Tip Calculator

Total a bill, add the tip, and see what each person actually owes.

Runs on your deviceCalculatorsWorkingNo account needed

What this tool does

Tip Calculator applies a percentage to a bill as gratuity and divides the result between however many people are paying. You can type the total straight into the Bill amount field, or paste the itemised lines — "Pizza: 14.50", "Salad 8", "Drinks: 12" — and it adds them up first, so the figure the tip is calculated on is the one you read off the receipt rather than one you retyped.

Rounding is where this stops being mental arithmetic, and there are three settings. Exact leaves the division alone. Round each share up to a whole unit takes every person's payment to the next whole number above it — a share that already lands on a whole number is left alone — and then works backwards to show what the tip has become. Round the total up does that to the bill total instead. Neither setting ever rounds down, and the Tip line in the result carries the effective percentage: the 85.50 bill it opens with, total rounded up to 99, leaves 13.50, which reads as 15.8% rather than the 15% you asked for.

The split is even, and that is the limit worth knowing before you start. Even when you paste the items, everyone pays the same share; there is no way to charge the person who ordered the steak more than the one who had soup. Pasted lines are only added together, as well — the result gives the total and how many items went into it, and never lists the lines back with their labels. Two smaller consequences of the arithmetic: per-person amounts are rounded to two decimal places, so a total that will not divide cleanly between three or six people leaves a penny or so unaccounted for, and the figures carry no currency symbol because the tool never asks which currency you are in. The whole calculation happens in this browser tab — the bill is not sent anywhere, which is unremarkable for a division but does mean that once the page is open it survives a restaurant's dead Wi-Fi.

How to use it

  1. Give it the bill. Type a figure into Bill amount, or paste the receipt one item per line. Whenever the box holds at least one item line, that sum is used and the Bill amount field is ignored; lines beginning with # or // are comments, so a box holding only those falls back to the field.
  2. Set the tip percentage. The Tip field moves in half-percent steps from zero upwards, starting at 15. Anything up to 1000% is accepted, so unusual conventions are not a problem.
  3. Say how many are paying. Split between takes any whole number from one upwards. Set to one, the output shows the total to pay instead of a per-person share.
  4. Choose the rounding. Exact, round each share up, or round the total up. Underneath, a comparison table shows the tip, total and per-person figure at 10, 12.5, 15, 18, 20 and 25 per cent — always the exact division, whichever rounding you picked, and only those six rates.

Processing & privacy

Runs on your device. Your file is processed directly in this browser.

Common use cases

Settling a restaurant bill at the table

Enter the total, the number at the table and a percentage, and read one number aloud. Nobody has to divide by seven in their head while a card machine waits.

Deciding what to leave

The comparison table puts six common percentages side by side with what each costs per person, which is a faster way to choose than recalculating one at a time.

Paying in cash without coins

Round each share up to a whole unit and everyone hands over notes. The Tip line then tells you what percentage that rounding actually produced.

Checking an itemised receipt

Paste the lines and the sum appears before any tip is added, so a bill that does not match what you were charged shows up before you pay it.

Questions

Is the bill sent anywhere?
No. The calculation happens in this browser tab, so nothing about the bill leaves your device, and once the page has loaded it keeps calculating with the connection off.
Should I tip on the amount before or after tax?
That is your call, and the tool cannot make it for you: it applies the percentage to whatever bill figure it is given, tax and service charge included, because it has no way to tell those apart from the food. To tip on the pre-tax figure, strip the tax with VAT & Sales Tax first and enter that number as the bill.
Can different people pay different amounts?
No. The split is always even, even when you have pasted an itemised bill. It totals the items; it does not assign them to anyone.
Why is the tip percentage in the result not the one I chose?
Rounding. With either round-up option the tip absorbs the difference, so the Tip line shows the effective percentage — what you are really leaving — rather than the number you typed.
Which currency does it use?
None in particular. Amounts are formatted using your browser's number settings, so you get the thousands separator and decimal mark you expect, but no symbol is added. A whole unit in the rounding settings means one pound, dollar or euro, whichever the bill is in.
What happens if a line has no amount on it?
It stops and names the line rather than skipping it quietly. Each line must end with a number; symbols such as £ and thousands separators are stripped, negative amounts are refused, and lines starting with # or // are treated as comments and ignored.

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