How We Compare

A transfer charges you in two ways at once: a visible fee, and an exchange-rate markup, the gap between the rate you are given and the mid-market rate. A "no fee" transfer can still be expensive if the markup is wide, so we reduce every option to one figure:

Total cost = the fee + the cost of the markup on the amount converted, in the currency you send.

Comparisons rank providers by that total, lowest first. A fee charged on top of the amount counts against the provider even when the recipient gets more.

For 17 money-transfer services (BOSS Money, Instarem, MoneyGram, OFX, Pangea, Paysend, Profee, Remitly, Revolut, Ria Money Transfer, Sendwave, taptapsend, Western Union, Wise, WorldRemit, XE and Xoom), every price on this site is collected by our software, mostly from the provider's own public price tools: it asks what a transfer costs, the same way the provider's website or app answers a customer before sign-in, and records the answer.

• What a quote records: the amount sent, the fee, the exchange rate, the amount the recipient gets, how you pay (bank, debit card, credit card), how the money arrives (bank deposit, cash pickup, mobile wallet), and the time it was collected.
• Which amounts: most providers are asked at three amounts, 100, 1,000 and 5,000 in the currency you send; a few at other amounts where their own minimums require it. Where a fee changes between two amounts, the software asks more amounts to find where it changes.
• Which routes: from the US for almost every provider, and, for most of them, from the UK, the euro area, Canada and Australia, to more than 100 currencies. Not every provider serves every route; a route we have no quote for shows no price.
• When: on weekdays only, because the currency markets the rates follow are closed at weekends. A full collection takes hours and is not run every day; each page states the date its prices were collected.
• Which price: the online price. Prices at an agent or in a store can differ, and we do not collect them.

The mid-market rate comes from commercial exchange-rate data providers: FastForex first, with OpenExchangeRates, ExchangeRate-API and CurrencyAPI as fallbacks if it is unavailable. Our servers refresh it every few minutes, and pages show a rate no more than about half an hour old, with the time it was updated.

Each quote is measured against the reference rate taken when it was collected: the markup is how far the provider's rate falls below that reference. On a page, we apply the provider's measured markup and fee to today's mid-market rate, so every provider is priced on the same day's rate, and we show one rate per provider, not the rate quoted on the day it was collected.

You can type any amount into a calculator, but providers were asked at a few. Between two collected amounts we show a price only where the provider's fee and rate are known to hold across the gap: the same fee at both ends, the same percentage, or one fixed-plus-percentage rule both ends agree on. That price is marked ≈ (an estimate). Where the two ends disagree, the amount shows no price rather than a guess.

We never extend a price beyond the amounts a provider was asked at, and we never rank an estimate against a quoted price.

• Promotions. A new-customer offer is a real price and is shown with a badge, but it is never named the cheapest: it is not what a returning customer pays.
• A rate better than our reference. When a provider's rate beats our mid-market reference, the gap is usually in the reference, not a gift, so the row is labelled "rate ref differs" and is never named the cheapest. In the live comparison it keeps its place by total cost; in the guides it is listed after the services that are ranked.
• No current quote. TransferGo has no automated source we may use, so it appears from an older record, labelled "No current quote", and is never ranked first.
• The question a comparison asks. Comparison tables price a transfer paid from a bank account and delivered to a bank account, each provider on its own bank option. For a sender in US dollars, Wise's bank option is a wire transfer. Wise also takes payment by ACH, which can cost less; our data does not cover that option, and those pages say so.

Payment processors, peer-to-peer apps, marketplaces, banks and business accounts publish fixed fee tables, not quotes. Those figures come from each company's own fee pages, one source per service, and the page says when they were last checked. They change only when the company changes them, so we re-read them periodically and when a provider announces a change.

Banks do not publish the markup in their exchange rates. The bank markups we state (2.9% to 4% at Chase and Wells Fargo) were measured on October 7, 2026, as Wise’s public comparison of bank rates showed it (Wise is an affiliate partner of this site).

Every price carries the date it was collected, and age alone never removes a route: an older quote stays visible with its date rather than disappearing. A page's "Last updated" date is the later of the last change to its own text and figures and the collection of the prices it shows; the same date is in its structured data and our sitemap.

• Prices are estimates from recent quotes, not live quotes. Rates move during the day and fees can change after a collection.
• We cover the providers, routes and amounts listed above, not every service or every way to pay.
• Providers can quote differently to signed-in, new or verified customers, and in their apps.
• Cash pickup, card funding and some delivery methods are priced only where the provider's public tool quotes them.
• Always check the provider's own quote before you send.

Price rankings are computed from the data alone; no provider pays to change its position in one. Some links are partner links that may earn us a commission, and some partners approve how we describe them; our advertising disclosure and editorial policy explain both. If you believe a figure is wrong, our corrections policy explains how to flag it.