How to calculate a tip and split the bill
The arithmetic is two steps. The tip is the bill multiplied by the percentage, and the total is the bill plus that tip. An 18% tip on a bill of 50 is 50 × 0.18 = 9, for a total of 59. Split between three people, each pays 59 / 3 = 19.67. The calculator shows all three figures at once: tip amount, total, and per person, with the per person share highlighted because it is the number people at the table actually need.
Enter the bill in the first field, which starts at 50. Set the tip with the slider, which runs from 0% to 30% in whole percentage points, or tap one of the preset buttons for 10, 15, 18, 20 or 25%. The active preset is highlighted, and moving the slider to a value that matches a preset highlights that button again. The second slider sets the number of people, from 1 to 20. Results update live as you drag, so you can watch the per person figure and stop at a number the group is comfortable with.
Amounts are shown to two decimal places with no currency symbol, formatted in the number style of the page language, so a share reads 19.67 on the English page and 19,67 on the German one. Whatever currency you typed the bill in is the currency of the result, since nothing is converted. Reset returns all three inputs to 50, 15% and 1 person.
A worked example with an uneven party
Five people have dinner and the subtotal is 137.50. At 18%, the tip is 24.75 and the total is 162.25. Entered as a bill of 137.50, a tip of 18% and 5 people, the calculator reports 32.45 per person. That is the straightforward case, and it is fair when everyone ordered roughly the same.
Now suppose one person ordered the expensive main and the wine, coming to 46.00, while the other four account for the remaining 91.50. Splitting by what each person ordered, and applying the same 18% to each share, means running the calculator twice. First, a bill of 46.00 at 18% with 1 person gives a tip of 8.28 and a total of 54.28 for the one diner. Second, a bill of 91.50 at 18% with 4 people gives a tip of 16.47, a total of 107.97, and 26.99 per person.
Check the arithmetic and one penny goes missing: four shares of 26.99 come to 107.96, not 107.97, because 107.97 divided by four is 26.9925 and the display rounds down. One person in that group of four pays 27.00 and the table settles at 54.28 + 26.99 + 26.99 + 26.99 + 27.00 = 162.25. This rounding gap appears whenever the total does not divide cleanly, it is never more than a few cents, and the usual fix is for one person to absorb it or for the group to round the whole total up to the nearest unit.
How much should you tip in different countries?
Tipping is a local convention rather than a calculation, and the right percentage depends entirely on where you are. In the United States and Canada, 15% to 20% of the bill is the usual range for table service in a restaurant, with 20% common for service people were happy with, and less for counter service where there is no table to wait. The presets on this calculator cover that range directly.
In much of continental Europe, service is included by law or by custom and the expected amount is far smaller. Rounding up to the next convenient figure, or adding 5% to 10%, is normal in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and in France a service charge is already in the price so anything left is a small extra. In Japan and South Korea, tipping is not part of restaurant culture and leaving money can cause confusion. In Australia and New Zealand it is optional and modest.
Two things are worth checking before you set the percentage. First, look for a line on the bill reading service charge, service compris, coperto or gratuity, which means a service amount has already been added and anything you add is on top of it. Second, be aware that some venues add an automatic gratuity for large groups, often at six or eight people, in which case the split you need is of a total that already contains the tip.
Tipping on the pre-tax or post-tax amount
The calculator applies the percentage to whatever number you type into the bill field, so the choice of base is made by which figure you enter. To tip on the pre-tax subtotal, enter the subtotal. To tip on the amount charged including tax, enter the final bill.
The difference is smaller than the debate around it suggests. On a subtotal of 137.50 with 8% sales tax, the taxed total is 148.50. An 18% tip comes to 24.75 on the subtotal and 26.73 on the taxed total, a gap of 1.98 across a table of five, or about 40 cents each. Tipping on the pre-tax figure is the more common convention in the United States; tipping on the total is slightly more generous and saves you looking up the subtotal.
One case does deserve care. If a discount, voucher or comped dish reduced the bill, the convention is to tip on what the bill would have been before the discount, because the work of serving it was the same. Enter the pre-discount figure as the bill amount, note the tip, and pay that tip against the discounted total.
Limits of this calculator
The split is always even. The per person figure is the total divided by the number of people, and there is no per person item entry, so an uneven share has to be handled by running the calculator once per group, as in the worked example above. There is also no way to split the tip in a different proportion from the bill.
The tip slider covers whole percentages from 0 to 30 only. Half percentage points are not selectable, and a tip above 30% has to be reached another way, such as entering a bill amount that produces the total you want. There is no field for entering a flat tip amount; if you know the money value you want to leave, divide it by the bill and multiply by 100 to find the nearest whole percentage. The number of people is capped at 20.
Nothing is stored. The calculator keeps no history, saves no previous bills, and does not remember your preferred percentage between visits, so every reload starts from 50, 15% and 1 person. All of the arithmetic runs in the browser and no amount is sent to a server.