Server Paycheck & Tip Calculators for Tipped Workers

Key numbers at a glance

The tip credit, in one paragraph

Federal law lets employers pay tipped staff as little as $2.13/hour in cash — but only if tips bring them up to the full minimum wage ($7.25 federal). If a slow night leaves you short, the employer must top you up. Many states set higher cash wages or reject the tip credit entirely (check your state's rules on the DOL table). That's the whole game — and what our calculator checks automatically.

How to use TippedPay

Start with the question that brought you here. Wondering what Friday's check will actually deposit? The server paycheck calculator turns your hours, cash wage and kept tips into a real weekly number — and tells you whether your employer owes a top-up under the tip credit rules.

Picking up a double or a sixth shift? Run it through the overtime calculator first. Tipped overtime is the most miscomputed wage in the industry — it's calculated on the full minimum wage, not your $2.13 cash rate — and the difference on an eight-hour shift is real money your employer may not know they owe.

Closing out the night? The tip pool splitter does the points math in seconds — servers, bussers, runners, bar — and posts fair numbers without a calculator app and an argument.

Moving states or comparing jobs? The state-by-state table shows where $2.13 is still legal and where the full minimum must hit your check before tips count. Same shift, same skills — sometimes $14 an hour apart, purely by geography. All tools run in your browser; your numbers never leave your phone.

The three numbers every server should know

Everything on this site orbits three numbers. Your cash wage — the guaranteed hourly amount on your check before tips, which ranges from $2.13 to the full state minimum depending on where you pour. Your effective hourly — cash wage plus tips divided by hours, which is the only honest way to compare this job against any other job. Your weekly floor — full minimum wage × hours, the amount the law guarantees you even in a dead week, top-up included. If you know those three, no paycheck mystery can survive ten minutes with the paycheck calculator.

A fourth number is worth tracking for anyone who stays in the industry a while: annual gross — tips plus wages, reported accurately. It's what lenders see when you apply for an apartment lease or a car loan, and what Social Security will calculate your retirement on. Tipped income that exists only in your memory doesn't exist to anyone who could have paid you based on it.

Tipped pay terms, defined

Tip credit. The amount of your tips an employer can count toward minimum wage. Federally it's capped at $5.12 — the $7.25 minimum minus the $2.13 cash wage. States set their own caps, and several allow none at all.

Cash wage. The guaranteed hourly amount on your check before tips. It runs from $2.13 in states that follow the federal floor to the full state minimum in places like California and Washington. It's the floor, not the job.

Top-up (make-up pay). When a slow workweek leaves tips short of the full minimum, the employer must pay the difference on your check. It's a legal requirement, owed automatically — not a favor you have to ask for.

Tip pool. A shared pot redistributed among staff by points, hours or percentage. Federal rules limit pools to employees who customarily receive tips; kitchen staff can be included only when the employer pays the full minimum and takes no tip credit.

Tip-out. Your share of tips passed to bussers, runners and the bar — commonly 3–10 percent of sales or 10–30 percent of your tips. It comes out of your tips, never out of your cash wage.

Regular rate. The base hourly rate overtime is computed on. Under a tip credit that's the full minimum wage: federally, overtime cash pay works out to $5.76 an hour ($10.88 minus the $5.12 credit), not 1.5 times $2.13.

Workweek. A fixed 168-hour period your employer defines. Top-up and overtime are measured per workweek, not per shift — a monster Saturday does not erase Tuesday's shortfall.

Dual jobs and side work. The long-running "80/20" debate over whether a tip credit applies while you do non-tipped work — rolling silverware, prep, cleaning — beyond an incidental amount. Enforcement guidance has shifted repeatedly over the past decade and varies by state; extended stretches of purely non-tipped work generally can't carry the credit.

Mandatory vs voluntary service charges. An automatic 18 percent for large parties is a service charge, and under federal law it belongs to the house unless the menu says otherwise. A tip the guest chooses belongs to the staff. The receipt language decides who owns that line.

Charge-backs on card fees. When tips arrive by card, some employers deduct the processor's 2–3 percent fee before paying them out. Federal rules generally allow it; a handful of states don't. It's small per shift and real per year.

How the numbers fit together

Start with geography, because it sets everything else. The tipped minimum wage by state table gives you your cash wage floor — $2.13 in the states that follow the federal standard, the full minimum in others, fixed cash wages everywhere in between. Two servers working identical shifts can sit $10 an hour apart in guaranteed pay purely because of a state line.

Then run your week. The server paycheck calculator lines up your cash wage, reported tips and tip-outs, and checks the total against your weekly minimum — if tips didn't cover the gap, it shows the top-up your employer owes. Cross 40 hours and the overtime calculator takes over: tipped overtime rides on the full minimum wage, not your cash rate, which is why a double can quietly be worth more than the schedule says.

Close out the night as a team with the tip pool splitter — points or hours across servers, bussers, runners and the bar, done in thirty seconds instead of a closing argument. When the whole week pays less than it should have, you'll already have the numbers to raise it.

Finally, drill into your own state, because the averages hide the stakes. Our California tipped minimum wage breakdown covers the full-minimum-before-tips rule and the higher local and fast-food rates; the Texas tipped minimum wage breakdown explains how the $2.13 cash wage, top-up and overtime math work in the state where most tipped workers still live under the federal floor. Same job, two very different paychecks — know which one is yours before you take the schedule.

Trusted resources

Three primary sources back every number on this site. The Department of Labor's tipped minimum wage table by state is the official list of cash wages and tip credit caps. The DOL Wage and Hour Division publishes the fact sheets, field guidance and the complaint process for when a check comes up short. And the minimum wage tracker from the Economic Policy Institute follows every pending state increase, so you can see a raise coming before your manager mentions it.