Stang for travellers
For a single two-week holiday, Stang is probably more app than you need, and a trip-based tracker like TravelSpend fits better — it is built around a trip with a start, an end and a daily budget, which is exactly the shape of a holiday. Stang is built for people whose travel never really stops: several trips a year, more than one currency in permanent use, and a reason to care how many days they spent in each country. If that is closer to your year, it is worth a look.
Most pages like this one exist to explain why you should use the product. This one mostly explains when you should not, because for a large share of people who search “travel expense app”, Stang is the wrong answer and it would be a waste of your time to pretend otherwise.
If you are taking a holiday, use something else
A two-week trip has a shape that Stang deliberately does not model: it starts, it has a budget, it ends, and then you want to know how it went.
Stang has no trips. It has months. There is no start date to set, no daily holiday budget, and no summary when you land back home — because it is built for people who do not land back home in that sense. Using it for a single holiday means using a continuous tracker for a bounded event and getting none of the features that make the bounded version pleasant.
For that, use TravelSpend. It is organised exactly around a trip with a start, an end and a daily budget, converts local currencies automatically, works offline, and is on both iPhone and Android. Note that CSV export, unlimited active trips and settling up debts within a group all sit behind its Premium tier.
If the hard part is splitting costs with the people you are with, that is Splitwise, not either of us.
A full breakdown of the options is on the best travel expense apps.
When travel stops being an event
There is a point where the trip model quietly stops working, and it is not about being a full-time nomad. It arrives when:
- You take several trips a year rather than one, and opening and closing a trip each time becomes bookkeeping rather than help.
- You keep money in more than one currency between trips — a card you top up, an account in another country, family or property somewhere else.
- You have started wondering how many days you spent somewhere, usually because of a visa, or because someone mentioned tax residency and it did not sound irrelevant.
Any one of those and the continuous model starts to fit better. All three and the trip model is actively getting in your way.
What you get if that is you
One home currency plus as many others as you spend in, converted at live rates, free. You think in one currency; everything else lands in it.
Monthly budgets and per-category limits, with an alert at 80%. Also free. These keep running between trips, which is the whole point.
One-sentence logging — “lunch 350 THB” is parsed into name, amount, currency, category and date. Thirty a month free, unlimited on Pro.
Days per country, via Stays: a running count derived from where your expenses happen, no GPS and no check-ins. Built for 90-day visa limits and the 183-day tax residency rule. Pro, and currently iPhone-only.
CSV export on every plan, including free.
The honest summary
| Your situation | What to use |
|---|---|
| One holiday a year | TravelSpend |
| Splitting costs with companions | Splitwise |
| Several trips a year, more than one currency | Stang |
| Living abroad | Stang, for expats |
| No fixed base, many countries | Stang, for nomads |
The free plan is not a trial — unlimited expenses, no history limit, multi-currency, budgets and export — so if you are unsure which side of the line you fall on, you can find out without paying anything.
