Tip Calculator

How It Works

The calculator works in three simple steps. First it multiplies your bill by the tip percentage to find the gratuity — so a $50 bill at 18% produces a $9 tip. Second, it adds that tip back to the bill to give the grand total the table actually owes ($59 in the example). Third, it divides the grand total by the number of people sharing it, so each person's share already includes their portion of both the food and the tip. Splitting after the tip is added — rather than splitting the meal and having everyone guess at the gratuity separately — is what keeps the math fair and avoids the awkward situation where the collected cash comes up short of the total. The most common point of confusion is what to apply the percentage to. In the US, a tip is customarily figured on the pre-tax subtotal, because sales tax is a government charge, not part of the server's work. In practice, though, many people simply tip on the total shown at the bottom of the check because it is faster and the difference is small — on a $50 meal with 8% tax, tipping on the post-tax figure adds only about 70 cents at 18%. Either approach is socially acceptable; what matters more is landing on a fair percentage for the level of service. A frequent pitfall is under-tipping on a discounted or comped bill: if you used a coupon or a dish was removed, etiquette says to tip on what the full bill would have been, since your server did the same amount of work regardless of the discount. When splitting unevenly — say one person had a $40 steak and another a $12 salad — this even-split tool will over-charge the lighter eater, so for very lopsided tables it is fairer to tip each portion proportionally rather than dividing the grand total equally.

Examples

Frequently Asked Questions