How to calculate a tip
- Enter the bill amount before any tip.
- Set the tip percentage you want to leave.
- Enter how many people are splitting the bill.
- Tick rounding if you would rather the total came to a whole number.
- Read what each person owes, and copy the breakdown if you are sending it to the group.
What this calculator does
- The tip amount, the total and the per-person share in one view.
- Optional rounding up of the total, with the effective tip rate recalculated.
- Any number of people, from one to a large table.
- The tip each person contributes, which is what people usually want to know.
- Any currency symbol.
- Instant recalculation as you adjust any figure.
Tipping is not universal, and the number matters less than the custom
Tipping practice varies more between countries than almost any other social convention around money. In the United States, staff wages are legally allowed to fall below the standard minimum on the assumption that tips make up the difference, so 18 to 22 per cent is expected rather than optional. In the United Kingdom, 10 to 12.5 per cent is normal in restaurants and often already added as a service charge.
In much of continental Europe, rounding up or leaving five per cent is generous. In Japan and South Korea, tipping is not practised and can be genuinely awkward. In Australia and New Zealand it is uncommon because wages do not depend on it.
Check for a service charge first
The single most common tipping error is paying twice. Many restaurants add an optional service charge of 12.5 per cent to the bill automatically, and it appears as a line item rather than a heading. Adding a tip on top doubles it.
Look at the bill before calculating. If a service charge is already there, the tip is done, and in most countries you are entitled to ask for it to be removed if the service was poor, though whether you want to is a separate question.
Tip on the amount before or after tax?
In countries where tax is added at the till rather than shown in the menu price, this genuinely changes the number. Convention in the United States is to tip on the pre-tax subtotal, though many people tip on the total for simplicity and the difference is small at typical rates.
In the UK and most of Europe, VAT is included in the displayed price, so the question does not arise, the bill is the bill.
Splitting fairly
- Even split: simplest, and fine when everyone ate similarly.
- By what each person ordered: fairer when one person had three courses and another had a salad.
- Rounding up: avoids awkward change and quietly increases the tip a little.
The rounding option here rounds the total up to the nearest whole unit and recalculates the tip accordingly, so you can see what the rounded total actually leaves as a gratuity. On a small bill that can be a noticeably larger percentage than you intended.
Cash or card
Where possible, a cash tip is more likely to reach the person who served you. Card tips are processed by the business and distribution varies. Some pool and share fairly, some deduct administrative costs, and a few have historically kept them. Legislation in several countries has tightened this considerably, but cash still removes the uncertainty.
Everything here is worked out in your browser. For splitting other kinds of shared costs the percentage calculator and ratio calculator handle uneven shares.