Bill splitter

Splitting a bill is two lines of arithmetic and an argument, and the argument is usually about the order things happen in. The tip goes on the whole bill before the division, not on each person's share afterwards — the two give the same answer only when the split is even, and the moment somebody covers more than their quarter they stop agreeing. This page adds the tip first, then divides, and shows the tip and the grand total on their own so you can see what you are dividing rather than just what each person owes. It carries no currency and no tipping norm, because neither of those is arithmetic.

How it is calculated

tip = bill × rate ÷ 100 · total = bill + tip · each = total ÷ people

A percentage is hundredths of the number it is taken of, so a ten percent tip on 120 is 12 and the table owes 132. Divided four ways that is 33 each. When one person covers a stated share, they pay that percentage of the total with tip and the remainder is divided between the people left, which is one fewer than the number at the table.

Source: A percentage is hundredths of the number it is taken of, so a tip is the bill times the rate over a hundred

Questions people ask

What tip should I leave?

This page has no opinion and deliberately ships none. Tipping is a local custom rather than a measurement: it is built into the price in much of Europe and Japan, it is a rounding-up habit in some countries, and it is a substantial part of a server's wage in the United States. A default percentage written into a calculator would be wrong for most of the people who opened it, so the field starts at a round number and expects you to replace it.

Why add the tip before dividing?

Because the tip belongs to the table, not to a person. Adding it first and then dividing is the same arithmetic as everyone tipping on their own share when the split is even — but it stops being the same the moment it is not. If one person covers 40% of the bill, they should be covering 40% of the tip too, and that only falls out if the tip is inside the number being divided.

How does the uneven split work?

The share is a percentage of the bill with tip, not of the bill before it, and everyone else divides the rest evenly. Four people on a 120 bill where one covers 40% means that person pays 48 and the other three pay 24 each. Leave the field at zero and the second line goes away, because an even split has nothing to say about who is covering what.

What does it do at zero people?

It refuses. There is a real temptation to return zero there, because zero is a number and the page would look like it worked, but a bill divided between nobody has no answer rather than an answer of nothing. So it says so instead of printing a figure that would be quietly wrong.

Does it round to the nearest coin?

No. It gives the exact quotient, which for 100 split three ways is 33.333… and never comes out even. Rounding needs a currency — how many minor units it has, and whether the local convention is to round to the nearest five or ten of them — and this page does not know which one you are holding. Round the figure yourself, and let whoever paid absorb the fraction.

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