How Much to Tip: A Simple Guide to Every Situation

How much to tip, in short: 15-20% at sit-down restaurants, $1-2 per drink at a bar, 15-20% (or $5 minimum) for food delivery, 20% at salons and barbershops, $20-40 per person for movers, and $2-5 per night for hotel housekeeping. Round up when the service was good and the bill was small.

That covers most of the situations you will actually run into. The rest of this page is the detail: what to tip on, what to do when there is no service at all, and how the numbers look in real dollars. Every amount below is convention, not law. Nobody is auditing you. But these are the ranges people in service jobs expect, and knowing them saves you the awkward pause at the card reader.

What is a standard tip in most situations?

Here is the quick-reference list. Bookmark it, screenshot it, whatever works.

• Sit-down restaurant: 15% acceptable, 18% standard, 20% good
• Bar, per drink: $1 for a beer or simple pour, $2 for a cocktail
• Bar, running tab: 20% of the total
• Food delivery: 15-20%, with a $5 floor
• Coffee counter / takeout: optional, $1 or spare change
• Rideshare and taxi: 15-20%, or round up to the next $5
• Hairdresser or barber: 20%
• Nail tech, esthetician, massage: 20%
• Tattoo artist: 20%, more for long or custom work
• Movers: $20-40 per mover for a normal day, $50+ for stairs and heavy loads
• Furniture or appliance delivery: $5-20 per person
• Hotel housekeeping: $2-5 per night, left daily
• Bellhop: $2 per bag
• Valet: $2-5 when the car comes back
• Buffet or counter service with a server refilling drinks: 10%

If you would rather not do the arithmetic in your head at the table, the Tip Calculator handles the percentage and the split in one shot.

How much should you tip at a restaurant?

Tip 18-20% for normal table service. Fifteen percent is the floor, and it reads as a mild complaint. Twenty percent is what most people default to now, and it is the number servers plan their income around.

Real numbers, because percentages are slippery:

• $40 bill: 20% = $8
• $80 bill: 20% = $16, 18% = $14.40
• $120 bill: 20% = $24
• $250 bill: 20% = $50

The fast mental trick: move the decimal one place left to get 10%, then double it. On an $86 check, 10% is $8.60, so 20% is about $17. Round to $17 and move on.

Two situations deserve more than 20%. First, small checks. If you sat with a coffee and a scone for an hour, 20% of $9 is $1.80, and that does not reflect the table you occupied. Leave $3-5. Second, large groups that were a genuine hassle. If you had a party of nine and the server split the check eight ways without complaining, go to 22-25%.

Check the bill before you add anything. Parties of six or more often have an automatic gratuity of 18-20% already baked in, usually labeled "service charge" or "gratuity." If it is there, you are done. Adding another 20% on top is a generous mistake people make constantly. For a full breakdown of what different percentages actually cost you, see whether 20% is actually a good tip.

Do you tip on the total or the pre-tax amount?

Technically pre-tax is correct, since tax is not service. In practice, most people tip on the post-tax total because it is what the receipt shows and the difference is small.

How small? On an $80 meal with 8% tax, the total is $86.40. Twenty percent of the pre-tax amount is $16. Twenty percent of the post-tax total is $17.28. The gap is $1.28. That is not worth the mental energy on a normal night out.

It starts to matter on big bills. On a $400 dinner in a high-tax city, the difference is closer to $8. Tip pre-tax if you want, nobody will notice or care. If you want to see exactly what a given percentage works out to before you commit, run the numbers through the Tip Calculator or a plain Percentage Calculator.

One more wrinkle: do not tip on a discount you did not pay for. If you used a coupon that took $30 off a $100 meal, tip on the $100. The server did the same work either way. This comes up a lot with restaurant week menus and gift cards, and it is one of the more common ways people accidentally short a server.

How much do you tip a bartender?

A dollar a drink is the working standard for beer and simple pours. Two dollars for cocktails that take real effort. If you are running a tab, 20% of the total when you close out.

Cash on the bar for the first round buys you attention for the rest of the night. That is not a myth, it is how a busy bar works. Bartenders remember.

Tip on comped drinks too. If the bartender buys you a round, tip as if you paid for it. A free drink is not free of labor.

How much should you tip for food delivery?

Tip 15-20% of the order, with $5 as the practical minimum. Delivery drivers pay for their own gas, their own car, and their own maintenance, and the app fees you see mostly do not reach them.

On a $28 order, 20% is $5.60. On a $60 order for the family, 20% is $12. Bad weather, a long drive, or a fourth-floor walkup all justify going higher. Add $2-3 in the rain. It is cheap goodwill.

The service fee is not a tip. It goes to the platform. This is the single most common misunderstanding in delivery, and it costs drivers real money. If you want the specifics on app-by-app tipping, pre-tipping versus tipping after, and why some orders sit unclaimed, we go deeper in the guide to tipping food delivery drivers.

How much do you tip at a salon or for personal services?

Twenty percent is the standard across hair, nails, waxing, and massage. These are appointment-based relationships where you see the same person repeatedly, and the tip is part of how that relationship works.

On a $60 haircut, 20% is $12. On a $200 color, that is $40, which stings, but color is hours of work. If multiple people touched your hair, the person who shampooed you gets $3-5 separately, in cash if you can.

Salon owners are a gray area. The old rule was that you do not tip the owner. That rule is mostly dead. If the owner cut your hair, tip them like anyone else. For the full picture, including how to handle a bad cut, see tipping your hairdresser.

Tattoo artists follow the same 20% baseline but scale differently, because the sessions are long and the work is custom. A $600 piece at 20% is $120. Our guide to tipping a tattoo artist covers multi-session pieces, shop minimums, and what to do when you are already stretched by the price of the tattoo itself.

How much do you tip movers and home service workers?

Movers get $20-40 per person for a standard local move, handed to each mover individually rather than to the crew lead. A long day with stairs, heat, or a piano moves that to $50-100 each.

For a three-person crew on a normal apartment move, budget $60-120 total. On a full-day house move, budget $150-300. That feels like a lot until you watch someone carry your couch down three flights. Cold drinks and lunch do not replace cash, but they are noticed. The math on crew size, hourly versus flat-rate jobs, and long-distance moves is in our breakdown of how much to tip movers.

Other home services:

• Furniture delivery and setup: $10-20 per person
• Appliance install: $10-20 per person
• House cleaner: 15-20%, or a week's fee as a holiday bonus
• Handyman, plumber, electrician: no tip expected, though $10-20 for exceptional work is a nice gesture
• Landscaper on a crew: $20-50 each at the end of the season

Licensed tradespeople set their own rates and are not tipped positions. Nobody expects a tip on a $900 plumbing bill.

How much should you tip when traveling?

Hotel housekeeping gets $2-5 per night, left daily rather than in a lump at checkout, because the person cleaning Tuesday may not be the person cleaning Friday. Leave it somewhere obvious with a note.

The rest of the travel list:

• Bellhop: $2 per bag, $5 minimum
• Valet: $2-5 when they bring the car back, not when you drop it off
• Hotel concierge: nothing for directions, $5-20 for real work like a hard reservation
• Airport skycap: $2 per bag
• Taxi or rideshare: 15-20%, or round up
• Shuttle driver: $2-5
• Tour guide: 10-20% of the tour price

On a $22 Uber, 20% is $4.40, so round to $5 in the app. On a $40 airport ride with luggage help, $8 is right. Note that tipping norms outside North America are completely different. In Japan, tipping can be an insult. In much of Europe, service is included and rounding up is plenty. Do not export American percentages abroad.

Is it rude not to tip?

Yes, at a sit-down restaurant. Servers in most US states are paid a tipped minimum wage that assumes tips will make up the rest, and stiffing them is not a message to management, it is money out of one person's pocket.

Bad service is not a reason to leave nothing. Leave 10% and speak to a manager if it was genuinely bad. Zero is a nuclear option reserved for hostility, not slowness. And the kitchen being slow is not the server's fault.

There are plenty of places where not tipping is completely fine:

• Counter service where you carry your own food and nobody comes to the table
• A tablet flipped around at a register for a bottled drink
• Retail cashiers
• Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other licensed professionals
• Government employees, who often cannot legally accept tips
• Bills that already include a service charge or auto-gratuity
• Fast food
• Airline staff

The tablet prompt at every counter is real fatigue, and skipping it is not rude. Save your money for the people whose income actually depends on it. That distinction, service work versus a screen asking, is the whole game.

How do you split a tip between people?

Calculate the tip on the full bill first, then divide the grand total by the number of people. Do not have each person tip on their own item, which is how tables end up leaving 14% by accident.

On a $160 bill for four with a 20% tip, the total is $192, so $48 each. If someone had only a salad, adjust their share downward by hand rather than restructuring the whole calculation. Round-number bills have their own quirks, and we walk through them in the guide to tipping on a $100 bill.

Bottom line

Tip 15-20% at restaurants, $1-2 per drink at a bar, 15-20% with a $5 floor on delivery, 20% at salons and for tattoos, $20-40 per mover, and $2-5 per night for hotel housekeeping. Do not tip at counters, on auto-gratuity bills, or to licensed professionals. Tip on the pre-discount amount, and pre-tax if you feel like being precise.

When you are staring at a receipt and do not want to do mental math, the Tip Calculator gives you the amount and the split in seconds.