Exchange fee calculator

• Rates are the euro reference rates the European Central Bank publishes, read through the Frankfurter API.
• A rate between two currencies that are neither of them the euro is worked out by dividing one euro rate by the other, which is how the API derives it too.
• Every rate here is mid market. It carries no margin, no card network charge, and no transfer fee.
• Reference rates are set once each working day at about 16:00 Central European Time. Weekends and days the euro payment system is closed have no rate of their own.
• The page opens with the rate stored when the site was built, then replaces it with a live rate once the request returns. If that request fails, the stored rate stays on screen and the page names the date it belongs to.
• Fees are taken off the amount you send before conversion, then the remainder is converted at the provider rate. That is the order retail providers use.
• The markup is applied to the mid market rate on screen. If you type a quoted rate instead, the markup figure is ignored and the implied markup is reported back to you.
• Nothing here accounts for what the receiving bank may deduct at the other end, or for correspondent bank charges on a wire.

A currency transfer can be charged in two places, and only one of them usually appears on the receipt. The first is the fee: a flat amount, a percentage, or both, deducted before anything is converted. The second is the rate itself. A provider quotes you a rate a little below the mid market rate and keeps the difference, which is why a transfer advertised as free is rarely free.

The two are easy to confuse because they are quoted in different units. A fee is a price; a markup is a percentage of an amount you have not converted yet. On a 2,000 dollar transfer, a flat 10 dollar fee costs 0.5 percent, while a markup of 2.5 percent costs 50 dollars. The provider with the larger visible fee is often the cheaper one, and comparing fee schedules alone will point you the wrong way.

This calculator puts both through the same arithmetic. It works out what the recipient would have received at the mid market rate with nothing deducted, works out what they actually receive, and reports the gap as an amount and as a share of the untouched figure. It also reports the effective rate, which is what your money converted at once every charge is counted. That single number is the one worth comparing between providers, because it cannot be split up or relabelled.

If your provider has quoted you an exact rate, type it into the last field and the markup is worked out from it. Otherwise leave that field empty and estimate the markup: card networks tend to sit under one percent, high street banks between two and four percent, and airport counters a good deal higher. The mid market rate used for the comparison comes from the same feed as the currency converter.