Service Charge, Cover Charge and Tip

Last updated: September 6, 2026

The bottom of a restaurant bill often carries two or three lines that are not food. They have different names in different countries, they are not the same thing as each other, and only some of them are optional. Reading them correctly is worth more than any tipping rule of thumb, because the most common tipping mistake is not paying too little — it is paying twice.

The short version

A cover charge is for the table and is not a tip. A service charge is a tip that has already been added. A tip is what you choose to add on top. If a service charge is on the bill, you have already tipped; anything more is genuinely optional and nobody will think worse of you for stopping there.

The lines, one at a time

Cover charge

A fixed amount per person for sitting down — bread, olives, the table itself. In Italy it is the coperto, and it is legal and normal; in Greece and Spain something similar appears under various names. It is not service and it does not reach the staff as a tip. It is not optional either: it is part of the price of eating there.

It splits per head, because it was charged per head. This is one of the few lines on a bill that genuinely should be divided equally even when the food is not.

Service charge

A percentage — usually ten to fifteen — added by the restaurant in place of you deciding a tip. In the United Kingdom it is normally described as discretionary, which means exactly what it says: you may ask for it to be removed, and asking is not rude. In France service compris means it is baked into the menu prices rather than shown separately.

The important question is whether it reaches the staff. In the UK, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act requires qualifying tips and service charges to be passed on to workers in full. In many other countries the answer is less clear and depends on the individual restaurant. If you care, ask — the honest ones will tell you.

A service charge splits in proportion to what each person ordered, because it was calculated as a percentage of the food. Dividing it per head quietly moves money from the light eaters to the heavy ones.

Gratuity

Usually the American term, and usually automatic for larger groups — six or more is the common threshold. It behaves exactly like a service charge: already added, already a tip. The trap is that the card terminal will then offer you a tip screen suggesting eighteen, twenty and twenty-five per cent, calculated on a total that already contains the gratuity.

Tax

Not a tip and not optional, but worth mentioning because of where it sits. In much of Europe tax is already inside the menu price. In the United States it is added at the end, which is why an American bill is always larger than the menu suggested.

Tax splits in proportion, like service. It was charged on the food, so it follows the food.

How to avoid tipping twice

Read every line below the food before you look at the total.
Look for a percentage, the word service, servizio, servicio, Bedienung, or gratuity.
If one is there, the tip is done. Treat any further prompt as optional.
On a card terminal, check what the suggested percentages are being calculated on. If the gratuity is already in the total, the suggestion is a tip on a tip.

Which lines split which way

Line	Optional?	Splits
Food and drink	No	By item, or evenly — your choice
Cover charge	No	Per head
Service charge	Often discretionary	In proportion to the food
Automatic gratuity	Usually not	In proportion to the food
Tax	No	In proportion to the food
Additional tip	Yes	In proportion to the food

That table is most of the argument. Only the cover charge is genuinely per head; everything else that is not food follows the food. Splitting the food by item and then everything else equally is the single most common way a fair-looking split ends up unfair.

Asking for a service charge to be removed

Where it is described as discretionary, you are entitled to ask, and the reasonable reasons are about service rather than about money. Staff generally know which is which. If the service was genuinely poor, saying so quietly and asking for the charge to be taken off is a normal conversation; removing it silently and leaving is not.

If you remove it because you would rather tip in cash, say that too — in some places cash reaches the person who served you more directly than a card service charge does.

Doing it without the arithmetic

All of this is easy to state and tedious to compute at a table for eight. MyShare reads the bill, keeps the service and tax lines separate from the food, and applies them in proportion when people pick what they had — so the rule in the table above happens by default rather than by somebody doing percentages on a phone.

For the four ways of dividing the food itself, see how to split a bill fairly. For what is expected once you are abroad, see how much to tip, country by country.

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