How to split a restaurant bill fairly
Splitting evenly is fast, but it stops feeling fair the moment one person orders a steak and another a salad. Here is how to keep it fair without turning dinner into accounting.
When even is fine
If everyone ordered roughly the same, split evenly and move on. The social cost of calculating who had the extra side dish is higher than the two euros at stake.
Even splits work best for set menus, shared feasts, and groups where the totals would land within a few euros of each other anyway.
When to split by item
The moment the spread gets big, itemized is the honest option. A 50 euro steak and a 12 euro salad at the same table should not cost the same.
The old way was passing the receipt around with a calculator. The faster way: the payer photographs the receipt, everyone taps what they had on their own phone, and shared items divide automatically. That is exactly what Tablesplitter does, with no sign-up needed.
Drinks are the usual argument
The most common unfairness is alcohol. The person drinking water subsidizes the cocktails in an even split.
A simple fix: split food evenly if it was similar, but let everyone pay for their own drinks. With an itemized split this happens naturally, since each person only taps their own items.
Shared plates and bottles
Bread for the table, a bottle of wine, a shared dessert: mark them as shared and divide them among the people who actually had them, not necessarily the whole table.
If only three of six people drank the wine, those three split it. Good splitting tools let you set how many people shared an item.
Tipping without the awkwardness
Tip on the total, then split the tip the same way you split the bill. If you split by item, each person tips proportionally to what they ordered.
Agree on the tip percentage before anyone pays, so nobody overtips out of guilt or undertips hoping nobody notices.
Try it on your next bill
Snap the receipt, share one code, everyone taps what they had. No sign-up needed.
Tap to split