Tip Calculator

Either approach is common, and there's no strict rule. Most people in the United States tip on the pre-tax subtotal rather than the total including sales tax. On a $100 bill with 8% tax, 20% of the pre-tax amount comes to $20, while 20% of the post-tax amount comes to $21.60. The difference is usually small, and this calculator's toggle lets you switch between the two instantly to see exactly how much it changes your total.

In the United States, a common scale runs from around 10% for acceptable service up to 20% or more for excellent service, with 15-18% generally considered a solid standard tip at a sit-down restaurant. Poor service might warrant closer to 5-10%, while exceptional service is often rewarded with 25% or more. These are cultural norms rather than fixed rules, and this calculator's star rating feature maps each rating directly to a suggested percentage.

It depends heavily on where you are. In the United States and Canada, tipping is generally expected because many service workers rely on tips as a significant part of their income, and skipping a tip for normal service can come across as a real snub. In the United Kingdom and Australia, tipping is appreciated but far more optional, since service workers there typically earn a full wage regardless. In Japan, tipping can actually be seen as unusual or even mildly awkward, since excellent service is considered standard rather than something requiring an extra reward. Always worth checking local customs before assuming a percentage.

Turn on the Custom Split option inside the Split the Bill section. Instead of dividing the total equally, you can enter each person's individual share of the bill, and the calculator proportionally distributes the tip and tax based on how much each person actually ordered, rather than forcing everyone to pay an identical amount regardless of what they had.

Move the decimal point one place to the left to find 10% of the bill, then either double that number for 20% or add half of it back for 15%. On an $84 bill, 10% is $8.40, so 20% is $16.80 and 15% is $12.60. It's a fast way to sanity-check this calculator's output, or to tip confidently even when your phone isn't handy.

Not financially in any meaningful way, but it matters for convenience. Rounding the total up to a clean number, or rounding the tip itself up to a whole unit of currency, avoids awkward coin change and makes splitting a bill by hand much simpler. This calculator offers rounding the tip up, rounding the total up, or rounding the total to the nearest whole currency unit, alongside the exact unrounded figures.

Yes, the per-person split works for any group size, and the stepper control lets you adjust the number of people splitting the bill up or down easily. For larger groups where orders vary significantly, the custom split option tends to feel fairer than a flat even split, since it accounts for who actually ordered more or less.

Group dinners often involve recalculating the same bill more than once, whether someone corrects the tax amount or the group size changes at the last minute. The history section keeps your last five calculations so you can quickly restore a previous version instead of re-entering every field from scratch.