My partner and I kept asking "did you pay for that?" Spreadsheets and split apps never stuck. So I built Lode: a shared budget that updates live via iCloud, plus an AI chat — type "coffee 5" and it's added, snap a receipt and it reads itself. Solo project, under 6 months. Now: budgets, goals, debts, multi-currency, widgets. Built for us — hope it helps you too 🙏

Hey Product Hunt! 👋 The origin story is pretty ordinary: my partner and I kept having the "wait, did you already pay for that?" conversation. We tried [Splitwise / a shared spreadsheet], and it worked for about a week before someone forgot to log something and we were back to guessing. So under 6 months ago I started building something just for us — a budget that updates live on both our phones via iCloud, no manual syncing, no "did you see my message" moment. Once that worked, the next annoyance was obvious: even solo, adding a transaction was still five taps through a form. So I built a chat into it — type "coffee 5" and it's logged, snap a photo of a receipt and it reads the amount for you. It grew from there into a full app: budgets, goals, debt tracking, multi-currency with live FX, home screen widgets, Siri Shortcuts — but the shared, real-time part is still the thing I'm proudest of, because it's the actual problem that started this. It's free to use, with an optional Premium tier for extras like more icons and AI insights. I'd love to hear: how do you currently split expenses with a partner, roommate, or family — spreadsheet, app, or just vibes? 😄 Happy to answer anything about how it's built (SwiftUI + CloudKit, AI parsing via Gemini) or what's coming next.

Love the receipt scanning idea. One thing that would help my partner and me: recurring expense detection, so rent or subscriptions automatically get logged once we've entered them a couple times. Would save a lot of manual entry each month.

Tried it for a day and the iCloud sync actually just works in the background, which solved the constant "did you pay for that" back-and-forth with my partner. The receipt snapping is surprisingly solid too.

Lode – AI Expense Tracker

Budgeting you can text like a friend

Budgeting you can text like a friend