California diners tip less than most Americans, according to a recent report.
California’s overall tip rate was 17.3%, about 1.5 percentage points below the national average, making it the nation's lowest-tipping state, according to Toast’s Q1 2026 Restaurant Tipping Trends report.
Toast, a restaurant point of sale and management system, based its analysis “on aggregated card and digital tip transactions from restaurants” across its platform, which serves about 171 locations nationwide.
In its report, which did not include cash tips, Toast distinguished between two main tip categories: full-service restaurants and quick-service restaurants.
For Q1 2026, the company found that the average tip at full-service restaurants was 19.3%. Meanwhile, quick-service
restaurants saw a lower tip average of 15.8%. Across all restaurant types, the overall average tip was 18.8%.
“Tipping has stayed relatively stable over the past two years,” the company noted. “Full-service tips have hovered between 19.1% and 19.4%, while quick-service tips have held near 15.8–16.0%.”
Here’s a closer look at the report’s findings for California and nationwide.
What Toast found for California
California diners tipped an average of 17.7% at full-service restaurants and 14.8% at quick-service restaurants, both lower than the national averages, according to the report.
Toast used a different calculation for its overall tipping rate. Rather than averaging restaurant-level tip percentages, the company divided total tips by gross processing volume across all transactions.
Using that method, California's overall tip rate was 17.3%, below the national average of 18.8%.
Toast's report does not identify the reasons behind the state's lower tipping average. Industry observers note that California's lower reported tip rate may partly reflect the state's higher restaurant prices, its requirement that servers receive the full state minimum wage before tips, and the relatively greater use of service-included or mandatory service-charge models at some restaurants. Cash tips also couldn't be included in Toast's analysis.
Places where diners tip the least
Here are the five places in the US with the lowest overall tip rates, according to Toast's report.
- California: 17.3%
- District of Columbia: 17.5%
- Washington: 17.8%
- Nevada: 18.2%
- Florida: 18.3%
Places where diners tip the most
Here are the five states with the highest overall tip rates, according to Toast's report.
- Delaware: 22.1%
- West Virginia: 21.0%
- New Hampshire: 20.9%
- Ohio and Wyoming: 20.7%
- Kentucky: 20.6%
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California diners tip less than most Americans, report finds
