How the tip, the total and the split are worked out
The tip is a percentage of a base amount — tip = base × percent ÷ 100 — and the total is bill + tax + tip. An 85.50 dinner at 18% gives 85.50 × 18 ÷ 100 = 15.39 and a total of 100.89. The line under the results repeats that calculation with your own numbers, and “How was this calculated?” opens the same thing broken into steps.
Every amount is computed in whole minor units — cents for the dollar and the euro, whole won and yen for currencies that have no subunit — and formatted only at the end. That is why the parts always add back up: bill + tax + tip equals the total to the last cent, and the per-person amounts add up to the total exactly. Calculators that work in floating-point decimals routinely print a total that is a cent away from its own breakdown.
The percentage can come from three places, and all three write the same value: the chips above the slider, the slider itself (0–50% in whole steps) and the Custom % box, which also accepts decimals such as 17.5. Amount, percentage, people, tax rate, tip base and rounding all travel in the address bar, so the link you copy reopens exactly this bill.
Tipping norms by country — and where 0% is the right answer
In the United States 15–20% is the working range in restaurants and bars, with 18% the usual default, because the federal minimum wage for tipped work is 2.13 an hour and tips make up most of a server’s pay. Canada sits in the same range. This is the exception, not the rule — in much of the world service is priced into the bill and a tip is optional or unwelcome.
- United States and Canada: 15–20% in restaurants and bars, 15–20% for food delivery and for taxis or rideshare, 10–20% for a hairstylist or massage, and 1–2 per night for hotel housekeeping.
- United Kingdom: 10–12.5%, and a service charge of about that size is often already printed on the bill. France: service is included by law, so people simply round up. India: 5–10% where no service charge has been added.
- Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordic countries: tipping is not customary, and in Japan a tip may be politely refused. 0% is a complete answer there, not a rude one.
The chips follow your region setting: 15/18/20/25 opening at 18% in the United States and Canada, 5/10/15 opening at 10% elsewhere, and in countries where tipping is not customary the tool opens at 0% and says so. The currency follows the same setting. Change either in the header — and note that a percentage or currency written into a shared link always wins over the regional default.
Tipping pre-tax or post-tax, and what the difference costs
Sales tax is money for the government, not for the person serving you, so the customary base is the pre-tax amount. This calculator uses pre-tax by default and only shows the ‘Tip on’ toggle once you enter a tax rate — most bills outside North America have no separate tax line at all.
The gap is small but real. On a 100.00 bill with New York City’s 8.875% sales tax the tax is 8.88. A 20% tip pre-tax is 20.00 and the total is 128.88; the same 20% post-tax is 21.78 and the total is 130.66 — 1.78 more. Switch the toggle and both numbers update, so you can see the difference instead of arguing about it.
Where the printed price already includes tax — Korea, Japan and most of Europe — leave the Tax field empty and tip on the amount shown; entering a VAT rate would charge the bill tax twice. The North American habit of “double the tax” is a shortcut for one place only: it lands on 17.75% in New York City, about 13% where the rate is 6.5%, and 0% in the five states that have no sales tax. Type the rate and read the number instead.
Splitting the bill so the parts add up
The split is the total divided by the number of people, with the remainder spread one minor unit at a time rather than rounded away. A 10.00 bill between three people shows 3.34 for one person and 3.33 for two, and the note under the per-person card tells you exactly how many pay each amount. The parts always sum back to the total.
Currencies without a subunit work the same way at their own scale: 100,000 won between three people is 33,334 for one and 33,333 for two, in whole won. The number of people must be a whole number of one or more, and the split is capped at 100 people with a note when the cap applies.
Two per-person figures are shown for a reason. ‘Tip per person’ is the tip alone divided down, useful when the food is being settled separately; ‘Total per person’ is what each person actually hands over, and it is the one that carries the remainder. If people ordered very differently, an equal split is the wrong tool — total each person’s items first, then apply the same percentage to each subtotal.
Rounding up: five modes and the effective tip
Rounding always goes up, never down, and there are five modes: the total up to a whole 1, 5 or 10, or the per-person amount up to a whole 1 or 5. Rounding the per-person amount multiplies back into the total, which is what you want when everyone is paying in cash and nobody has coins.
The tip is then back-calculated from the rounded total, so bill + tax + tip still equals the total exactly. Because that changes what you actually tipped, an ‘Effective tip’ card appears with the real percentage to one decimal. An 85.50 bill at 18% comes to 100.89; rounding the total up to the nearest 5 makes it 105.00, the tip becomes 19.50 and the effective tip is 22.8%.
Per-person rounding behaves the same way: the same bill split four ways is 25.23 each, rounded up to 26.00 each, so the total becomes 104.00, the tip 18.50 and the effective tip 21.6%. Watch that card on small bills — rounding a 12.00 bill up to the nearest 10 turns an 18% tip into 8.00, which is 66.7%.
The tip table, and the mistakes it helps you avoid
Under the results is a table at 10, 15, 18, 20 and 25%, plus a row for your own percentage if it is not one of those, with the current row highlighted and a per-person column whenever you are splitting. Those rows are always unrounded, so with a rounding mode on the table and the result card differ on purpose: the table is the reference, the card is what you will pay.
- Splitting the tip but not the tax. Enter the tax rate here and the split covers the whole bill, which is what everyone at the table actually owes.
- Treating percentages as if they add up. A 10% service charge followed by a 15% tip on the new total is 26.5% of the food, not 25%.
- Reading the requested percentage as the one you paid. With rounding on, the chip you pressed is only the starting point; the effective tip card is the number that actually left your wallet.
- Assuming the defaults are the same for everyone. The chips and the currency follow the visitor’s region, so a link opened in Seoul and one opened in Chicago start from different numbers — unless the percentage is written into the link, in which case it is preserved.
Limits, currencies and what leaves your browser
The inputs have deliberate ceilings: a tip of up to 200%, a tax rate of up to 50%, and a split of up to 100 people. Anything beyond those is a typo rather than a bill, so the tool says which field is out of range instead of printing a nonsense total, and negative amounts are refused the same way.
Fifteen currencies are in the picker — USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, KRW, CAD, AUD, INR, CNY, BRL, MXN, CHF, SGD, ZAR and PHP — and your region’s currency is added automatically if it is not on that list, as is any currency arriving in a shared link. Each one uses its own number of decimal places, which is why won and yen amounts never show a fractional unit anywhere, including in the split.
The calculation runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded, and nothing is kept after you close the tab. The numbers do sit in the address bar so that a shared link reopens the same bill, which is worth remembering before pasting one somewhere public.