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About this tool
Customary US tipping ranges for restaurants, bars, taxis, hotels and guides, with the tip and total worked out on the pre-tax bill.
This calculator applies customary United States tipping ranges — 15-20% for table service, $1-2 a drink at the bar, $2-5 per night for housekeeping — to your actual bill, and works the percentage out on the pre-tax subtotal as the convention requires. It is aimed at visitors and at anyone tired of guessing at a card terminal that suggests 25%. US ranges are higher than most of the world because federal law lets an employer pay a tipped worker a cash wage as low as $2.13 an hour and count tips toward the $7.25 federal minimum, so the tip functions as the wage rather than a bonus.
Open Tipping Guide Calculator for USA on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Strips the sales tax back out before applying the percentage, the way the custom actually works.
Bars, delivery, taxis, valets, housekeeping, porters, salons and guides each have their own range.
Shows tip and total per person so a group settles up without mental arithmetic.
15% to 20% of the pre-tax subtotal, with 18% the safe everyday figure and 20% standard in major cities. Below 15% reads as a complaint about the service. Check first whether an automatic gratuity has been added — most restaurants apply 18-20% automatically for parties of six or more.
The convention is to tip on the pre-tax subtotal, not the total. Sales tax ranges from nothing in Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon to over 9% combined in parts of Louisiana and Tennessee, and it has no connection to service. Tipping on the full total is simply a slightly larger tip, and nobody objects.
Because the tip replaces wages rather than topping them up. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act an employer can claim a tip credit and pay a tipped employee a direct cash wage of as little as $2.13 an hour, so long as tips carry the worker to the $7.25 federal minimum. Several states, including California and Washington, require full state minimum wage before tips, but the 15-20% expectation holds nationwide.
For table service, a taxi, a haircut or a delivery, leaving nothing is read as a direct complaint about the service and does real financial harm to the worker. For counter service, a coffee, or a takeaway you collected yourself, leaving nothing is completely normal, despite what the payment terminal suggests.
Add the Tipping Guide Calculator for USAwidget to your blog or website — free, responsive, no signup. Just keep the “Widget by AltFTool” credit link visible.
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<p style="font-size:12px;margin:4px 0 0">Widget by <a href="https://www.altftool.com/tools/all/tipping-guide-calculator-usa?utm_source=embed&utm_medium=widget">AltFTool — free online tools</a></p>