Ultimate Las Vegas Tipping Guide

Last update: January 14, 2026

• Cited by the Las Vegas Sun.
• “It’s better than most anything I’ve seen.” – Advantage Sports 

Many Vegas workers rely on tips because the minimum wage alone puts them below the poverty level.  Every dealer, from the low roller joints to the Bellagio, gets paid only minimum wage or barely more from the casino itself.  Service workers depend on your support for their livelihood.

Why we tip in the first place

Tipping is the norm because:

1. Workers make poverty wages otherwise.
2. Tipping usually prevents bad service.

The point of tipping is not to reward good service.  That’s just an urban legend.  We don’t tip because the service is good, we tip as long as the service isn’t bad.

You might counter that employers should just pay a living wage.  Yeah, and I want a pony.  Whether employers should pay more, the reality is that they don’t, and because they don’t, that’s why we tip.  That’s the custom in this country.  If you don’t like it, vacation in Europe or Asia instead.

The normal minimum wage in the U.S. has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009, but tipped employees can be paid as little as $2.13.  Yes, $2.13.  Now, some states have higher minimum wages for tipped and/or non-tipped employees, and Nevada is one of them.  In Nevada the minimum is $12/hour, tipped or not. (2025)  That would put such workers below the poverty line if they never got any tips.

Also, by having the customer shoulder part of the burden for the worker's wage, a business can make sure customers get better service.  If a business paid 100% of the worker's wage and there was no tipping, workers would have little incentive to treat customers well.

By the way, tipped workers do report their tips to the IRS.  The IRS isn't clueless, and they expect tipped workers to report a certain minimum of tips.  So in fact, those workers pay taxes on those tips whether they actually receive them or not.

How this tipping guide is different

Wherever possible, I base tipping suggestions on the amount needed for a worker to make a Living Wage.  All the other guides just copy each other, using arbitrary amounts.

The Living Wage in Vegas for each parent in a family with one child is $24/hr. (MIT 2025), and that’s the target I use in my calculations in this article.

Hotel staff

$20 to get a free room upgrade

This is less a tip than an outright bribe, but anyway, you can usually get a free room upgrade by tipping $20 to the front desk.  Not sometimes, usually.  Put the $20 between your ID and your credit card, then casually ask if there are any complimentary upgrades available.  Most front desk staff will give the $20 back if they can't upgrade you.  Check out FrontDeskTip.com for more.

How much to tip housekeeping staff (maids)

Tip $6 per room, per day.  Leave it on the night stand.

The math:  Maids clean about 16 rooms per day. (Woman's Day)  Therefore, every dollar tipped means an extra $2/hour.  Minimum wage is $12/hr., and the Living Wage is $24/hr, so they need $12/hr. from tips.

If you skip service for one or more days, I suggest tipping for that day anyway at the end of your stay, because it will probably take them longer to clean your room.

These guidelines apply to tipping at all hotels, not just Vegas hotels.

Interestingly, scientific research shows that Las Vegas maids have elevated blood pressure specifically because of the stress of working hard for little pay. (American Journal of Industrial Medicine)  Consider that when deciding how much to tip.

Casino workers

How much to tip Cocktail Waitresses

• Minimum:  $1 every other drink
• Middle:  $2 every 3 drinks
• Generous:  $1 per drink
  

Casinos provide free drinks (alcoholic and otherwise) while you're playing any game.  A waitress comes around every once in a while to take your order.

Here's how much the waitress makes if everyone tips these amounts:

Annual Cocktail Waitress Earnings
If everyone tips this much...	...she'll make about this much
$2 per drink	$120,000
$1 per drink	$72,000
$2 every 3 drinks	$56,000
$1 every other drink	$48,000
Assumptions: (1) 2000 work hours/yr.  (2) Minimum wage of $12/hr. pd. by casino.  (3) 20% tip-out to bartender.  (4) 60,000 drinks served/year (30/hr.), based on my direct observation of waitresses' productivity in a Vegas casino.

Keep these downsides of the job in mind when you decide how much you think they should make:

1. Have to work in a smoky environment, every day.  It's amazing that OSHA allows it.
2. Have to walk in uncomfortable heels for their whole shift.
3. Have to often deal with rude comments and groping.

So, while the job doesn’t require a college degree or a lot of training, it’s not a walk in the park.  (Except at Park MGM.  Ha ha!)

Cocktail waitress etiquette

(The following comes from a friend of mine who’s a cocktail waitress.)

Place the tip on the serving tray. You can tip with casino chips if you like.

Waitresses record who ordered what based on where they're sitting in the casino, so if you move don’t expect the waitress to remember you.  If you moved, then when she gets to you tell her that you moved and what you ordered.  Waitresses work different sections of the casino so if you move out of your waitress’ section don't expect (or ask) her to come find you to deliver your drink.  Cocktail waitresses can't bring you food of any kind, not even peanuts, so don't even ask.  The casino is well stocked, so there's no need to ask whether they have your particular drink—just order what you want since they probably have it, and if they don’t the waitress will tell you.

Just because a cocktail waitress might be dressed in a sexy outfit doesn't mean it’s okay for you to touch her, or to say naughty things.  Don’t take the drink off the tray yourself, because that can upset the balance of the tray and cause the waitress to drop it.  Don’t ask a cocktail waitress which slot machines are the loosest—all slots in a casino generally pay out about a similar amount, the odds are against you in every single one of them, and the cocktail servers aren’t privy to the slot settings.  If a waitress actually tells you which machine she thinks is good then she's playing your naiveté.  (More on slot machines.)

How much to tip dealers

• MINIMUM:  $4/hr
• MIDDLE:  $6/hr
• GENEROUS: $8/hr
  

Yes, you should tip per-hour and not base your tips on how much you’re betting.  The goal, as always, is to ensure that the dealer makes a Living Wage.

Here’s an estimate of how much dealers make at various tip levels.  This assumes an average of 3 players at the table, and that all players tip the same amount.

How much to tip the dealer
If you think the dealer should make this much...	...then tip this much
$84,000/yr • $7k/mo	$10/hr.
$72,000/yr • $6k/mo	$8/hr.
$60,000/yr • $5k/mo	$6/hr.
$48,000/yr • $4k/mo	$4/hr.
Includes $12/hr. minimum wage.

Wondering how much dealers actually earn?  See my separate article:  How much do dealers make?

Tip whether you win or lose.  It's not the dealer's fault if you lose.  The odds are against you, you're supposed to lose.

While I'm a big advocate of tipping, I'm frequently annoyed by dealers who have a sense of entitlement, and expect me to tip big just because I won big.  If you're such a dealer you can feel free to write in and make your case and I'll likely print it, but the first thing I'll want to know from you is what do you think fair annual earnings for a dealer is?  (The only dealer ever to write in said he thought he should be getting $10,000/month!  I queried another dealer in 2019 who gave a range, the top of which was $9833/mo.  That's the freaking 92nd percentile for all jobs in 2019, higher than the median for even lawyers, aerospace engineers, nurse practitioners, college professors, and the list goes on and on.  They rather proved my point about dealers’ sense of entitlement.)

I'm a bit of a communist when I tip.  If I see that a dealer is making $30/hr. from other people overtipping, I might not tip at all, even if it's at the Bellagio and I'm betting black.  But at a low-end casino like the Gold Coast where dealers make nearly no tips, I might tip twice what I normally do even if I'm betting red.  A typical dealer at the Gold Coast needs my $10/hr. more than a typical dealer at the Bellagio needs my $6/hr.

How to tip dealers

Tip the dealer with chips, not cash.  You can make your hourly tip all at once or spread it out throughout the hour.  Either way, I suggest tipping right when you sit down, because then the dealer will be friendlier.

You can give the chip by pushing it towards the dealer, or you can make a bet for her/him, which is more common.  The normal way to bet for the dealer is to place the dealer's bet beside your own bet.  If you win then the dealer gets both the chip you bet for her as well as the payout chip.  But there's a much better way to tip that I'm going to let you know about.

Instead of placing the tip chip next to your bet, put it on top of your bet.  Be sure to tell the dealer that the bet is for her so she knows you tried to tip even if you lose.  Then if you win, give the dealer only the winning chip, and keep the original tip chip on top of your next bet.  If you get a streak going then you might be able to tip the dealer five times off a single effort!  I did this once at the El Cortez with a $5 chip, winning ten hands in a row, and netting the dealer $50 for the streak.  It cost me only $5, and in a few minutes she made more than twice what El Cortez dealers typically make in tips in a whole day.

Tip pooling

Almost every casino requires dealers to pool their tips.  As such, it's impossible for you to really reward a good dealer or punish a bad dealer.  If you don't tip a bad dealer, then all of the dealers make less money.  While this isn't fair to the other dealers, I still suggest you decline to tip bad dealers.  That's because if we can't apply an incentive for dealers to give better service, then at least the other dealers can, through peer pressure.  Also, if you tip a dealer no matter how bad the service is, that dealer will see little reason to give good service, since the tips roll in either way.

Casinos require dealers to pool tips for three reasons:

1. It makes the bookkeeping easy.  Casinos just collect all the tip money themselves, count it, take the taxes out of it for the IRS, and then distribute the money to the dealers.  Otherwise they might have to collect a separate tip report from each individual dealer.
2. It equalizes the rewards.  Dealers on the higher limit tables get more tips than those at the lower limit tables, so tip pooling ensures that all the dealers get the same amount of money.  Of course, an obvious counter argument is that dealers on the higher limit tables have earned those positions by virtue of seniority or excellent service, and thus have earned the higher tips they make.
3. It reduces the possibility of collusion with the players.  If a dealer gets to keep their own tips then they're likely to cheat for a player who's tipping really well.  This is unlikely in modern times with video surveillance and stiff legal penalties, but it's still a risk, and casinos don't like extra risk.

Of course, players and even many dealers would prefer that dealers keep their own tips—players because they want the ability to reward dealers directly who give good service and dealers (at least the good dealers) because they reap the rewards of the good service they give.  Wishing aside, this situation isn't likely to change any time soon.

Slot Machine hand pays and Table Game jackpots

While I prefer to base my tipping advice on getting workers to a living wage, I can’t do that with slot attendants because I don’t have data on how many handpays they do per shift.  (Next time I have a few spare days, I’ll observe and record, like I did with cocktail waitresses.)  Also, etiquette experts haven’t weighed in on slots.  So here’s where my suggestions come from.

• I surveyed gamlers on a forum about how much to tip on handpays.
• I surveyed gamblers separately about $1M wins.  I took the median figure, and excluded people who said to not tip at all.
• A slot worker says that $20 on a $1200 is standard.  (Before the W-2G threshold was upped from $12000 to $2000 in 2026, I recommended $20 on a $1200 handpay.) (Reddit 2022) 
• Slots influencer Brian Christopher says 1%, which matches my recommendations for jackpots up to $20,000. (Flip the Switch)   It’s unclear whether Christopher sticks with 1% for even larger jackpots.

For the record, Vital Vegas thinks I’m lowballing, but I’ve asked him what he thinks is appropriate and he hasn’t replied.

Food

15-20% for sit-down service is standard

Much as I dislike tipping as a percentage rather than a flat amount, restaurant tipping is so firmly established as a percentage, there’s no way around it.

For decades the standard was 15%, but in recent years the etiquette experts have nudged that up to “15 to 20%”.

The Las Vegas Sun opined that in Vegas 18-20% is standard and 15% is only for mediocre service.  They cite no sources and I don’t agree.  The more respected tipping experts, such as the Emily Post Institute, say 15-20% is standard and make no mention of mediocre service.

Food delivery

Answer:  $7 per order, regardless of size (unless it’s so large that it takes the driver more than one trip from their vehicle to deliver, in which case, tip more).

Tipping should always be per-order, not a percentage of the total.  Percentages are ridiculous.

Most other tipping guides suggest a percentage, and if they do suggest a flat amount per order, it’s lower than what I suggest here, usually like $3-5.  That’s because they’re pulling the numbers out of their a$$ and haven’t bothered to do any calculations.  My advice is based on a Living Wage goal.

Our target is $24/hr living wage as per above, plus my calculation of $6/hr for vehicle costs, for $30/hr total needed.  Minimum wage in Vegas is $12/hr; Uber Eats doesn't pay hourly but their effective compensation is around the same ballpark.  So a driver needs $18/hr in tips to make a living wage.  We’ll assume 2.5 orders per hour.  That means you should tip a wage worker $18 ÷ 2.5 = about $7 per order.

Tipping on the pre-tax amount for meals is fine

You don’t have to tip on the tax.  Tip on the pre-tax amount.  (Washington Post, Emily Post Institute)

And here's a handy way to calculate a standard tip: Sales tax in Las Vegas is 7.75%, so if you double the tax you'll be tipping 15.5%.  If you want to leave 20%, the shortcut is to figure 10%, then double it.

How much to tip at a buffet

All the etiquette guides say 10% at a buffet is standard.  Frankly, that seems ridiculously high.  A buffet server who’s only handling drinks and clearing plates can probably serve 20 customers an hour.  And if each tipped $1, that would be $20/hr. on top of a minimum wage.  So $1-2 per person seems reasonable.  If a buffet server disagrees, they're welcome to write in to let me know what I'm missing.  Caesars agrees with me that $1 is sufficient.

Transportation

How much to tip valet

$2-5, on pickup.   (Emily Post 2025, Forbes 2018)