Currency Converter

Why this converter asks you for the rate

Every other currency converter on the internet shows you the mid-market rate: the midpoint between what banks are buying and selling a currency for on the interbank market. It is a real number. It is the number in the news. It is not a number you can transact at, and it never was.

What you actually get is that rate minus a margin, and the margin is the entire business model of every place that will change money for you. So a converter that answers "1,000 dollars is 920 euros" has told you the sticker price of a car with the tax, the delivery and the dealer fee removed. This page makes you type the rate in because that forces the second question — minus what? — which is the question that decides how much money you end up with.

The spread, and why "0% commission" means nothing

A bureau quotes two numbers on the board: what it will give you for your pounds, and what it will charge you for pounds. The gap between them is the spread. Half of that gap is roughly what one conversion costs you, and the whole gap is what a round trip costs — which is why changing money at the start of a holiday and changing the leftovers back at the end is the most expensive thing you can do with cash.

Commission and spread are two separate charges. A sign reading "0% commission" removes the first and says nothing whatsoever about the second, and at the places that shout loudest about commission the spread is usually where the margin has gone. The only honest question is: how many euros do I walk away with for this exact pile of pounds? Every other number is decoration.

Dynamic currency conversion: always decline

You are at a card terminal in Lisbon and the screen offers you a choice: pay 47.50 EUR, or pay 41.20 GBP. Choosing your home currency is dynamic currency conversion, and it is a trap with a friendly face. The conversion is done by the merchant's payment processor at a rate it chooses, typically several per cent worse than your own bank's, and the difference is shared between the processor and the merchant. The screen is designed so that the option that costs you more is the one that feels safe.

Always pay in the local currency — the currency of the country you are standing in — and let your own card issuer do the conversion at its own rate. The same applies at an ATM: when it offers a "conversion guarantee" or shows you a rate and asks you to accept, decline it and choose "continue without conversion". The withdrawal goes through in local currency and your bank converts it. Your bank's margin is a known quantity you can check; the terminal's is not.

Airport exchange desks are the worst rate you will ever be offered

Not because they are wicked, but because of where they are. A desk airside has paid a great deal for a spot where the customer has already passed the point of having alternatives, and the price reflects the absence of competition rather than the cost of the service. The rate on the board is a function of how many other desks are within walking distance, which airside is usually zero.

Two rules follow. Never change a large sum at an airport — take out what you need for the taxi and change the rest in town or draw it from a machine. And never change your leftover foreign cash back at the end of the trip if you can help it; you pay the spread twice on the same money, for the privilege of moving it in a circle.

What to put in the margin box

These are ranges people report, not quotes, and they are a judgement rather than a fact — your own card's terms are the only authority. But as a starting point: a travel card or credit card advertised as having no foreign transaction fee sits around 0.5–1% once the network's own conversion is counted; a mainstream bank debit or credit card used abroad is commonly 2.75–3%, sometimes with a fixed charge per transaction on top; a high-street bureau in a city centre runs 3–6%; an airport bureau can be 8–15%; and a specialist transfer service is usually well under 1% plus a stated fixed fee. Put your own number in and you will get your own answer.

Rough reference rates, and what they are for

The rates below were compiled in the first half of 2026, rounded, and are stale by definition — some of them will have moved a long way by the time you read this. They are here for one job: catching a rate that is wrong by a factor of ten or entered upside down. Never price a transaction from them, and look up the live mid-market rate before you convert anything that matters.

A few of these barely move: the UAE dirham, the Saudi riyal and the Hong Kong dollar are pegged or tightly managed against the US dollar, so their reference figures age far better than the rest. The ones at the other extreme — currencies in countries running high inflation — can be out by a factor within a year, which is exactly the kind of error the table is here to catch rather than to commit.