The bill arrives, one card goes down, and then the table does arithmetic badly for ten minutes. There are only three sensible ways to split a restaurant bill, and each one has a situation it's right for.
Want the numbers done for you? The split bill calculator splits a single bill item by item, with GST, service charge and tip shared fairly.
1. Equal split: the default
Total divided by the number of people. Right when everyone ate and drank roughly the same, or when the difference is small enough that nobody cares. It takes five seconds and it's what most friend groups should do most of the time.
Rule of thumb: if the most expensive person's share and the cheapest person's share differ by less than the price of a coffee, split equally and move on.
2. Itemised: everyone pays for their own
Right when the differences are big: one person had a steak and three cocktails, another had soup and water. Also right for mixed groups where not everyone knows each other well, because nobody is subsidising a stranger.
The practical problem is shared items: starters for the table, the bottle of wine, the bread. Itemised splits usually turn into method 3.
3. Hybrid: shared items equally, personal items individually
This is the one that handles the real world. Shared starters, the table's wine and the tax and service charge are split among everyone who took part; each main course goes to the person who ate it.
In Ezysplit it's two or three expenses rather than one:
- "Dinner – shared": starters, shared drinks, paid by whoever's card it was, everyone included.
- "Dinner – mains": one bill per noticeably different main if you want to be precise, or lump the similar ones together and exclude the people who had something very different.
- "Dinner – drinks": the bar tab with the non-drinkers excluded.
The non-drinker problem
The person who didn't drink shouldn't pay for a quarter of the wine, and in most groups everyone agrees with that in principle. In practice it gets skipped because splitting the drinks separately feels fussy. The fix is to make it the norm: enter drinks as their own bill with the non-drinkers excluded, every time. It takes ten seconds and the non-drinker never has to raise it.
Tax and service charge
Split these in the same proportion as the food. If you're doing an equal split they're just part of the total. If you're itemising, whoever ordered 30% of the food pays 30% of the GST, service charge and tip. When orders are close, sharing the tax equally instead is only a few rupees out. When they're far apart, use the split bill calculator: tick who shared each item, and it shares the GST and tip by what each person ordered.
Tipping
Agree the tip as a group before the bill is paid, add it to the total, and it splits with everything else. If one person wants to tip more, they tip more from their own pocket and it stays off the shared bill.
Someone arrives late or leaves early
Late arrivals pay for what they ate plus a share of anything shared after they sat down. Early leavers usually hand over cash or say "put me down for X". If they gave the card-holder cash for their share, take that amount off the bill and leave them out of it: for a ₹3,000 bill where Asha handed over ₹800, enter ₹2,200 with Asha excluded.
When it's one bill at the end of a long evening
Don't do the maths at the table. One card pays, the payer snaps a photo of the receipt, and the split gets entered in the cab. Everyone sees the same numbers in the morning and settles by UPI. The card-holder is repaid the exact amount, and nobody had to be the person who said "actually I only had the salad".
Frequently asked questions
Is it fair to split a restaurant bill equally?
Yes, when everyone had roughly the same. A good rule: if the most expensive and the cheapest share differ by less than the price of a coffee, split equally. When orders are very different, split item by item.
How do you split the bill when someone didn't drink?
Put the drinks on their own bill and leave the non-drinkers out of it. Split the food as usual. Doing it every time makes it the norm, so nobody has to ask.
How do you split GST and tip on an itemised bill?
In proportion to what each person ordered: whoever ordered 30% of the food pays 30% of the GST and tip. The split bill calculator does this for you.
How do you split the bill when one person pays by card?
The card-holder pays the full bill, then everyone else repays their share by UPI. Enter the bill as paid by the card-holder, and anyone who didn't share an item is left out of it.
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