Every traveller knows the moment: the waiter hovers with the card machine, the taxi idles outside, and you're frantically searching "do you tip in Japan?" on your phone. A free online tool called Tipping Rules wants to make that moment a thing of the past.
The site is a searchable database of tipping guidelines covering 140 destinations worldwide. Type a country into the search bar (or browse an interactive map) and you land on a profile page that spells out the local picture: whether tipping is expected at all, standard amounts for restaurant meals, bar tabs, taxis and hotels, plus notes on the best currency to tip in, when to round up, and exceptions to the general rule.
The norms it covers range wildly. In Mexico, expectations resemble those in the United States. In France and much of Europe, gratuities are appreciated but rarely demanded, since service staff typically earn a proper wage — a sharp contrast to American tipping culture, which the site's coverage notes is unusually intense because many US service jobs aren't paid a livable hourly rate. And in Japan and much of Asia, tipping can be genuinely unnecessary or even confusing to recipients.
There are also guides for specific scenarios, such as how gratuity works at Oktoberfest or when a service charge already covers the tip.
Who's behind it? Silviu Androne, a Romania-based software quality engineer who runs Tipping Rules as an independent project. He says he built it because tipping advice online tends to be scattered, contradictory, or too vague to actually help with the situation you're standing in.
Notably, the research standards look solid for a free resource. Androne works destination by destination, reviewing multiple sources and prioritising official tourism or government information and in-country material over single articles. AI tools help organise the research, but automated output isn't published on its own, and each country page carries a "last reviewed" date so you can see how current the guidance is. Readers can flag inaccuracies or share local context, which feeds back into updates.
For travellers, the value is obvious. Tipping customs shift from one border to the next, and getting it wrong ranges from an awkward overpayment to accidentally insulting a server. Having one vetted place to check, before or during a trip, saves both money and the classic checkout panic. It's especially handy for anyone travelling between several countries on one itinerary — a road trip across Southeast Asia or a multi-city European holiday — where the rules change every few hundred kilometres. If you've ever tipped generously where it wasn't expected, or stiffed someone where it was, this is worth bookmarking before your next trip. The site is at TippingRules.com, and it costs nothing to use.
