Tip Calculator — Restaurant & Service Tips

Tipping in the UK is discretionary, not mandatory. A typical restaurant tip is 10-12.5% of the bill, though this varies by establishment and region. Many restaurants add an optional service charge of 12.5%, which you can ask to have removed if the service was poor, and London venues increasingly set that charge at 15%. Service has had to be labelled discretionary or optional in Britain since the 1980s, and you can request its removal for any reason at all, including simple preference.

For other services, UK customs differ from American expectations. Taxi drivers are usually tipped by rounding up to the nearest pound, or 10% on a longer fare, and Uber takes 10-15% through the app if you choose to add it. Hairdressers typically receive £2-£5, with 10% of the treatment cost the usual convention in salons. Hotel porters may get £1-£2 per bag and housekeeping £1-£3 a night, though the latter is often skipped here. There is no expectation to tip in pubs, cafes or for takeaway orders, where a jar on the counter is entirely optional.

Since October 2024, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act requires employers to pass 100% of tips to staff. Before the Act, many employers kept card service charges to cover what they described as processing costs, and that is now unlawful. Card tips usually travel through a tronc, a pooled distribution system that has to operate independently of the employer, and the receipt will often say so. Cash tips bypass the tronc entirely and go to whoever you hand them to. This calculator shows tip amounts at common UK percentages and lets you adjust based on the service you received.

Tips are taxable income for whoever receives them, but the route matters. Cash tips are the employee's own responsibility to declare through Self Assessment, unless the employer administers them through PAYE. Card tips paid through a tronc have PAYE deducted before the money reaches staff, so what arrives is already net. National Insurance is payable on tips that come through a tronc, because the employer treats them as wages, while cash tips handed over directly are not subject to NI. A service charge added to the bill and then distributed attracts both PAYE and NI, exactly like ordinary pay.

The sums involved are far from trivial for the people receiving them. Tips add somewhere between £1 and £4 an hour to a hospitality worker's base pay, on top of the £12.71 an hour minimum wage for over-25s in 2026/27, and £5 to £15 an hour in upscale London restaurants. Hairdressers take around 10% of their earnings from tips, and taxi drivers around 5% to 10% of the fare. ONS estimates put the whole UK tipping economy at roughly £3 billion a year, and since 1 October 2024 the average full-time tronc worker has received about £200 a month more.

Splitting a bill is far easier to agree before the food arrives than after it. An even split works when everyone ordered similar amounts, so a group of 8 facing a £200 bill plus 12.5% service pays £225 in total, or £28.13 each. Where orders diverge sharply, with one person on the £80 steak and others on £15 pasta, itemised splitting through an app such as Splitwise or Tricount avoids resentment. The person being celebrated traditionally does not pay their share, service included. Watch the menu fine print too, since a service charge on parties of 8 or more is often applied automatically.

Expectations shift the moment you leave the country. American waiters are paid below minimum wage, so 15% to 20% is expected there. Italy and France sit at 5% to 10% where service is not already included, and in Japan tipping is not done at all and can be taken as an insult. Back home, a collected takeaway needs nothing, delivery riders for Uber Eats or Deliveroo get 5% to 10% for good service, a barber or hairdresser 10% to 15% if you want to be generous, a tour guide £5 to £10 a day, and a beauty therapist 10% to 15% where you are pleased with the result.