and let us know what you think - we’d love some feedback!

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I created an app to make sure your friends cough cash they owe you

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I created an app to help you track and share travel expenses among friends. Here's the story:I was on a trip to Spain with my senior pastor and church accountant.We had a tiring first day. Only I spoke a little of the language but that didn't stop of from getting lost. In the midst of this, we had to buy multiple bus and train tickets and it was easier for one person to pay. We finally made it to our hotel and went out for dinner and my senior pastor paid. There was all these scattered expenses and my curious brain was looking for an easy way to solve this.We could never fight because of money but I had seen many wonderful relationships split because of money and chose to solve the problem. I spent a few hours in the morning pushing out some code and then over the last 2 weeks, I put in some work after my 9-5 and between church and school. Now I have a very buggy product.That's how Splitpool was born.

Protecting friendships from money-related conflicts.

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