The spreadsheet is the incumbent, and it's genuinely good at some things: it's free, it does maths, and everyone already knows how it works. It's also the reason one person ends up doing all the planning. Here's the honest trade-off.
Try bothways free| bothways | a Google Sheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | A group planning together on phones | Budgets, columns and custom structure |
| Collaborative editing | Yes — shared link, everyone edits | Yes, but editing on mobile is painful |
| Usable on a phone mid-trip | Built mobile-first | Technically possible, practically not |
| Flight tracking | Live status for the whole group | Manual — you type the times in yourself |
| Timezone handling | Times shown in airport-local time | Whatever you typed, interpreted however people read it |
| Saved places | Yes, with notes | A column of links |
| Shared packing list | Yes, with claiming | Another tab nobody opens |
| Maths and budgeting | Not built for it | Excellent — this is the real advantage |
| Setup effort | None | You build it, every trip |
| Price | Free to start | Free |
Plenty of groups use both: {brand} for the plan and a sheet for the money. Our free budget splitter template is a good starting point for the spreadsheet half.