Currency Converter

Where the margin hides

Almost nobody charges an explicit exchange fee any more. The cost moved into the rate instead, which is harder to see.

• High street banks typically take 3 to 5 percent on a card payment abroad, sometimes with a fixed fee as well.
• Airport bureaux de change are the worst rate you will find anywhere, routinely 10 percent or more from mid-market.
• Dynamic currency conversion, where a foreign card machine offers to charge you in your own currency, costs 3 to 6 percent. Always decline and pay in the local currency.
• Card networks apply their own rate that sits close to mid-market, which is why a card with no foreign transaction fee is usually the cheapest option available.
• Transfer services vary widely. Some quote mid-market and charge a visible fee, which is the honest structure even when the total is similar.

Where the rates come from

The European Central Bank publishes a set of reference rates against the euro on each working day, at around 16:00 Central European Time. They are drawn from a regular concertation procedure between central banks and are intended as a reference, which is exactly what a converter needs.

This page fetches those rates when it loads and calculates everything else from them. A pair that does not involve the euro is worked out through it, which is standard practice and introduces no meaningful error at any amount you are likely to be converting.

If that request fails, or you are offline, a rate table stored in the page is used instead and the line under the result says so along with the date it was captured. A stale rate presented as a live one would be worse than no converter at all, so the page never does that quietly.

There is no publication at weekends or on European public holidays, so a Saturday reading shows Friday's rate. That is the reference rate, not a market that has stopped moving.

What different providers actually charge

Every one of these quotes a rate below mid-market. The spread is the cost, whether or not a fee is also shown.

The pattern is consistent: the more convenient the option, the wider the spread, and the options that hide the cost entirely in the rate are the expensive ones. A provider that shows a fee and quotes close to mid-market is usually cheaper overall than one advertising no fee at all.

Dynamic currency conversion deserves its own mention because it is the easiest to avoid. When a card machine or a website abroad offers to charge you in your home currency, it is offering to do the conversion at its own rate. Decline it and pay in the local currency every time.

Free, with no account

There is no limit on how many conversions you make, no sign up wall and no paid tier. The currency converter costs nothing to run because the arithmetic happens on your device, so there is nothing to meter.

The page is also small. One stylesheet and one script, together less than a single photograph, which means it loads in well under a second on a phone connection rather than after several seconds of adverts and trackers.

Every other tool on the site works the same way. Over a hundred of them, all running in the browser, none of them asking for an account and none of them uploading anything you give them.

How to use it

Type into the field and the answer appears as you go. There is no calculate button to press and no page reload, because the arithmetic is a few milliseconds of work happening on your own device rather than a round trip to a server.

Every control recalculates immediately when you change it, so you can try several variations without retyping the numbers. The result stays selectable, so you can copy it straight into whatever you were filling in.

On a phone the layout stacks and the number fields open a numeric keypad rather than the full keyboard. Nothing about the tool is held back for a desktop, and nothing is hidden behind a menu.

What it will not do

This is a calculator, not advice. It tells you what a number is, not what you should do about it, and it has no way of knowing the fees, taxes or terms attached to whatever transaction you are planning.

Nothing is saved between visits. Close the tab and the figures are gone, which is the correct behaviour for a tool you reached for once to check one thing, and the reason there is no history to opt out of.