Tip Calculator
A straightforward bill-splitting tip calculator with presets for common country norms, so the suggested percentage actually matches where you're eating.
Service quality
Tip
$11.52
Total
$75.52
Per person
$75.52
($11.52 tip each)
Calculated on the pre-tax subtotal, the customary basis in the US and most similar tipping cultures. Not financial advice — the final amount is always your call.
How it works
Instantly calculate the tip and total for a bill, split any number of ways, with a country-norm preset.
Enter your bill total, choose how many ways to split it, and pick a percentage — either a manual one or a country preset pulled from the same researched norms used throughout the rest of the site. The calculator handles the arithmetic (tip amount, total, and per-person share) instantly, without submitting anything to a server or storing your numbers anywhere.
The country presets exist because a flat '20% everywhere' default gets things wrong in both directions: it under-tips in countries where a service charge is already legally built into the price, and it can over-tip in countries where 10% is the well-established ceiling rather than a starting point. Selecting a country preset swaps in the actual customary restaurant range for that place, sourced from the same country pages you can browse directly.
This tool is meant for the ordinary case — splitting a dinner bill with friends, sanity-checking a tip before you leave the table, or figuring out per-person shares for an uneven group. For situations that don't work as a simple percentage of a bill (movers, wedding vendors, holiday tipping for a doorman), the relevant situation page has the actual customary structure, since those aren't percentage-of-bill calculations at all.
Worked example one: a $64 dinner bill split three ways at 18% comes to an $11.52 tip, a $75.52 total, and $25.17 per person before rounding. Worked example two: a $210 bill for a group of six at a restaurant with a country preset of 10% (rather than the US-style 18-20%) comes to a $21 tip and $231 total, or $38.50 per person — a meaningfully different result than defaulting to a flat 20% would have produced, which is exactly the gap the country preset is built to close.
The math itself is intentionally simple — percentage of the bill, divided by the number of people — but the calculator also reflects one piece of etiquette reasoning worth stating plainly: the customary base for the percentage is the pre-tax subtotal, not the total including sales tax, in the US and most countries with a similar tipping culture. Tipping on the post-tax total isn't wrong or rude, and plenty of people round up from there anyway, but it isn't the technical customary basis, so the calculator defaults to the pre-tax figure when a bill is entered as a subtotal.
Large parties are a common edge case worth flagging directly: many US restaurants automatically add an 18-20% gratuity for parties above a set size (often six to eight people), printed directly on the check as a service charge. If that's already been added, re-tipping on top of it isn't customary or expected — check your bill for an existing gratuity line before using this calculator to add a second tip on the same meal.
Frequently asked questions
Does the calculator round the tip and total for me?
Yes — the tool rounds to a sensible amount so you're not staring at a total with three decimal places when you're trying to actually settle a bill quickly.
Why does the suggested percentage change when I pick a different country?
Because customary tipping percentages genuinely differ by country — the preset swaps in the real, researched range for wherever you select, rather than assuming a single global default applies everywhere.
Is this financial advice?
No — this tool calculates customary tipping amounts based on common local norms; it isn't financial advice, and the final amount you choose to leave is always your own call.
Should I tip on the pre-tax or post-tax bill total?
The customary basis in the US and similar tipping cultures is the pre-tax subtotal — tipping on the full post-tax total isn't wrong, and many people do it out of convenience, but it isn't the technical norm the percentage guidance is built around.
What if the restaurant already added a gratuity to my bill?
Check the bottom of the check for an automatic gratuity line, common for large parties — if one's already there, it's already your tip, and adding another calculated on top of it would mean tipping twice on the same meal.
What if service was genuinely bad — should I still use the suggested percentage?
The suggested percentage reflects an average, expected-service baseline; it's genuinely acceptable to tip below it for service that was actually poor through the server's own fault, though most etiquette guidance suggests not going below roughly 10% except in extreme cases, and raising a real problem with a manager rather than silently under-tipping when the issue was a kitchen delay or understaffing, not the server.