Holiday Tipping Guide 2026: Who to Tip, How Much, and Who You Legally Can't

For most of the year, tipping is a transaction — you get a service, you add a percentage, you move on. The holidays work differently. Holiday tipping is closer to an annual thank-you: it goes to the people who have shown up all year, often without you noticing, and it usually goes to people you have never tipped before. Your doorman. The person who cleans your house every other Thursday. The woman who has cut your hair for six years.

That shift is exactly why it causes so much anxiety. There is no percentage to fall back on, the amounts are larger than a restaurant tip, and nobody tells you the rules. Worse, some of the most commonly repeated advice is wrong — there is one group of workers who cannot legally accept a cash tip from you in any amount, and they show up on almost every holiday tipping list anyway.

The 2026 calendar

Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, 26 November this year, and Christmas on a Friday. That leaves a short run between the two, so it is worth writing your list and setting your budget in the week after Thanksgiving, then handing envelopes over in the first half of December — before the people on your list start taking time off.

Who to tip and how much: the short version

If you want the whole thing in one table, here it is. The national figures follow the Emily Post Institute's holiday tipping guide; the dense-market figures for building staff come from our building staff guide, which explains why New York-style buildings run so much higher. Treat every number as a starting point, not a bill. What follows the table explains where the ranges come from and when to ignore them.

Why every guide gives you a different number

If you have read more than one holiday tipping article you have noticed the figures do not agree. One says $25 for a doorman, another says $200. Neither is wrong, because the number depends on things a national guide cannot know: how many people work in your building, how long you have used someone, what a service costs where you live, and what your neighbours do. A $100 tip is generous in one city and slightly awkward in another.

There is a more useful way to think about it than copying a number. Holiday tipping tends to follow one of two logics. For people you pay directly and regularly — a housekeeper, a nanny, a dog walker — the tip is usually expressed as a share of what you already pay them: a week's worth, give or take. For people you do not pay directly — building staff, delivery workers — it is a flat amount that reflects how much you rely on them. Once you know which category someone falls into, the number gets much easier.

Building staff: the one that gets expensive

If you live in a building with a doorman, this is likely your largest holiday tipping expense, and the reason is arithmetic rather than generosity. A building with four doormen, two porters and a superintendent is seven people. Even at modest amounts per person, the total lands somewhere most people did not budget for.

A few things make this manageable. Tip the superintendent the most — they are the person who handles the emergency at 11pm. Weight the rest by contact: the doorman on your usual shift who takes your packages every day is not in the same category as the one you see twice a year. And if the building has a staff list posted in December, use it; it exists precisely so residents are not guessing.

One thing worth knowing: in some buildings the staff pool holiday tips and split them. If that is the arrangement, a single envelope to the building is fine and individual envelopes may actually complicate things. It is a reasonable question to ask the super directly.

People you pay regularly

For a housekeeper, nanny, regular dog walker or personal trainer, the common benchmark is up to a week of what you normally pay them. That works cleanly for someone who comes weekly. It works less cleanly for someone who comes once a month, where a full week's pay would be four times a normal payment — for irregular schedules, the cost of one session is a more sensible anchor.

Length of relationship matters more here than anywhere else. Someone who has worked in your home for five years is in a different position from someone who started in October, and it is normal for the amount to reflect that. For live-in help, the Emily Post Institute's range runs from a week up to a month of pay.

Hairdressers and personal care

The usual benchmark is up to the cost of one visit — so if you pay $80 for a cut, the holiday tip is around $80, on top of your normal per-visit tip. If several people work on you, the amount is generally split rather than repeated: the stylist gets the largest share, with smaller amounts for the colourist, the assistant who washes your hair, and anyone else who is regularly involved. Our guide to tipping your hairdresser at the holidays covers the split in detail.

The rule almost every guide gets vague about: your mail carrier

This is the one to get right, because getting it wrong puts someone else's job at risk rather than just embarrassing you. Letter carriers are federal employees, and the executive-branch gift rules apply to them year-round, holidays included.

Under the Postal Service's published gift policy, a carrier may accept a gift worth $20 or less from a customer per occasion, and no more than $50 in gifts from any one customer in a calendar year. Cash and cash equivalents must never be accepted in any amount — the policy names cheques and gift cards that can be exchanged for cash, and a Venmo, Zelle or PayPal transfer is cash by any other name. A carrier who accepts an envelope of cash is not receiving a nice gesture; they are being put in a position they may have to report.

So the answer is not "how much" but "what". A gift card of $20 or less to a specific coffee shop is generally treated as fine, because it buys coffee and nothing else. A $20 Visa or Mastercard gift card is not, because it is functionally cash. Snacks, a thermos, warm gloves, a note — all fine. If you have wanted to give your carrier something for years and never known what, this is the constraint that explains why the usual answer feels unsatisfying.

Private couriers are a different matter. UPS, FedEx and Amazon drivers work for private companies, and while each has its own gift policy, they are not bound by the federal rules that cover USPS. Policies vary and many discourage cash, so the safe default for a regular driver is a small gift — the Emily Post Institute suggests something around $20 — rather than an envelope.

Teachers, and other places where cash is the wrong answer

Cash is also usually the wrong instinct for teachers. Many school districts limit the value of gifts staff may accept, and some prohibit cash outright. The specific rule varies by district, so the practical advice is to check your school's policy rather than assume — a class gift organised by several families is a common way around the awkwardness, and a written note from the child is generally valued more than either.

The same caution applies to home health aides and nursing home staff, who often work under agency rules that restrict gifts. The Emily Post Institute suggests checking the agency's policy first, and choosing something the whole staff can share — flowers or food — where cash is not allowed.

Cash or a gift?

You do not need to give both. Cash is the honest default for people you do not know well enough to choose something they would actually want — which, for building staff and most service providers, is nearly everyone. A gift makes sense where cash is restricted (your mail carrier, teachers, agency staff) or where you know the person well.

Whichever you choose, add a short handwritten note. Two or three sentences is enough. It is the part of the envelope people keep.

If you do not have cash

Cash in a card is still the standard for building staff, because it is the one form that reaches the right person without a payroll system or an app in between. If you rarely carry cash, the simplest fix is a single ATM trip once your list is final: withdraw the total, then fill the envelopes at home.

For people you already pay electronically — a nanny, housekeeper or dog walker you pay through Venmo, Zelle or a cheque — sending the holiday amount the same way is perfectly normal. Add a note to the card anyway, so the money does not arrive as just another line in their payment history. A cheque in a card also works for anyone who can accept one.

The exceptions are the ones covered above: never send a payment-app transfer, cheque or cash-convertible gift card to your mail carrier, and check the rules before sending any of them to a teacher or agency worker. Our cashless tipping guide covers the digital options in more detail.

Setting a budget

Decide the total before you decide individual amounts. Pricing each person separately and adding it up afterwards is how people discover a number they cannot pay in the second week of December. Start with what you can spend, then divide it: the largest shares to the people you rely on most, smaller amounts to everyone else.

If you already tip someone well every time — your hairdresser at each visit, for example — the Emily Post Institute notes you can give a smaller holiday thank-you or a small gift instead of a full extra amount. That is often the easiest place to free up room in the budget.

If the total is more than you can spend

It very often is, and the honest answer is that holiday tipping is discretionary. Nobody is entitled to it and nobody should be made to feel that a smaller envelope is an insult. If the arithmetic does not work this year, reduce the amounts rather than dropping people entirely — a smaller tip with a handwritten note lands better than silence, and the note is not a consolation prize. A homemade gift is another option. People remember being thanked specifically far longer than they remember an amount.

The other adjustment worth making is to narrow the list. Tip the people whose work you actually rely on and skip the ones you barely interact with. A guide listing fifteen categories is describing the maximum, not the expectation.

Timing and delivery

The first half of December is the usual window — early enough that it arrives before people take time off, late enough to feel seasonal. Cash or a cheque in a card is the standard form for anyone who can accept it, handed over in person where possible. For building staff, an envelope with the person's name on it prevents the awkwardness of a tip going to the wrong shift.

Whatever the amount, write something specific in the card. "Thank you for everything" is fine. "Thank you for carrying the packages up when the lift was broken in August" is what people keep.

Sources

National amounts for household, personal-care, building and delivery staff follow the Emily Post Institute's holiday tipping guide, which is also the source for the points on budget, gifts versus cash and agency staff. Dense-market figures for building staff are from our building staff guide. USPS gift limits are from the Postal Service's Employee Tipping and Gift-Receiving Policy (Postal Bulletin 22349), which applies the federal executive-branch gift rule at 5 CFR 2635.204(a): $20 per occasion, $50 per calendar year from one source, no cash. These are conventions rather than rules, except where a gift policy says otherwise, and they vary by region. School district and agency gift policies vary and should be checked locally.