tippos research
Most U.S. adults say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years ago, only about a third find it easy to know when to tip, and card tips at full-service restaurants average just over 19%. Here is what the data shows, with the year and method behind every number.
Based on: Pew Research Center, Toast
72%
say tipping is expected in more places than five years ago
Pew Research Center, 2023
34%
find it easy to know whether to tip for a given service
Pew Research Center, 2023
19.3%
average card tip at full-service restaurants
Toast, Q1 2026
1 in 7
consumer payments made in cash
Federal Reserve, 2025
Fifteen findings from the most recent credible U.S. datasets: two large consumer surveys, a payments platform's quarterly numbers, the Federal Reserve's payments diary and a fifty-year academic series. Each fact carries the year it was measured and, where it matters, the limit of what it can tell you. None of it is a rule about what you should tip.
In Pew Research Center's August 2023 survey, 72% of U.S. adults said tipping is expected in more places than it was five years earlier. Only 5% said fewer places, and 23% said about the same. It is a perception of where tip prompts show up, not a measure of how much people actually give.
Source: Pew Research Center — Pew Research Center, survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, August 2023
Bankrate's April 2025 survey found 63% of U.S. adults held at least one negative view about tipping, up from 59% a year earlier. 41% said tipping culture has gotten out of control, up from 35%, and the same share said businesses should pay staff better rather than rely on tips.
How to read it: Online YouGov panel, a non-probability sample weighted to match the U.S. adult population.
Source: Bankrate — Bankrate, YouGov survey of 2,277 U.S. adults, April 2025
34% of adults told Pew it is extremely or very easy to know whether to tip for different kinds of services, and 33% said the same about how much. Upper-income adults and college graduates were the least confident of all: only about a quarter of each group called it easy.
Source: Pew Research Center — Pew Research Center, survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, August 2023
21% call tipping more of a choice, 29% more of an obligation, and 49% say it depends on the situation. Adults under 30 were the most likely to call it an obligation, at 38%. Service quality still decides most tips: 77% told Pew it is a major factor in whether and how much they tip, and Bankrate's 2025 survey found 58% say it most influences their amount, down from 64% in 2024.
How to read it: The two surveys asked different questions about service quality, so the 77% and 58% are two angles on the same idea, not a trend.
Source: Pew Research Center · Bankrate — Pew Research Center, survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, August 2023; Bankrate, YouGov survey of 2,277 U.S. adults, April 2025
Pew found 40% of adults strongly or somewhat oppose businesses suggesting tip amounts, 24% favor them and 32% feel neither way. Automatic service charges fare worse: 72% oppose them and 10% favor them. Adults 65 and older were the most opposed to suggestions, at 47%, while adults under 30 split almost evenly three ways.
Source: Pew Research Center — Pew Research Center, survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, August 2023
In Bankrate's 2025 survey, 38% said they were annoyed by pre-entered tip screens, up from 34% in 2024. 27% said they tip less or not at all when shown one, and 11% said they tip more. The rest said it made no difference.
How to read it: Online YouGov panel, a non-probability sample weighted to match the U.S. adult population.
Source: Bankrate — Bankrate, YouGov survey of 2,277 U.S. adults, April 2025
Among people who use each service, Pew found 92% always or often tip at a sit-down restaurant, 78% for a haircut, 76% for food delivery, 70% at a bar and 61% for a taxi or rideshare. The share drops to 25% at coffee shops and 12% at fast-casual restaurants such as Chipotle or Panera, where you order at a counter and no server takes your order.
How to read it: Self-reported habits among people who use each service, not a count of transactions.
Source: Pew Research Center — Pew Research Center, survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, August 2023
Bankrate's 2025 survey asked who people always tip: 70% said sit-down servers, 54% hair stylists and barbers, 52% food delivery, 43% taxi and rideshare drivers, 25% hotel housekeepers, 18% coffee baristas, 12% takeout pickup and 9% home repair workers. The always-tip share for servers was 75% in 2021 and 67% in 2024.
How to read it: Online YouGov panel, a non-probability sample weighted to match the U.S. adult population.
Source: Bankrate — Bankrate, YouGov survey of 2,277 U.S. adults, April 2025
Asked about a meal where the food and service were average but not exceptional, 57% of adults told Pew they would tip 15% or less, including 2% who would leave nothing. 12% would tip 18%, and 25% would tip 20% or more. Bankrate's 2025 survey found 35% say they always tip at least 20% at sit-down restaurants, down from 37% in 2024.
How to read it: Pew asked about an average meal; Bankrate asked what people always do. The two questions are not comparable, and both are self-reports rather than receipts.
Source: Pew Research Center · Bankrate — Pew Research Center, survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, August 2023; Bankrate, YouGov survey of 2,277 U.S. adults, April 2025
Toast's platform data for the first quarter of 2026 shows an average tip of 19.3% at full-service restaurants and 15.8% at quick-service restaurants, with an overall average of 18.8% across restaurant types. Quick-service tips have sat at 15.8% for six straight quarters, and full-service has moved only between 19.1% and 19.4% since 2024.
How to read it: Card and digital tips only, from roughly 171,000 U.S. Toast locations as of March 31, 2026. Cash tips are excluded, and the overall figure is total tips divided by gross processing volume.
Source: Toast — Toast platform data, Q1 2026
Toast reports that takeout transactions which included a tip averaged 13.7% in Q1 2026. The figure leaves out every takeout order with no tip, so it says how much tippers give, not how often anyone tips on takeout. By state, Delaware had the highest overall average at 22.1% and California the lowest at 17.3%.
How to read it: Averages of orders that carried a tip; the share of takeout orders with no tip is not published.
Source: Toast — Toast platform data, Q1 2026
A 2025 research note by Cornell's Michael Lynn pooled 64 observations from 56 academic studies of real U.S. restaurant tipping and found average tip percentages rising by about 0.16 percentage points a year, roughly 1.5 points a decade, across the last half century. Pew's report traces the norm from 10% in Emily Post's 1922 etiquette book to 15% in the late twentieth century and 18% to 20% in today's guides.
How to read it: Averages from academic field studies, not a nationally representative sample. The trend held across several robustness checks in the paper.
Source: International Journal of Hospitality Management · Pew Research Center — International Journal of Hospitality Management, 2025; Pew Research Center, 2023
In Bankrate's 2025 survey, the share who always tip sit-down servers rises with age: 43% of Gen Z, 61% of millennials, 83% of Gen X and 84% of baby boomers. Tipping 20% or more runs from 16% of Gen Z to 49% of boomers. Yet older adults are also the most critical: 68% of boomers hold a negative view of tipping against 57% of Gen Z, and 44% of boomers are annoyed by tip screens against 27% of Gen Z. Pew found the same age pattern on suggestions: 47% of adults 65 and older oppose suggested tip amounts, against 33% of adults under 30.
How to read it: Self-reported behaviour from an online panel. Bankrate defines Gen Z as ages 18–28, millennials 29–44, Gen X 45–60 and boomers 61–79.
Source: Bankrate · Pew Research Center — Bankrate, YouGov survey of 2,277 U.S. adults, April 2025; Pew Research Center, survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, August 2023
The Federal Reserve's Diary of Consumer Payment Choice found cash was about one in seven consumer payments in 2025, and 14% by count in 2024, when credit cards took 35% and debit cards 30%. Cash is far from gone: 80% of consumers used it in the past month and 76% carry it, averaging $69. Mobile-phone payments averaged 11 a month in 2024, up from 4 in 2018, and adults aged 18 to 24 paid by phone 45% of the time.
How to read it: Payments of every kind, not tips. The diary is nationally representative and runs each October.
Source: Federal Reserve Financial Services — Federal Reserve, Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, October 2024 and October 2025 diaries
Federal law counts someone as a tipped employee once they customarily receive more than $30 a month in tips, and lets employers pay a cash wage as low as $2.13 an hour when tips make up the rest of the $7.25 federal minimum; many states set higher floors. Employers, managers and supervisors may not keep any part of a worker's tips. Asked what is fairest for restaurant servers, 72% of adults told Pew that each server should keep the tips they personally receive.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor · Pew Research Center — U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #15; Pew Research Center, 2023
The statistics on this page come from the published research and datasets below. Sources reviewed .
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