Currency Converter

Where these rates come from

The converter fetches live reference rates published by the European Central Bank, via the Frankfurter API. Press Refresh and it requests the current set; the time of the last successful fetch is shown above the form.

If the request fails, the tool falls back to a set of cached rates stored in the page and labels the result (Cached) rather than (Live). That label matters: cached figures are a rough orientation, not a current price, and can be materially out of date.

ECB reference rates are published once each working day, at around 16:00 Central European Time. They are not updated over the weekend or on holidays, and they are not a tradeable price. What you see here is the same reference figure central banks and news outlets quote.

Why you will never be offered this rate

This is the single most useful thing to understand about currency conversion, and it is where most people lose money without noticing.

The rate shown here is the mid-market rate: the midpoint between what buyers are bidding and sellers are asking. It is the honest centre of the market and essentially nobody transacts there.

What you are actually offered is the mid-market rate plus a margin, and that margin is frequently the entire cost of the transaction even when the provider advertises no fee.

Use this converter to establish the true mid-market figure first. Then compare what a provider actually offers you against it. The difference, expressed as a percentage, is what the conversion costs, and it is the only comparison that puts providers on the same footing.

A provider advertising "no fees" and a 4% margin is more expensive than one charging a flat fee with a 0.4% margin, on almost any amount.

Dynamic currency conversion

There is one specific trap worth knowing by name.

When you pay by card abroad, or withdraw from a foreign ATM, you may be asked whether you want to be charged in your home currency or the local one. Choosing your home currency is called dynamic currency conversion, and the rate applied is set by the merchant's payment processor rather than by your card network.

It is almost always worse, sometimes substantially. The offer is presented as a convenience, and it is presented at the moment you are least able to compare.

Always choose the local currency. Your own card network will convert it, generally at a rate much closer to the one on this page.

What the numbers mean here

Enter an amount, pick two currencies, and the tool converts through the base. Because the rates are quoted against a single base currency, converting from one non-base currency to another involves two steps, and the result is arithmetically identical to a direct quote at these reference rates.

The exchange rate line beneath the result shows the rate for one unit, which is the figure to compare against a provider's offer.

The converter deliberately shows no historical chart and makes no forecast. Short-term currency movement is not reliably predictable, and a tool implying otherwise would be misleading.

Practical uses this is good for

• Checking a quote. Establish the mid-market rate before accepting a provider's offer, so you can see the margin
• Sanity-checking a bill received in another currency
• Budgeting for travel, where a rough figure is enough
• Comparing prices across borders when shopping online
• Understanding a statement after a foreign transaction has posted

And what it is not good for: deciding when to convert. The rate today tells you nothing reliable about the rate next week.

Timing, and why not to try to be clever

People frequently try to time a conversion, waiting for a better rate before moving money. For large sums over long horizons this occasionally pays off. For ordinary amounts it usually does not, for two reasons.

First, currency movements over days and weeks are close to unpredictable, and the people who trade them professionally have information and tools that a retail customer does not.

Second, the cost of a poor provider is usually far larger than the cost of poor timing. Moving 5,000 through a bank at a 3.5% margin costs about 175. A 1% adverse move in the rate over a week costs 50. Choosing the right provider is worth more than waiting for the right day, and it is something you can actually control.

If you have a genuinely large sum and a genuinely long horizon, that is a conversation with a currency specialist rather than a calculator.

Currency and your wider finances

Two points that come up often:

Holding foreign currency is not a hedge unless you have a foreign liability. If you are paid and spend in one currency, holding another introduces risk rather than removing it. If you have a mortgage or a child's tuition in another currency, that is different.

Foreign investments carry currency exposure whether or not you notice. An internationally diversified fund holds assets priced in other currencies, so your returns include a currency component. Some funds hedge this and some do not, and the hedging itself has a cost that shows up in the ongoing charge. Our investment fee calculator shows what an ongoing charge compounds to.

A note on accuracy

Reference rates are published to a limited number of decimal places, and this tool rounds for display. For everyday purposes that is more than sufficient.

For anything where precision matters, such as reconciling an invoice or a tax return, use the rate your provider actually applied, which will appear on your statement, or the official rate your tax authority specifies for the relevant date. A mid-market reference rate is not the correct figure for either purpose.

Fees you may not see on a card payment

Paying by card in another currency can attract up to three separate costs, and only one of them is usually stated:

• The network conversion margin, applied by Visa or Mastercard when converting the transaction
• A foreign transaction fee from your card issuer, commonly around 2% to 3%
• A cash advance fee and interest from day one, if the transaction is an ATM withdrawal on a credit card

The third is the expensive surprise. A cash withdrawal on a credit card is typically treated as a cash advance, which means no interest free period and a higher rate from the moment of the transaction, on top of a fee. How the grace period works explains why that exemption exists.

Cards marketed as having no foreign transaction fee remove the second cost, not the first or third.

Working out what a provider is really charging

Take the amount you would receive from a provider, divide it by the amount you are sending, and compare that figure with the rate shown here.

For example, sending 1,000 and being told the recipient gets 1,148 in another currency, when the mid market rate on this page is 1.18, means an effective rate of 1.148. That is a shortfall of about 2.7%, or roughly 27 on the transaction, regardless of what the provider calls it or whether a separate fee is listed.

Do this once for each provider you are considering and the ranking is usually obvious. It is also the only comparison that cannot be gamed by moving cost between the rate and the fee.

Privacy

Amounts you type are never transmitted. The only network request this page makes is for the published rate table itself, which is the same request regardless of what you are converting or how much. There is no way for us, or for the rate provider, to know what you were calculating.