How much to tip in Egypt

Nobody warned me about the small change problem

My first morning in Cairo, a man at the Egyptian Museum coat check handed me my bag back and just stood there. I had no idea what to do. I’d read plenty before the trip about pyramids and mosques and river cruises, but nobody had mentioned that I’d need a pocket full of small notes for moments like this, several times a day, for the whole stay.

That’s baksheesh — a word you’ll hear constantly once you notice it. It isn’t a scam or a hustle, even though it can feel that way the first time you’re caught without cash. It’s a normal, widespread custom here: small payments for small services, expected by the people providing them, understood by everyone around you. I’m not going to give you a number, because I don’t think a flat figure means much when the situations are this different from each other — a bathroom attendant, a felucca crew member, a driver who waited two hours in traffic for you. What I can tell you is how to stop being caught off guard by it, because that’s what actually made my trip easier.

Why I stopped relying on my card

I came into Egypt assuming I’d manage the way I do in most cities — card for everything, cash for emergencies. That didn’t hold up. Cards work well in hotels, in shopping malls, and in most restaurants, and I used mine there without issue. Outside that fairly narrow set of places, cash in Egyptian pounds is what actually moves things along.

Baksheesh sits right in that gap. Nobody is going to ask you to tap a card for holding a door or pointing you toward the better photo spot at Giza. It’s coins and small notes, handed over quietly, and if you don’t have them, the moment just sits there awkwardly — which is exactly what happened to me at that coat check.

So somewhere around day two, I started keeping a separate stash of small denominations, apart from my main wallet, topped up whenever I passed an ATM. It sounds like a minor adjustment, but it changed how the whole trip felt. I stopped doing the mental scramble every time someone did something small and helpful, and started just handling it.

The private driver made this click for me

I’d booked a full day out to Saqqara and Dahshur with a private driver, which is the normal way to see that stretch of sites in one go rather than piecing together public transport. He picked me up early, sat through Cairo’s traffic in both directions, waited at each stop, and got me back to my hotel by early evening. GetYourGuide and Viator price the drive and the day itself, but that price doesn’t include a personal thank-you to the person who spent the whole day making it easy. That’s baksheesh territory, separate from what I’d already paid online.

Guides work the same way. When I later did a guided walk through the Egyptian Museum, the guide’s fee covered the tour; what I handed over at the end covered the fact that she’d answered every tangent question I threw at her for two hours. If you’re weighing a private guide against wandering the museum on your own, that’s worth folding into your decision — a good guide is worth it, but budget the cash on top of the tour price, not instead of it.

a private guided walk through the Egyptian Museum is the kind of booking where this comes up directly — the guide’s own fee is separate from what you’d set aside for them at the end.

Where it comes up without you expecting it

A few places caught me off guard more than the obvious driver-and-guide situations:

• Site staff at Giza who’ll offer to take your photo, point out an angle, or “help” you somewhere you didn’t ask to go. I found it easier to have a firm, polite no ready, and small change ready separately for the times I did want the help.
• Felucca crews on the Nile at sunset — a lovely, low-key evening, and one where a small tip at the end is simply part of how the outing works.
• Bathroom attendants, almost everywhere, including at rest stops on longer drives like the one out to Alexandria.
• Bag carriers or porters at hotels, especially the larger ones in Zamalek or Garden City.

None of these are big amounts individually. What adds up is the frequency — Cairo runs on this kind of exchange more than most places I’ve traveled, and going in with cash on hand rather than scrambling each time made the days flow a lot better.

What I’d tell a first-timer

Don’t try to work out a formula before you land — I tried, and it didn’t survive contact with an actual day in Cairo. What worked instead:

1. Get Egyptian pounds early, ideally from an ATM soon after arrival, and keep small notes separate from larger ones.
2. Assume cards only cover hotels, malls and most restaurants — everything else, plan for cash.
3. Treat baksheesh as separate from anything you’ve already paid online through GetYourGuide or Viator — that price covers the activity, not the person.
4. Keep a bit extra on longer days, like a full-day private driver out to Fayoum or an overnight into the White Desert, where you’re relying on someone for hours, not minutes.

If you’re weighing a private option against a group tour at Giza, that’s also where this factors in — a smaller group or a one-on-one guide tends to come with a slightly higher expectation than a large bus tour, simply because the service is more personal.

a private Giza pyramids tour with a stop at a Bedouin village is a good example of a longer, more personal day where I’d set aside more cash than for a quick group visit.

A word on the group option too

Not every day needs a private driver. On a straightforward morning at the pyramids, I joined a group tour to the Giza pyramids and Sphinx instead, and the same logic applied on a smaller scale — the guide leading a group still appreciates a tip at the end, just proportionally lighter than what I’d set aside for a private day out.

None of this needs to be stressful once you’ve accepted the basic shape of it: baksheesh is normal here, it’s cash-based, and it’s separate from anything you’ve already booked. Carry Egyptian pounds, keep small notes handy, and you’ll stop having those awkward coat-check moments I had on day one. For more on cards, ATMs and using pounds instead of dollars or euros, that’s really its own topic — worth reading separately from this one, since carrying the right currency and knowing when to tip are related but different problems.

For the airport pickup, the drivers who get you into the city, and the Cairo metro or Uber and Careem if you’re doing more independent days, the same instinct applies: know ahead of time whether cash will be expected, and don’t let it be the thing you’re figuring out mid-transaction. If you’d rather sort out the bigger currency questions first, that’s worth a look before you land — this page is just about the day-to-day habit of having a little cash ready.