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TippingUSA

Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 2026

TippingUSA is designed to be privacy-respecting by default. The calculator runs entirely in your browser - your bill amounts, tip choices, and calculations never leave your device.

What we store locally (in your browser)

We use your browser's localStorage to remember your preferences between visits. This data never leaves your device:

  • tippingusa:theme - your light/dark/system theme choice.
  • tippingusa:settings - your last category, tax mode, split count, and tip.
  • tippingusa:currency - your chosen display currency.

You can clear all of this at any time via your browser's "clear site data" feature.

Exchange rates

Exchange rates are fetched once at build time on our server and baked into the site. Your browser never contacts the currency API - the rates ship inside the page itself. The site is rebuilt daily, so rates are typically within 24 hours of current, with only a single API call made per day regardless of how many people visit. Your browser never contacts the currency API - no per-visitor requests are made to the rate provider, and it has no visibility into your visits.

Advertising

Advertising is not currently enabled on this site. If Google AdSense is activated in the future, this policy will be updated and a cookie consent banner will be shown to visitors in regions that require it.

Analytics

We collect anonymous interaction data to understand how the app is used and to compile aggregated trends (such as average tipping behavior by region or service category).

What we collect per interaction: the pages you visit (route path only, no query parameters), the service category you select, the tip-quality button you choose (Poor/OK/Good/Great), the bill amount and tip percentage you enter, whether you use pre-tax or post-tax mode, the state/city you select for the sales-tax lookup, the number of people you split the bill with, whether you enable the round-up option, and whether you expand the tipping-tips guide. We also capture your approximate platform (Windows/macOS/Linux/iOS/Android - derived from your browser's device type) and the page that referred you here.

What we do NOT collect: your name, email, IP address, exact location, raw browser identifier, or any information that directly identifies you. We do not use cookies for analytics - events are sent via a one-shot background request that does not identify you across visits.

  • The data is never shared or sold. It is stored on infrastructure we control and used only to improve the site and to produce aggregated, de-identified trend reports. Individual entries are never published or shared.
  • We do not currently gate analytics on the browser's "Do Not Track" (DNT) signal, because DNT is inconsistently implemented across browsers and would silently under-count usage. Our privacy posture is preserved by what we do not collect (no personal information, no IP address, no cross-visit tracking) rather than by gating on DNT.

This data helps us see which services are most in demand, where users want more guidance, and how tipping norms vary across the country.

Children's privacy

This service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Contact form

If you submit the contact form, the information you provide is sent to our mailbox (contact_us@tippingusa.net) and read by a person. This is separate from the anonymous analytics described above - the contact form collects identifying information by design, because its purpose is for you to reach us.

What the contact form collects:

  • Your name and email - so we can reply.
  • Your message - the content of your inquiry, correction, or feedback.
  • Your IP address - captured for rate-limiting (to prevent automated abuse of the form) and included in the submission email for abuse triage. It is not used for tracking, profiling, or shared with third parties.

Spam protection via Cloudflare Turnstile. The contact form uses Cloudflare Turnstile to distinguish humans from bots. When you submit the form, Cloudflare receives your IP address, browser/TLS fingerprint, and User-Agent for the sole purpose of bot detection. See Cloudflare’s Turnstile privacy policy. Turnstile may set strictly-necessary cookies on your browser for this purpose.

Contact submissions are stored in our mailbox and are never shared or sold. We retain them only as long as needed to respond and handle follow-ups.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data can be sent via the contact form.