How to split bills by income

If you and your partner earn different amounts, working out who should pay more isn't always obvious. This calculator does the maths for you. Enter your names and what you each earn, and see the fair percentage split.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

You can apply this ratio to your Cino card so your expenses split this way automatically.

Example: Spotify

You can also create multiple groups in Cino for different ratios, as you find convenient. For example: rent 60/40, other expenses 50/50.

Don't have Cino yet? Download the app below.

Download Cino

Why proportional splitting works better than 50/50

The first step to sorting out household bills fairly is working out how much each person can actually afford to pay. Some people split everything equally. Some take it in turns to cover whole bills. And some, the fairest option when incomes or room sizes are different, work out the proportion each person should actually contribute.

If you split bills equally but earn different amounts, one of you ends up worse off than the other. Splitting proportionally fixes that.

A quick example

Say you earn £2,000 a month and your partner earns £1,000, and your combined monthly bills come to £1,500. Split it 50/50 and the lower earner is handing over half their entire income, while the higher earner barely feels it. Split it proportionally instead, and you contribute £1,000 while your partner contributes £500, each of you paying exactly the same percentage of what you actually earn: 50%.

The same ratio works for smaller shared costs too. Say your Netflix and Spotify subscriptions come to £25 a month between you. Instead of splitting it £12.50 each, the higher earner would pay around £16.67 and the lower earner £8.33, in that same 2:1 ratio.

What counts as "fair" is up to the people splitting the bill — this calculator's job is just to do the maths.

Use that ratio on Cino

Once you know the percentage, you can apply it to everything you pay together going forward: rent, groceries, subscriptions, bills, without recalculating it every time. That's exactly what Cino is built for: set the split once, and it's applied automatically every time you pay with your shared Cino card.

Splitting proportionally means everyone contributes fairly, without losing the ability to spend on their own things (a haircut, a new pair of trainers, whatever) without it affecting the shared side of things.