A tip in Paris is not a required part of the bill, because since a 1987 order any service charge must be built into the displayed price. And the widely quoted 15% is not a legal rate: no official text found for this guide fixes it, and the consumer authority requires only that the percentage be shown.
This guide explains what "service compris" means on a bill, where the 15% figure comes from, how tipping works in restaurants, cafés, taxis and hotels, and what changes when you pay by card. It relies on the DGCCRF, Service Public, the National Assembly and the Paris tourist office.
What service compris means
"Service compris" means the service charge is already in the price you see. The DGCCRF's restaurant guidance says that "dans les établissements où est perçu un service, le prix affiché s'entend taxes et services compris": where a service charge is collected, the displayed price includes taxes and service, and the menu must carry the words "Prix service compris".
The rule comes from a ministerial order, not a law or a decree. The DGCCRF cites the "arrêté du 27 mars 1987 relatif à l'affichage des prix dans les établissements servant des repas", and a 2019 government answer in the National Assembly says that since this order "a été instaurée la notion de « service compris »": the idea of service included was introduced.
The same 2019 answer describes what the order requires on paper: documents given to customers "doivent comporter l'indication du taux pratiqué pour la rémunération du service", the rate charged for service, and "le client peut compléter avec un pourboire s'il a apprécié le service", the customer can add a tip if they liked the service.
The DGCCRF's separate page on tips defines the two terms. "Le service est un pourcentage perçu sur l'addition ou le prix", a percentage taken on the bill or the price, which "doit être inclus obligatoirement dans le montant de la note". A tip, by contrast, "est une somme d'argent remise par le client à un travailleur salarié", money the customer gives to an employee.
SignalConso, the DGCCRF's consumer-reporting platform, repeats the rule for diners in its April 2025 guide: "Dans les établissements avec service, les prix affichés incluent les taxes et le service." Service should therefore not appear as an extra charge on top of the menu prices.
The bill itself has rules too. SignalConso says a detailed bill must be handed to you at the end of the meal, showing the date, the establishment's name and address, and each item supplied with its price including tax. The DGCCRF lists an order of 8 June 1967 as the legal basis for that bill.
Price display starts before you sit down. The DGCCRF says prices must be displayed both inside and outside the restaurant, and SignalConso adds that the menus inside must be identical to those shown outside, and that the prices of five wines, or five commonly served drinks if the restaurant serves no wine, must be displayed.
The table decodes the terms you will meet on menus, bills and taxi windows. Amounts are the ones official sources state.
| Name | Local name | What it is | Price range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service included | service compris | The service charge, built into every displayed price | Rate shown on the menu; none fixed by law |
| Tip | pourboire | A voluntary sum you give to staff | Optional; tourist office suggests 5 to 10% |
| The bill | l'addition / la note | The itemised bill you must be given at the end of a meal | No fee stated |
| Tap water carafe | carafe d'eau | Tap water served with a meal | Free |
| Cover charge | couvert | A per-person charge, e.g. for a child who does not eat | Allowed only if shown on the menu |
| Tax-inclusive price | prix TTC | Price with all taxes included | No fee stated |
| Taxi flat fare | forfait aéroport | Fixed price between Paris and CDG or Orly | €36 to €65 |
| Taxi booking supplement | supplément réservation | Extra charged when you book a Paris taxi | €4 immediate, €7 in advance |
Where the 15% figure comes from
The 15% figure is a description, not a legal rate. The Paris tourist office's page on prices and tipping says "all prices shown include tax and service" and that the service "is around 15% of the total price". "Around" is the word to notice.
The official texts are more precise about the format than the number. The DGCCRF's tips page says menus and price lists must carry "prix service compris" followed by "le pourcentage appliqué", the percentage applied, but it names no percentage. The 2019 government answer also speaks only of "le taux pratiqué", the rate used.
The number has a history in tax law too. A 2001 written question in the National Assembly referred to "le service 15 %" when asking about a European Court of Justice ruling. The government's answer, published on 27 August 2001, explained that the court had ruled on 29 March 2001 that France's tax tolerance exempting the "service obligatoire" from VAT breached EU law.
The answer noted that many restaurants and hairdressers could not use the tolerance anyway, either because they had no employees or because their staff were not paid from the service. It said the tolerance was abolished by an instruction of 15 June 2001, that mandatory service charges would be subject to VAT from 1 October 2001, and that the price effect would be "de l'ordre de 2 %", around 2%. It added that "les vrais pourboires", real tips left voluntarily for staff, were not affected.
For a visitor, the practical point is simple. The service percentage is a component of the menu price, not an extra line on your bill. If you want to know the rate a particular restaurant applies, the regulations say it should be printed next to "prix service compris".
Tipping in restaurants and cafés
A tip in a Paris restaurant or café is your choice. The DGCCRF's tips page is direct: "Aucune profession ne peut l'exiger", no profession can demand it, and a tip "est toujours facultatif et laissé à l'appréciation du client", always optional and at the customer's discretion.
The Paris tourist office gives a benchmark for when you do want to tip. Its guidance says that "if the service has been particularly good, you may wish to leave a tip in order to show your appreciation. As a general rule, the amount is 5 to 10% of the total bill."
How often people actually tip is harder to pin down. The government's 2019 answer cited a March 2016 study by the trade publication L'Hôtellerie Restauration and CHD Experts, which found that on average 40% of customers leave a tip, averaging €5. That is a third-party survey quoted by the ministry, not an official statistic.
Cafés have their own pricing quirks. The tourist office notes that drink prices vary depending on whether you stand at the bar, where they are lowest, or sit at a table inside or on the terrace, and that a supplement may be added after a certain time in the evening. For more on this, see how a French café works.
The DGCCRF requires cafés and bars to display the most common drinks, with the volume served and their price "toutes taxes et service compris", and to show prices both at the counter and in the seating area. So the price for your spot should already include service.
Tap water is covered by the rules too. The DGCCRF says that with a meal "vous pouvez vous contenter d'une carafe d'eau ; celle-ci est gratuite", you can make do with a free carafe of water, and SignalConso adds that you can refuse mineral water or wine. Since the 2020 anti-waste law, cafés and bars must also show on their menu or a sign that you can ask for free drinking water, according to the DGCCRF.
Some other diner rights on SignalConso's list are worth knowing. A cover charge can be billed for each child, even one who does not eat, but only if it is clearly shown on the menu; you are not obliged to use the cloakroom; and you can ask to take away unfinished food or drink.
Tipping when you pay by card
Card payment has put pressure on tipping, according to the government itself. Its 2019 answer said that "le paiement par carte bancaire et l'apparition du sans-contact menacent toutefois cette pratique", that card and contactless payment threaten the practice, and that the hospitality employers' union UMIH had noted a fall in the average amounts customers leave.
That answer was a response to a deputy's proposal to let customers round up a card bill for staff. The government called the idea "intéressante si elle préserve le libre choix du consommateur", interesting if it preserved the consumer's free choice over whether to tip and how much, but said it needed further technical study on how such sums could reach staff.
The tax treatment of tips has since changed. Service Public Entreprendre, the government's business information site, says that since 2022 tips have been exempt from social contributions and income tax, and that the finance law for 2026 extends the exemption until 2028.
The exemption has conditions. It covers tips "non imposés aux clients et versés volontairement aux salariés", not imposed on customers and given voluntarily to employees who deal with customers and earn less than 1.6 times the minimum wage (€2,916.85 gross a month in 2026), and tips given to the employer and passed on to that staff. Restaurants, hotels and hairdressing are named as the sectors concerned.
No official source read for this guide says whether a particular card terminal offers a tip option or how a card tip is shared out. The government's 2019 answer itself flagged the open question of how sums paid on top of the bill could be returned to floor staff and to "un serveur en particulier", a particular server.
The exemption list is long: Service Public Entreprendre names CSG and CRDS, social-insurance and family-allowance contributions, apprenticeship tax and income tax for the employee, among others. Self-employed workers are not covered, so the exemption concerns employees, not owners serving their own customers.
For wider card and cash questions, see our guide to paying by card and cash.
Taxis, hotels and other services
Paris taxis have an explicit official statement on tipping. Service Public's taxi page, checked on 13 August 2026, says "Le pourboire laissé par le client est strictement facultatif", a tip is strictly optional.
The same page sets out what you do have to pay and how. You can pay in cash or by card "quel que soit le montant", whatever the amount; the driver may refuse only cheques, and only if that is posted on the outside window. Every taxi must carry a working card terminal and a printer linked to the meter.
Paris taxi fares are capped and, for airport runs, fixed. The flat fares for 2026 are €56 between Charles-de-Gaulle and the Right Bank, €65 between Charles-de-Gaulle and the Left Bank, €45 between Orly and the Right Bank, and €36 between Orly and the Left Bank, and Service Public says no extra charge or surcharge can be added to them.
Other taxi rules help you check a fare before thinking about a tip. Service Public says 2026 fares were set by an order of 24 December 2025, with a maximum rise of 1.38% for a standard journey, and that a green letter L on the meter shows it has been updated for the year.
Outside the flat fares, the meter applies capped rates: at most €4.48 for pick-up, €1.30 per kilometre and €42.15 per hour of waiting. The per-kilometre rate can be raised for night journeys, within a limit of 50%, but no supplement or surcharge may be charged for a pick-up at a station, port or airport, or for a passenger's wheelchair. The minimum fare is €8; Paris booking supplements are €4 for an immediate booking and €7 for an advance booking; a supplement of €5.50 applies per passenger from the fifth; and there is no luggage supplement for Paris taxis. A receipt is mandatory from €25, and optional below that unless you ask. Our guide to getting from CDG compares the taxi with other options.
Hotels are a gap in the official record. The DGCCRF's hotel page, dated April 2026, says your bill must show "les prix, taxes et service compris" of the services provided, and that hotels must display the price of a night in a double room at reception and outside, but it says nothing about tipping staff.
The DGCCRF's tips page opens with the question "Faut-il laisser quelques pièces au restaurant, chez le coiffeur, dans un taxi?", and its answer applies to all of them: tipping is optional. Its examples of tipped jobs are a café waiter, a cinema usher and a petrol-pump attendant.
Deciding what to leave
The decision comes down to two questions: was service already included, and was it particularly good? Where the menu says "prix service compris", the first answer is yes, so the second is the only real choice. The table sets out what the official sources say for each situation.
| Situation | What the rule says | A reasonable choice |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant meal, ordinary service | Prices include service (1987 order) | Nothing extra is expected |
| Restaurant meal, service particularly good | Tip optional | 5 to 10% of the bill, per the tourist office |
| Coffee at the bar | Service included in the displayed bar price | Nothing extra is expected |
| Taxi, airport flat fare | No additions to the fare; tip strictly optional | Pay the flat fare; tip only if you choose |
| Hotel stay | Bill must be service included | No official guidance on tipping staff |
| Paying by card | Tip still optional; card sharing not documented | Choose cash or card knowing this gap |
A short routine keeps you from overpaying or under-tipping.
If something goes wrong with the meal itself, a tip is not your only lever. SignalConso says you can ask for a dish to be replaced if it is not right in freshness or temperature, and for a corked wine to be replaced; that you can dine alone even when the restaurant is full; and that you can seek compensation if, for example, service stains your clothes. Problems can be reported on SignalConso.
Two myths are worth dropping. The first is that the service percentage is added on top of the menu price; the 1987 order means it is inside the price. The second is that 15% is a legal rate; the DGCCRF requires a percentage to be shown, not a particular one.
What this guide does not cover
We could not open the text of the order of 27 March 1987 or the Labour Code articles on tips (L3244-1 and L3244-2) on Légifrance, which refused automated access, so this guide relies on the DGCCRF's and the government's descriptions of them. The URSSAF page on the tip exemption also refused access, so the exemption details come from Service Public Entreprendre only.
No official source we found gives tipping guidance for hotel staff, tour guides or hairdressers beyond the general statement that tips are optional, and none says how card-terminal tips are distributed. The 40% and €5 tipping figures are from a 2016 trade survey quoted by the government, not from an official statistic.
The DGCCRF's restaurant and café pages were read through a summarising tool because the site blocked direct download, so this guide quotes only the short passages we could confirm. It also does not cover restaurant price levels, which no official source publishes.