Splitting the restaurant bill: a method for every situation

The restaurant bill is where most people first run into expense-splitting problems, and it comes in more variations than it seems like at first. Here's a method for each common scenario.

Everyone ordered about the same

Split evenly, including tax and tip, and don't overthink it. If the total spread between the cheapest and most expensive order is small, itemizing costs more in social effort than it saves in actual dollars.

Orders varied a lot in price

Itemize: assign each line item to whoever ordered it, split any genuinely shared items (an appetizer everyone ate from) evenly among however many people had it, then apply tax and tip proportionally to each person's actual subtotal — not split evenly on top of an itemized base, which quietly reintroduces the same unfairness itemizing was meant to fix. See itemized vs. even split for when this is worth the extra few minutes.

A big group with mixed shared and individual items

Split shared appetizers and any bottles of wine ordered "for the table" evenly across everyone who was there. Itemize individual entrees to whoever ordered them. This hybrid approach handles the most common real-world dinner shape — some things genuinely shared, some things clearly individual — without forcing either extreme onto the whole bill.

Someone brought outside drinks (corkage) or a special request

A corkage fee or a special request charge (a substitution fee, a split-plate charge) should generally be assigned to whoever triggered it, not spread across the table — it exists because of one person's choice, and folding it into an even split quietly charges everyone else for a decision that wasn't theirs.

Someone doesn't drink, or has dietary restrictions

When alcohol makes up a large share of the bill and one or more people didn't drink, an even split quietly charges non-drinkers for something they didn't have — this is one of the more common sources of quiet resentment at group dinners. The fix is simple: itemize the drinks separately and split that portion only among those who ordered them, then handle food normally (evenly if orders were similar, itemized if they weren't). The same logic applies to someone who ordered a cheaper dish for dietary reasons — don't let a well-intentioned "let's just split it evenly" erase a real cost difference they didn't choose.

A full worked example

Six people at dinner: four entrees at $22 each, one $35 steak, one $16 salad, plus a $28 bottle of wine split by the three people who drank it, and a shared $14 appetizer split by all six. Each entree-orderer pays their own $22; the steak and salad orders pay their own totals; the wine splits three ways at about $9.33 each; the appetizer splits six ways at about $2.33 each. Tax and tip are then added proportionally to each person's actual subtotal. It looks like more steps written out than it is in practice — a receipt scan handles the itemization in seconds, and the splitting logic runs automatically from there.

The tip: proportional or even, but agree which upfront

Two defensible approaches: tip proportionally based on each person's actual subtotal (fairest when orders varied a lot), or tip evenly per person (simpler, and fine when orders were similar). The actual failure mode isn't picking either one — it's different people silently assuming different methods and the total tip coming up short. Agree on which before the bill arrives, not while everyone's already reaching for their wallets.

One person paid the whole bill upfront

This is the most common real-world case — someone puts the whole check on one card for simplicity, then collects from everyone after. Log the full bill as one expense, itemize or split it using whichever method above fits the situation, and let everyone else's share show up as what they owe that one person — rather than trying to have five people all tap the same card reader in sequence. See our guide to receipt scanning for the fastest way to itemize that one receipt afterward.