Tipping is the question everyone emails about before a Tanzania trip, and the advice online is all over the place. Here is the short version, then the detail.
For a standard safari, think in two pots: your driver-guide and the camp staff. Budget around USD 20-25 per day for the guide (that is for the whole vehicle, shared across everyone in it) and USD 10-15 per guest per day for the camp tip box. On Kilimanjaro it works completely differently, and you should plan roughly USD 200-300 per climber for the entire mountain crew. All ranges below are honest estimates, not fixed rules. [VERIFY]
Safari: your driver-guide
Your driver-guide is the single person who makes or breaks the safari. They drive, spot, explain, manage the day and often quietly fix problems you never hear about. This tip is the one I would never skimp on.
The going range is USD 20-25 per day for the vehicle, not per head. So a couple sharing a Land Cruiser is not paying double; you split it. If you are a family or a group of six, the same range still applies to the vehicle, which makes the per-person cost very small. [VERIFY]
Tip up if your guide goes after the sightings rather than just driving the loop road, knows the bird calls, and gets you to the river crossing before the crowd. Tip down, honestly, if they spend the game drive on the phone. Hand it over on the last morning, in an envelope or just folded notes, with a thank-you. It does not need to be a ceremony.
Camps and lodges: the tip box
Most camps and lodges run a communal staff tip box at reception, split among the people you rarely see: kitchen, housekeeping, waiters, maintenance. Pooling it is deliberate, so the cook who made your dinner gets a share even though you never met them.
Budget USD 10-15 per guest per day for the box. [VERIFY] At a high-end mobile camp with a big team and big rates, lean to the top; at a simpler lodge, the lower end is fine. If a particular waiter or your butler looked after you all stay, it is normal to hand them something separately on top.
What to skip: do not tip every individual member of staff individually every day. It gets awkward, some staff are not allowed to accept personal tips, and it undermines the pooled system that keeps things fair behind the scenes. One contribution to the box at checkout does the job.
Kilimanjaro: the biggest tipping bill of your trip
Kilimanjaro is the one that catches people out, because the crew is huge. A single climber can be supported by a dozen-plus people: lead guide, assistant guides, cook, and a small army of porters carrying tents, food and water up the mountain.
Plan USD 200-300 per climber for the full crew across a typical 6-7 day route. [VERIFY] That breaks down very roughly into a larger daily figure for the lead guide, less for assistant guides and the cook, and a per-porter amount that is small individually but adds up across the team. A good operator gives you a suggested breakdown before you start and runs a transparent tipping ceremony on the last morning, where the crew gathers and you hand tips over openly so you can see the split is fair.
Carry the cash up with you in a dry bag, in mixed denominations so you can divide it. This is also why porter welfare matters: choose an operator that pays and feeds its porters properly, because your tip should be a thank-you on top of a fair wage, not a substitute for one.
Which currency, and how to carry it
USD is king for safari and Kilimanjaro tips. Bring clean, undamaged notes dated 2013 or later (older notes are widely refused across East Africa), and bring a spread of small bills: a stack of 5s, 10s and 20s is far more useful than a few 100s you cannot break.
Tanzanian shillings are perfectly good for everyday tipping: a few thousand shillings for a taxi driver, a porter at the airport, or rounding up a restaurant bill. Euros and pounds are accepted in some places but you will usually get a poor rate, so I would not rely on them. Cards are no use for tipping anywhere off the main resort strips.
A practical line from living here: keep your tip cash separate from your spending cash from day one. Sorting envelopes by hand in a dim tent on the last night, by head-torch, is how good intentions turn into rounding errors.
Planning the trip around this? See our Tanzania safari overview for routes and seasons, and the Zanzibar travel guide if you are tacking the coast onto the end.