Agree on a budget without anyone sharing theirs.
Create a private link. Everyone enters the most they’d feel comfortable spending. You only see the amount the whole group can live with.
Three steps, then it’s decided
The whole thing takes about a minute. Nobody signs up, nobody installs anything, and nobody has to say a number out loud.
You set it up and answer first
Say what the money is for, how many people are involved, and the most you would be comfortable spending per person. That is your answer in, so the room starts at 1 of however many you expect.
Everyone else answers privately
Send the link to the group chat. Each person opens it, types one number, and submits. They see a count of how many people have answered, never who, and never what anyone put.
One number comes back
When the last person answers, the page shows a single group-safe cap: the lowest amount submitted, rounded down. The individual answers are deleted at that moment.
The rule is deliberately strict
Most group polls land on whatever the majority picked. That is exactly the wrong answer for money, because the person with the least room to spend is usually the person least likely to argue about it.
So this tool does something simpler and stricter: the published cap is the lowest comfortable maximum anyone submitted, rounded down to a round-looking number. It is never an average, never a midpoint, and never above what someone said they could live with.
Rounding down does two things. It keeps the number usable, €300 rather than €317, and it blurs the exact figure so the lowest answer stays a little less identifiable.
What people use it for
Any plan where everyone is expected to chip in the same amount, and nobody wants to be the one who says it’s too much.
Group trips and weekends away
Agree the per-person ceiling before anyone starts sending links to apartments.
Hen, stag and bachelorette weekends
The classic case: a wide range of budgets and a lot of social pressure not to mention it.
Group gifts and collections
Set the per-person contribution without anchoring on whoever answers first.
Why not just ask in the group chat?
You can, and for some groups that works fine. It stops working when the answers are not equally easy to give. The first number posted becomes the anchor, the people with more room agree quickly, and anyone who needs a lower figure now has to say so publicly, after the fact, in front of everyone.
Most people simply don’t. They agree to something uncomfortable, or they drop out of the plan later with a vague excuse. Neither is a good outcome, and neither looks like a budgeting problem from the outside.
Why not an anonymous form?
An anonymous form is a genuine alternative and plenty of groups use one. The differences are practical: a form needs an account to create, it gives you a spreadsheet of answers rather than a decision, the organiser can see every individual response, and the responses sit in that account indefinitely.
Here, nobody sees the individual answers, not even the person who made the room. The decision rule is applied for you, and the raw numbers are deleted as soon as the result appears.
When this tool is the wrong choice
- When contributions are meant to be unequal. This assumes everyone pays the same per-person amount. If you’re splitting by income or by who uses what, use something else.
- When you need to collect the money. This settles the number and stops. It does not handle payments, deposits or who owes whom.
- When there are only two of you. With two people the result gives away the other person’s limit, so the minimum room size is three.