Recipe
Order from a menu you cannot read
Everything else Split The Bill does happens after the meal. This happens before it: photograph the menu, get it back in your language, and let the whole table pick before a single thing is ordered.
Last reviewed: September 2026
Eating out abroad has two language problems, not one. The inbound problem is that you cannot read the menu — you are choosing between words you do not recognise, and the price is the only part you understand. The outbound problem arrives about a minute later: you now know what you want, and no way to say it that the waiter will understand. Split The Bill's menu scan handles both ends. You photograph the menu — several pages at once if it is a long one — or scan the table's QR code, and it comes back as dishes and prices in your language, with the original name kept next to the translation. You share one link with the table, and everyone picks their own food on their own phone, in their own language, watching their own running total as they go. When the table is ready, a waiter page lays the order out person by person in the restaurant's language, ready to show or to open by QR on the waiter's own phone. There is no integration with the restaurant and nothing is sent to a till or kitchen: a human still takes the order, they can simply read it now. Afterwards the order becomes an editable draft bill, so what everyone chose carries through to who owes what instead of being reconstructed from a receipt nobody can read either. The feature is in beta and says so in the app — the translation is good, not flawless, which is exactly why the original name stays on screen beside it.
Step-by-step
- 1
Scan the menu
Photograph the menu — several pages in one go if it runs long, or pick the shots straight from your photo library — or scan the QR code on the table. If you photograph a QR card by mistake, the code is recognised anyway and you get the menu behind it. The app reads dish names and prices and hands you a review step to correct anything it misread before you share it. Menu OCR is good, not perfect — decorative fonts, multi-column layouts and glare are genuinely hard — so correcting and adding items by hand is a normal part of the flow, not an error state.
- 2
Share one link with the table
Copy the link, push it through your phone's own share sheet, or open a QR code for people to scan across the table. You can also send it straight to a contact or to a whole group inside the app, or invite someone by email. Anyone opening the link can pick dishes without signing up or installing anything, and if you are eating too you are seated at the table automatically — you never have to join your own order. Links are deliberately short-lived, because a link strangers could write to should not stay open for days.
- 3
Everyone picks and sees their own total
Each person reads the menu in their own language and chooses their own dishes. Their personal total updates as they go, so the person watching their budget can quietly swap one dish for a cheaper one before committing, rather than doing arithmetic under the table when the bill lands.
- 4
Show the waiter, then turn it into a bill
The waiter page lists the order grouped by person, each with a seat number, because two people at a table are often called the same thing. It is written in the restaurant's language and shows, by default, only the dishes not yet sent to the kitchen, so a waiter reads one round rather than the whole evening; the full sitting is there on demand, and someone who ordered nothing still appears, marked as such. Open it by QR and the waiter can read it on their own phone. Mark the round as sent once it has been taken, and the sitting simply continues — later dishes gather into the next round. When you convert the order to a bill, you are offered a suggested tip percentage you can change or decline outright; whatever you choose lands on the bill and splits like everything else. The draft bill is prefilled with who chose what and stays fully editable for service charge, a later round of drinks, or whatever actually happened.
Why a shared menu beats eight camera-translate apps
The usual workaround is that everyone points a translation camera at the page and gets a slightly different, flickering result, while one person takes orders verbally and writes them on a napkin. The menu is read eight times and the order is assembled once, badly. A shared menu inverts that: the menu is read once, corrected once, and then translated per person into whatever language they actually read. The order assembles itself as people pick, with quantities already counted, so nobody has to repeat their choice twice and nobody's dish gets forgotten between the third person and the waiter arriving.
The money conversation happens before the food, not after
The thing that makes splitting a restaurant bill awkward is that everyone finds out what their choices cost at the same moment they find out what everyone else's cost. Picking from a shared menu moves that forward. Each person's total is visible while they are still choosing and can still change their mind, so the shared starters are already split and the expensive steak already sits with whoever ordered it. When the meal ends, converting the order to a draft bill carries those per-person amounts straight through — the split is a record of what people actually chose rather than a reconstruction argued out over a printed receipt.
What this deliberately does not do
It does not talk to the restaurant. There is no POS, till or kitchen integration anywhere in this feature — the waiter block is a screen you show a person, and a person still takes your order. It does not filter for allergens or dietary requirements, and that is a safety decision rather than a missing feature: an automatically generated allergen claim that is wrong can put someone in hospital, so always ask the restaurant directly about allergies and treat nothing here as allergen information. It also does not support item modifiers like 'no onions' yet, and it does not take payment — Split The Bill works out and records who owes what, it does not pay the restaurant.
Scanning the same place twice is free
Scanned menus are saved to your Menus collection and translations are cached per language, so a restaurant you go back to costs no scan and no translation the second time. Translation cost scales with the number of languages at the table rather than the number of people: six people reading three languages is three translations, not eighteen, and on the next visit it is none. The original dish name stays on screen next to the translation, so you can point at the line on the printed card when a name does not survive translation cleanly, and search runs across both languages at once — accents are ignored, so typing 'cafe' finds 'Café', and typing a printed item number like '47' jumps straight to dish 47.
Frequently asked questions
Does the restaurant receive my order?â–¾
No. There is no integration with any restaurant, till or kitchen system. The app renders your table's order as text in the restaurant's language for you to show a waiter, and a human takes the order exactly as they always would.
Can it tell me if a dish contains nuts, gluten or dairy?â–¾
No, and we deliberately do not offer it. Allergen and dietary filtering is excluded on safety grounds: an automatically generated allergen claim that is wrong can put someone in hospital. Always ask the restaurant directly about allergies, and do not treat anything in this feature as allergen information.
Do the people I am eating with need an account?â–¾
No. Anyone with the link can open the menu, choose dishes and see their total without signing up. You need an account to scan and share a menu; the people joining your table's order do not.
How long does the shared link stay open?â–¾
Not long, by design — a link that anyone can write to should not stay open for days. Free links last an hour, and Pro lets you choose the window and extend it if the meal runs long.
What if the scan gets a dish or a price wrong?â–¾
You fix it in the review step before sharing, which is built into the flow precisely because menu OCR is imperfect on decorative fonts, multi-column layouts and angled photos. You can also add any item by hand, so a menu the scanner struggles with never blocks you.
Can I ask for a dish without onions?â–¾
Not in this version. You can pick dishes and quantities, but item modifiers are not supported yet, so special requests still go to the waiter the usual way.
How does the waiter see who ordered what?â–¾
There is a waiter page that lists the table's order grouped by person, each with a seat number, since names at a table are rarely unique. It is written in the restaurant's language and shows only the dishes from the newest round by default, so nobody has to re-read the whole evening, and the full sitting is available on demand. Someone who ordered nothing is still listed, marked as such. You can show it on your phone or let the waiter open it by scanning a QR code on theirs. Nothing is sent to the restaurant either way — it is a screen a person reads, and a person still takes the order.
Can we order in rounds and add a tip?â–¾
Yes. When a round has been taken you mark it as sent to the kitchen, and the sitting carries on — anything ordered afterwards gathers into the next round, which is what the waiter page shows by default. When you turn the order into a bill you are offered a suggested tip percentage, which you can change to any amount or decline entirely; nothing is added unless you choose it. A tip you do accept goes onto the bill and splits like every other line on it.
Free tier covers most recipes. Pro is 100 receipts every 30 days + private invite links.
