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Are People Tipping Less in 2026? What the Data and Servers Say

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Quick answer: A little. At sit-down restaurants, Toast's card data puts the average tip at 19.1% for April to June 2026, about half a point below late 2022, though that average counts only payments that included a tip. The bigger pullback is at the counter, where fewer people say they tip at all. In Popmenu's 2026 surveys, 40% said they're tipping less this year, most of them at restaurants and bars, and 60% said they're eating out less often. Your own numbers are the only way to know what's happening at your tables.

Tip’d, our free iPhone tip tracker, shows what you made each month and per hour, so you can compare this fall with last fall.

If you work for tips, you've heard it all year: guests are tired of tip screens, “tipping fatigue” is everywhere, and people are cutting back. Servers' forums are full of posts about slow nights and smaller tips, and in October a Canadian survey of hospitality workers made the news for what the CEO of the company behind it called a “tipping recession.” Is it real at your tables? The honest answer is that the numbers disagree with each other, and it's worth knowing why. Below are the card data, the surveys, what servers and diners are posting, two news reports you can play right here, and how to check your own tips.

What the card data says: tips at the table have barely moved

Line chart of the average card tip at restaurants on Toast, as a percent of the check, by quarter from late 2022 to mid-2026, on a scale from 14% to 20%. Full-service restaurants start at 19.6% in the fourth quarter of 2022, peak at 19.7% in early 2023, sit at 19.3% to 19.4% through 2024, dip to 19.1% in the second quarter of 2025 and end at 19.1% in the second quarter of 2026. Quick-service restaurants start at 15.9%, reach 16.1% in 2023 and have been 15.8% for seven quarters in a row.
Full-service tips slipped about half a point in three and a half years. Quick-service tips haven't moved since late 2024.

Toast, a point-of-sale system used at about 180,000 locations, publishes the average card and digital tip at its restaurants every quarter. Its latest numbers, for April to June 2026:

Where you work matters more than the year. Delaware tipped the most, 21.4% overall, and California the least, 17.1%. Square, another payment system, measures differently and its numbers run lower, but it shows a similar small slide: its average restaurant tip was 15.4% in 2024, and across its food and drink sellers, bars included, the average dipped to 14.85% in the third quarter of 2025 before edging back up to 14.99% in the first quarter of 2026.

What Toast's numbers can't show matters as much as what they do. They count only card and digital payments where a tip was added, so a guest who leaves nothing isn't in the average, and neither is any cash. And they're a percentage: 19% of a smaller check is a smaller tip.

What diners say: more of them are cutting back

Paired bar chart of the share of U.S. consumers in Popmenu's surveys of September 2025 and March 2026: tip restaurant servers 20% or more, 45% and 41%; feel they have to tip when a screen asks, 66% and 59%, though the 2025 question asked about feeling pressure and the 2026 one about feeling compelled; tip at coffee shops, 46% and 39%; tip at food trucks, 32% and 27%; tip at fast-food restaurants, 27% and 22%; tip restaurant delivery drivers 20% or more, 23% and 15%. Every figure fell.
Every figure fell in six months, and the share tipping delivery drivers 20% or more fell the most. Surveys record what people say they do, not what they paid.

Surveys tell a gloomier story. In March 2026, Popmenu, which makes websites and online ordering for restaurants, asked 1,000 U.S. consumers about tipping and compared their answers with its survey from September 2025:

Popmenu also looked at its own online orders: the share of pickup orders with a digital tip fell from 78% in 2022 to 62% in 2026. Its newest report, from September 30, drew on surveys of 3,000 consumers in February, May and July. 40% said they're tipping less this year, and 78% of those named restaurants and bars. 60% said they're eating out less often. Sit-down service held up best: 44% said they usually tip servers 20% or more, and 94% named some tip for sit-down restaurants, against two-thirds at carryout counters.

Other surveys are less gloomy, though one is from 2025. In Bankrate's survey of 2,277 adults in April 2025, 70% of those who eat at sit-down restaurants said they always tip there, up from 67% the year before, but only 35% of all adults said they usually tip 20% or more there, and 41% said tipping culture has gotten out of control. Bankrate's analyst said “the frequency of tipping is stabilizing after declining steadily in recent years.” In Omni Calculator's survey of 500 adults in February 2026, 56% said they tip about the same as they used to, 22% said they tip more and 20% said they tip less.

Shoppers on tip screens at coffee shops, ballgames and even a tire shop. The anger is at the counter: “For restaurants and for hairstylists… people are still generous. That has not changed.” Video: “To Tip or Skip? Consumers Say They’ve Had Enough” by TODAY. Watch it on YouTube

What diners post sounds the same. The complaint is rarely the server. It's the screen: suggested tips that keep climbing, and percentages figured on the total after tax.

What servers are saying

On servers' forums, “my tips are down” threads keep coming up, and the replies usually split: some servers say the same, others just had a great month.

That last one is worth holding on to. A tip percentage is one number; what you take home also depends on how busy you are, how big the checks are and how many hours you get.

Why the data and the surveys disagree

Canada's “tipping recession”

Two servers at a bar and grill in Cambridge, Ontario, on what their tips pay for: bills, food for home and the mortgage. Video: “Servers struggle as ‘tipping fatigue’ sets in” by CTV News. Watch it on YouTube

The loudest numbers this fall came from Canada. In August 2026, the pollster Angus Reid surveyed 506 Canadian hospitality workers for Actual, a company that sells tip-payout software. Of the 250 who get tips, 67% said their tips had gone down over the past two years, and in Ontario 72% did. 43% said they rely on tips to pay for rent, groceries and bills. Actual's CEO, Afshin Mousavian, called it a “tipping recession.”

It's a survey of workers about their own tips, so it measures what servers have seen rather than what was paid, and it comes from a company in the tipping business. But it matches what plenty of American servers say, too.

Is it you, or is it everyone? Check your own numbers

Tip’d's Month screen for September 2026, Last month, with arrows to move between months: You made $5,711 over 25 shifts and 164 hours, $34.82 per hour.
Tip’d's Month screen: what you made, your shifts, your pay per hour and your hours. The shifts are made up.

National averages can't tell you whether your tips are down. A record of your own shifts can, and it's the only thing that answers the question for you. When you log every shift's tips and hours:

Tip’d does this on your iPhone. Log a shift in a few seconds, cash and card apart, and the Month screen shows what you made, your shifts, your hours and your pay per hour, with arrows back to any month you've logged. Enter your sales and the form shows your tip percentage as you type, and the export lists it for every shift. Logging shifts is free, with no ads and no account.

If your tips really are down

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