Tipping in Morocco: 12 Roles, 1 Honest Amount for Each

Last verified: September 27, 2026. On the date above I read 21 published Morocco tipping guides and coded every amount they give, then read Morocco’s Labour Code, the 2026 minimum-wage decree as reported by the state broadcaster, and five Marrakech restaurant menus. No tip figure here is a rate anyone enforces: each one is the middle of what those guides say. I re-read all of it every 60 days and move the date each time.

Tipping in Morocco is routine and small, until you reach the driver. Ask 16 published tipping guides what to give a private driver for a day and the answers run from 50 dirhams to about 575 for a couple. Not one of the 21 guides I read cites a source for its numbers.

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So I put them side by side. I read 21 guides, turned every amount into dirhams and into the same unit, and took the middle figure for each of twelve roles, from the toilet attendant to the licensed guide. The range sits next to every number, because the range is half the answer.

Key Takeaways

• Tipping in Morocco is small and routine, and no law adds service to your bill. Round up in cafés and taxis, and leave about 10% at a sit-down meal: the middle of 14 published guides
• For a couple, the middle figure is 125 dirhams a day for a driver and about 165 for a full-day guide. The published range runs from 50 to about 575, more than ten times
• Read the foot of the menu. Two of five Marrakech terrace menus I checked add a service charge, and one says it is charged in place of a tip
• Tip in dirhams, and carry 10s and 20s. The 20-dirham note is the smallest in circulation (Bank Al-Maghrib)
• A 20-dirham tip is about an hour of minimum-wage work. Morocco’s minimum wage is 17.92 dirhams an hour in 2026

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Is tipping in Morocco expected?

Yes, in small amounts, and nothing is added to your bill by law. Morocco’s Labour Code has no service-charge rule. What it does say is that tips count toward a worker’s legal minimum wage (Code du travail, Loi 65-99, art. 357, Ministry of Justice consolidated text), and that tips handed to staff or collected by the employer belong in full to the staff who serve (art. 376).

Mint tea and the bill at a Casablanca café. Photo: Michal Osmenda, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

That first rule changes how to think about a café tip. In hotels, cafés and restaurants, the few dirhams you leave can legally be part of the waiter’s wage, not a bonus on top of it. The employer may not keep any of it: the code says so in one line, “Il est interdit à l’employeur de bénéficier des sommes perçues au titre des pourboires” (art. 376). Tips must be shared out at least monthly, on payday (art. 377).

Where tips fall short of the legal minimum, the employer pays the difference (art. 378). Keeping staff tips or failing to top up a wage carries a fine of 2,000 to 5,000 dirhams (art. 380). The text I read is the 2011 consolidation.

Three governments’ travel advice says nothing about it. The UK’s advice on local laws and customs (FCDO, updated 19 August 2026), Canada’s (travel.gc.ca, updated 24 September 2026) and France’s (France Diplomatie, updated 15 September 2026) don’t mention tipping at all. That silence is why every amount I found comes from a company, and most of those companies sell tours.

Tipping in Morocco by role: how much for each of the 12?

Coins for cafés, taxis, toilets and parking. Fifteen dirhams a bag or a night for porters and housekeeping, and about 35 for a hammam scrub. For a couple, 125 a day for a driver and about 165 for a full-day guide. Each figure is the middle of what 5 to 18 published Morocco tipping guides recommend, read on 27 September 2026.

Role	Unit	Middle figure (median)	Published range	Guides giving a figure
Sit-down restaurant	share of the bill	10%	5% to 15%	14
Café	per visit	about 5	1 to 20	8
Petit taxi	on top of the meter	round up, about 7.5 where a figure is given	5 to 10	5
Porter	per bag	15	1 to 50	18
Housekeeping	per night	15	5 to 50	11
Riad staff envelope	per night of your stay	50	20 to 150	5
Hammam attendant	per scrub	35	10 to 80	7
Licensed city guide	per couple, full day	about 165	40 to 500	16
Private driver	per couple, per day	125	50 to about 575	16
Camel handler	per couple, per ride	35	10 to 100	7
Parking guardian	daytime	about 4	2 to 10	6
Toilet attendant	per visit	2	1 to 5	7

All amounts in dirhams except the restaurant row.

How I built it. I read 21 tipping guides and took every figure from the page itself. US dollars were converted at Bank Al-Maghrib’s reference rate of 25 September 2026 (1 dollar = 9.5965 dirhams, Bank Al-Maghrib). Per-person figures were doubled for a couple, and per-day figures that name no group size were read as per couple. Per-trip figures that gave no number of days were left out. The median is the middle of each guide’s own midpoint, and it is published only where at least four guides give a figure. All twelve rows clear that bar.

Read the chart in dirhams, not ratios. In ratio terms, the café (1 to 20) and the porter (1 to 50) spread as widely as anything, but the gap is a few coins. The driver and the guide spread by more than ten times as well, and there the gap is hundreds of dirhams a day, which is why those two rows matter most. The porter’s floor is also misleading: its range starts at 1 dirham a bag only because one guide, Wise’s tip calculator, says 1. Without it, the floor is 5.

Do you tip in Moroccan restaurants and cafés?

Round up in a café, and leave about 10% at a sit-down restaurant: that is the median of 14 guides, with a range of 5% to 15%. But read the foot of the menu first. Of the five Marrakech medina terrace menus I re-read on 27 September 2026, two add a service charge, and one of them says it replaces the tip.

The first is Le Jardin, whose menu says “An additional service charge of 7% will be added to the bill” (Le Jardin menu). The second is Nomad, which applies 9% “in lieu of gratuity”, or au lieu de pourboire on its French menu (Nomad menu). Café des Épices, Terrasses des Arts and Taj Medina print no service line on the menus I could read. Five menus is a small sample from one city, so I read it as “it happens, check”, not as a share of Moroccan restaurants.

Where a menu says the charge is instead of a tip, the tip is paid. Where it says “additional”, my own reading is the same: the service has been charged for. No law requires either charge. Article 376 covers money an employer collects as tips, and says it belongs to the staff who serve.

The café is the one place the guides won’t be pinned down. Eight give a number, with a middle figure of about 5 dirhams a visit. Seven more say only “round up” or “leave the change”. In practice those are the same instruction: a 15-dirham tea paid with a 20 is a 5-dirham tip.

Bread, olives and water that arrive unasked are a bill question, not a tip question. They’re covered in the guide to food prices in Morocco. I haven’t tested adding a tip on a card terminal, so I won’t guess whether it reaches the waiter. Cash is the safe route.

How much should you tip a guide or driver per day?

For a couple, the middle figure is 125 dirhams a day for a private driver and about 165 for a full-day licensed guide, each from 16 published guides. The ranges are wide: 50 to about 575 for the driver and 40 to 500 for the guide. Tip once, per group, at the end.

A camel caravan in the Merzouga dunes, with the handler walking ahead. Photo: Houssain tork, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Part of that spread is units, not generosity. Guide advice arrives in five forms: a percentage of the tour, an amount per person, an amount per party, an amount per day that never says for how many people, and a lump sum per trip. The same full day with a guide can read as 25 dirhams or 400, depending on the page.

My conversion: per couple, per day, in dirhams. Per-person figures double for two. G Adventures, one of the group operators, publishes a tip for its tour leaders of 8 to 11 US dollars per person per day and collects a separate kitty for everyone else on the trip. That is one operator’s policy for its own staff, not a national norm.

A tip is not the guide’s fee. Morocco licenses its guides under law 05-12, and the tourism ministry publishes the list of licensed guides but no tariff (Ministry of Tourism, guides). The “official” guide rates that circulate online have no order behind them that I could find. What guides advertise is in the Morocco trip cost guide, and why the licence matters is in the guide to fake guides in Morocco.

One suspicion I tested and couldn’t support: that tour companies push the driver tip up because their own staff receive it. The guides that sell tours or transfers put the driver at a median of 125 dirhams a day (13 guides). The three that sell none, two booking affiliates and a villa rental company, put it at 150. Three is too few to say they recommend more. It is enough to say the sellers’ figure is not measurably higher.

On a desert tour, tips are never in the price: “drinks and tips are always extra” on every shared listing in the Morocco desert tour guide. The camel handler’s middle figure is 35 dirhams for a couple per ride, from 7 guides. Only two give a figure for camp staff, too few for a median.

How much do you tip at a riad, a hotel or a hammam?

Housekeeping gets 15 dirhams a night (median of 11 guides), porters 15 a bag (18 guides), and a hammam attendant about 35 for a scrub (7 guides). In a small riad, where the same few people carry, cook and clean, the guides that address it suggest one envelope at checkout, about 50 dirhams per night of the stay.

A riad courtyard in Marrakech. Photo: Arnaud 25, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The envelope and the housekeeping tip overlap, so pick one. In a hotel with separate departments, tip housekeeping nightly, because shifts rotate. In a riad of six rooms, one envelope to the manager or the kitchen, with a word that it’s for everyone, reaches more people. Five guides give an envelope figure, which works out at 20 to 150 dirhams per night.

The hammam is where two methods collide. Seven guides give a flat amount per attendant, with a median of 35. Three others say 10% to 15% of the price. At a neighbourhood hammam, where a scrub starts at around 170, the percentage gives 17 to 26, a little under the flat figure. At a palace spa that lists an hour at 1,300, as La Mamounia does, 10% is 130, nearly four times the flat figure. For a scrub, I’d use the flat amount. For a spa treatment priced like a spa, the percentage is what those three guides suggest.

The taxes on a hotel bill are not service. Morocco’s per-night tourist taxes are charged by star rating and are often not in the advertised room price (Hespress, 29 April 2026). None of that money goes to the staff.

Do you tip taxi drivers in Morocco?

Round up the meter on a petit taxi. About 13 of the guides say “round up” and stop there. The five that name a figure add 5 to 10 dirhams, a median of 7.5. On a shared grand taxi, the guides split.

In practice, rounding up means a 17-dirham meter becomes 20. The tip only makes sense on a meter. A flat fare quoted before you get in is a negotiation, not a fare, and how the meter rules work in each city, and the airport run, is in the Morocco taxi rules guide.

A grand taxi sold by the seat runs at a fixed local fare. One guide says no one tips on a shared seat. Merzouga Way suggests 5 to 10 dirhams per person on a longer route, and two others call a small tip for a helpful driver optional. I’d read that as: nothing is expected on a short shared hop, and a few dirhams is a kindness on a long one.

Who does not expect a tip, and who asks anyway?

No guide I read suggests tipping a shopkeeper after a deal, and none mentions tipping at a pharmacy, a ticket counter or a government office. My reading is that none of them expects it. The people who ask anyway are mostly offering something you didn’t request.

• The shop. You don’t tip a shopkeeper after haggling: the price you agreed already carries the shop’s margin. Where haggling applies and where prices are fixed is mapped in the haggling guide.
• The helper. Someone who walks you to your riad unasked will expect money at the door. It’s a fee you never agreed, not a tip, and a firm, smiling la, shukran before you set off is the cleanest answer. The difference between that and a licensed guide is in the guide to fake guides.
• The photograph. Most of the guides that mention it say the performers in Jemaa el-Fna expect payment for a photo, and most put it at 10 to 20 dirhams. Agree the amount before you raise the camera, because it’s a price, not a tip.
• The parking guardian and the toilet attendant. These do expect coins. Every guide that covers them stays between 1 and 10 dirhams.

Should you tip in dirhams, euros or dollars?

In dirhams. The dirham is a closed currency (FCDO, entry requirements), and small dirham notes and coins are what the person in front of you can spend today. Carry 10-dirham coins and 20-dirham notes: the 20 is the smallest note in circulation (Bank Al-Maghrib).

Dirham notes from 20 to 200, and coins. Photo: Freepius, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The coins in current use run to ½, 1, 5 and 10 dirhams, with a 2-dirham coin still circulating from an older series. The notes are 20, 50, 100 and 200. ATMs favour 100s and 200s, so break them early at a supermarket, a petrol station or your riad. The ATM fee and the 2,000-dirham limit on taking dirhams out are in the guide to money in Morocco. On foreign coins, the tipping guides contradict each other, and I found no authority either way. My reasoning is simple: a euro coin is money the recipient may never be able to spend, so don’t use one.

To see what a tip means to the person receiving it, divide it by the minimum wage. Morocco’s rose 5% on 1 January 2026 to 17.92 dirhams an hour outside agriculture, under decree 2.25.983 published in Bulletin Officiel 7469 (SNRT News). That is 3,422.72 a month on the legal 191 hours.

A week of tips, added up from the table’s middle figures for a couple:

• three days with a driver, 375
• one day with a guide, 165
• six riad nights by envelope, 300
• porters on two arrivals with two bags each, 60
• two hammam scrubs, 70
• a camel ride, 35
• about 14 cafés, taxis and toilets at around 5 each, 70

That comes to about 1,075 dirhams, before restaurant tips, which depend on the bill. For comparison, the two guides that give a weekly budget disagree by about five times, middle to middle: 300 to 500 dirhams for two for a week in one, about 1,400 to 2,800 in another. Almost all of that gap is the driver and the guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where to start

Three things. Break a large note on your first day and keep a pocket of 10s and 20s. Agree a guide’s or driver’s price before you start, then tip on top of it, once, per group, at the end. The middle of the published advice is about 125 a day for a driver and 165 for a guide. Everywhere else, round up.

For where tips sit in the budget of a whole trip, start with the Morocco trip cost index.