This paper explores surface settlement for shallow tunnels with different cross-sectional shapes including mouth profile, horseshoe and triangle roof shapes under various excavation techniques and soil characteristic conditions. Plaxis 2D software version 2024.2 used to numerically investigate a couple influences of tunnel excavation-and-shape-induced extra surface settlement. It was concluded that the couple effect of excavation-and-shape-induced surface settlement might be significantly minimized by selecting a proper excavation technique as well as a particular tunnel configuration in a suitable soil condition. To validate the numerical results, a comparison was made with the analytical results from the Peck’s formula. An excellent agreement was observed between the analytical and the finite element analysis results.