Tipping in Austria

As in France, the service charge on the bill is essentially the tip. Rounding up to the nearest euro is .customary. If you had exceptional service you can leave more.

Thank you, it’s what I thought but wanted to verify

In Austria, by law, prices given in a restaurant's menu must include everything, i.e. are final. There is no service charge added.

If you want to act like a local then you round up the bill by adding 5-10%. Just rounding up to the next Euro is a bit chintzy.

German who lived and worked in Vienna for a while here: something in the 5-10 % range is the norm. More than 10 % is uncommon, significantly less than 5 % can be, depending on the type of restaurant, seen as being a bit cheap. But, in general, tipps are not as much of a big deal.

Note: you do not leave tipps on the table, but rather when the server comes to tell you the price you are to pay, you add the tipp and say that price back to them when you hand them the money or hold out your payment card. So, a waiter will come over and give you a bill/say, "Your bill was 22,30", and you say to them "24 Euro", and they will ring up that amount on the mobile terminal thing, and then you tap your card. Leaving money on the table is not done anywhere in the German-speaking world that I know of.

Thank you all for your replies. I’m much more comfortable now about how and how much to tip!

My sister -in-law has her primary residence in Vienna. She taught me that it's 5-10%; she always adds 10%.

It's not the rounding up as we might do in France if we pay in cash.

Good distinction, thank you!

I'll use the example above: if the bill amounts to 22.70 Euro, I would suggest not rounding off to 23 Euro but to 24 Euro, unless the server was plainly and clearly unpleasant, had that happen only once. It was at this particular restaurant in Berlin. No doubt about it. I didn't bother rounding off at all, he was obviously ticked off.

When paying by card, we found that the credit card receipts don't have a place to add a tip like we usually see in the US so we were leaving cash tips. However, we got caught once without the right cash - the ATMS give out huge denominations - to leave what we wanted to leave. We found success with asking our server to add 10% or whatever we wanted to our bill as they put the amount into the CC machine.

Tigerfan, what you did in asking the server to add the percent is the normal way to do this in the German-speaking world. Leaving a cash tip is not really the done thing by local people.

When the server comes to you with the bill, you do the math in your head, and ask them to ring you up for the total amount with tip. So, if the bill for two coffees is 9,10 then you would say "make it 10 Euro please", and that is what they type into the terminal before they hand it to you.

Yes, we quickly figured that out. We just got caught off guard at first by the absence of a line to add the tip ourselves as is common in the US.