Tipping abroad calculator

Methodology

This tool runs the Kindhow Scale, version 1.0, in its list form — the same shape as the hotel tipping list, one row per thing you are doing rather than one baseline and a stack of adjustments. What is new here is that the country control decides whether a line can be sourced at all. Everywhere else on this site, an input moves a number inside a published range. Here it changes whether there is a publication.

The formula

pick a country. that decides FOUR things, not one:

  the currency          ¥ £ € $MXN $AUD   never converted
  which rows cost       Japan: none of them
  which rows are        board publishes a figure  → sourced
    sourced at all      no board publishes one    → house judgment
  which bill states     coperto exists in Italy and nowhere else
    are even possible

for each thing you are doing:

  meals / taxis   → the bottom of the published % band
                    × the bill or fare YOU typed in
                    (the top of the band is printed separately)
  porter          → a published amount per bag
  nights / bars   → per night, per stop
  guided tour     → per person, per tour

  ─────────────
  bill already covers it   → that row to 0, kept visible
  cash or card             → 0. changes the reasoning;
                             in the UK, changes the citation
  the reason it works
    this way                → 0. sourced in all six countries

  = local cash to carry for tips, rounded to what that
    country's pocket actually holds

Two layers, tagged separately

Every other page in this category asserts one number for a whole continent. The reason they can is that they never say where it came from. This tool splits the claim in two and tags each half on its own:

• The reason is sourced for all six countries. A statute or a government agency, every time — the DGCCRF on French price display, PROFECO on whether a Mexican tip can be demanded, the Fair Work Ombudsman on the Australian wage floor, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 on where a British card tip ends up. It is line 0 of every ledger and it is always at zero, because it is not money. It is why the money is what it is.
• The custom is sourced for three of six. JNTO, VisitBritain and Italia.it publish figures. France, Mexico and Australia have no equivalent, so every amount for those three is ours and carries the house-judgment tag. We would rather show you an untidy table than a uniform one that implies a citation we do not have.

Every row, every country, and whose figure it is

This is the tool. Read down a column for one country’s whole answer; read across a row to see the same activity change provenance as you cross a border. The three countries under a tourism board are marked sourced; the other three are ours throughout.

The rows are not on the same clock, which is the other reason a single percentage cannot answer this: meals and taxis are priced off a bill you type in, a porter is per bag, housekeeping is per night, and a guided tour is per person per tour. A family of four on two tours in Mexico pays eight times the per-head figure; the same family in Japan pays nothing.

Where the sourced figures come from

Why we use the bottom of a published band

VisitBritain publishes “10-15”. We charge 10 and print what 15 would come to as a separate line under the total. Picking the middle of somebody else’s range is a judgment, and unlike the tagged ones it would be invisible — the number would look sourced while being partly ours. Italia.it publishes a single figure, 10%, so there is no band and no choice to make. Australia’s band is the one we wrote ourselves, and its bottom is zero, because zero is the default answer there.

The $0 lines, and why they stay on the ledger

A row that costs nothing is not a row we deleted. It is frequently the most useful line on the page, and there are four kinds here:

Cash or card changes the reasoning, not the number

In five of these six countries, how you pay is a practical matter we have an opinion about: terminals in Italy and France rarely offer a tip line, so plan on coins. Britain is the exception, and it is a statutory one. Since 1 October 2024 the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 has required an employer to ensure the total amount of qualifying tips is “allocated fairly between workers”, and the statutory Code of Practice in force from that date has them passed on without deductions, enforceable at an employment tribunal. That is why the payment control changes the British line from our opinion to a citation — and why it is the only one it does that for. The Act covers England, Scotland and Wales, not Northern Ireland.

Why the wage floor is the whole story

American tipping exists because a tipped worker’s wage can legally be set below the ordinary minimum and topped up by tips. None of these six countries does that, and each states it in its own way. VisitBritain: “Workers do not have to rely on tips to live and all staff must be paid at least the National Minimum Wage.” The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes an Australian national minimum wage of $26.44 an hour from 1 July 2026 — $1,004.90 a week before tax, and $33.05 an hour for a casual once the 25% loading is added. France puts the service in the price by regulation. That is the fact the one-number “tipping in Europe” guides leave out, and it is the reason the answers here are so much smaller than an American traveller expects.

Rounding

Whole pounds, euros and Australian dollars; tens of pesos; hundreds of yen. That is house judgment and nothing more — no country publishes a rounding convention for tips, and this one just reflects the notes and coins actually in a pocket. It never moves a figure outside the band it came from.

What this tool will not do

• It will not convert to dollars. Deliberately, and permanently. An exchange rate baked into this page would be wrong within days, and printing a stale rate as though it were current is exactly the kind of confident fabrication this site exists not to commit. Paying for a live-rate API to tell you something your phone does free would be worse. The ledger is in local money.
• It covers six countries, and the gaps are real. Spain, Germany, Greece and Portugal are the biggest omissions. Spain was dropped during research rather than rushed: spain.info publishes no tipping page and there is no crisp statutory hook, so its ledger would have been entirely ours with nothing underneath it. Germany has a genuine statute — § 3 Nr. 51 EStG makes Trinkgeld tax-free for the employee — but that is a fact about a worker’s tax return, not about what a visitor owes. These are gaps, not claims.
• It does not use Emily Post. Every other tipping tool on this site does. Her guide is US-scoped, and lifting an American figure onto a foreign country is precisely the error this page exists to correct. There is no regional price adjustment here either, for the same reason.
• A country is not one custom. A tourist restaurant in Rome and a village trattoria are not the same room, and London is not Britain. Where a national tourism board generalises, we follow it and say whose generalisation it is; we do not add a second layer of ours on top.
• It has no opinion about your budget. No nudge toward generosity, and no suggestion that a zero is stingy. In Japan it is simply the answer.

Sources

• Japan National Tourism Organization — Tipping in Japan — that tipping is not common in bars, cafes, restaurants, taxis and hotels; the private-guide exception; the kokorozuke custom and the envelope.
• VisitBritain — Useful information for travel to Britain — the National Minimum Wage sentence, the 10-15 restaurant and taxi figures, the optional service charge, and “approximately £2” for a hotel porter.
• Italia.it (ENIT) — Money, payments and tipping in Italy — the single published sentence putting a satisfied customer’s tip close to 10% of the bill. It is the entirety of Italy’s official guidance.
• Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 (c. 13), section 2 and the statutory Code of Practice — in force 1 October 2024; fair allocation of qualifying tips, passed on without deductions, enforceable at an employment tribunal. England, Scotland and Wales.
• DGCCRF, Ministère de l’Économie — Pourboire (fiche pratique) — displayed prices must be those actually payable by the customer, service included; the required “prix service compris” mention and its percentage; and that a tip is always voluntary and may not be required by any profession.
• PROFECO — La propina es voluntaria — the tip cannot be demanded and cannot be included in the bill without the diner’s consent.
• Fair Work Ombudsman — Minimum wages — the Australian national minimum wage from 1 July 2026, including the casual rate with its 25% loading. Reviewed every 1 July.

Informational only, not professional advice. The Kindhow Scale is a published model, not a standard, and the lines marked house judgment are our reasoning and nothing more. Nothing here is legal advice: the statutes and agency guidance are quoted to explain what you are being charged and what you are protected from, not to tell you or any business how to comply with them. Customs vary within every country listed, and no amount on this page is owed anywhere. Last reviewed: August 2026. Scale version 1.0. The Australian minimum wage moves every 1 July; sourced figures are re-checked against their publications on a monthly cycle, and when one moves the version number moves with it.