Currency converter

Real exchange rate

With our Nuts About Money currency converter, we use the ‘real’ exchange. This is also called the mid-market exchange rate and the interbank rate (they’re all the same thing), and it’s typically an indication of the best exchange rate you can get.

Technically speaking, when you buy and sell currency, you have a price to buy a currency, and a price to sell the currency, and in between there is a tiny gap (often called a spread). Well, the mid-market exchange rate is the middle point of that gap, between the buy and sell price, so it gives an indication of both the buy and sell price.

Banks, foreign exchange providers and financial companies will buy and sell currency all day long at the real exchange rate, and then provide you, the customer, with a different rate that includes a bit of commission for them, it’s how they make money. And sometimes they’ll also charge a fee.

You can see the rates the banks charge in our comparison table just above.

So, with the ‘real’ exchange rate, you can see there’s no hidden fees, and it’s effectively what the current price of the currency is if you are looking to either buy or sell a foreign currency.

Some money transfer providers (companies) will use the mid-market rate to ensure you get the best rate possible, and then they may add fees on top, so they still make money, but even including these fees, they can often still be much cheaper than a provider such as a high street bank, who doesn’t apply fees but uses their own exchange rate (with hidden fees).

That’s why we’ve worked out how much you’ll actually receive when you transfer money (in our table above), which includes all the fees you’ll pay too, rather than just using the exchange rate. So you can really compare providers to get the best deal for you.

We get the mid-market rate from independent data sources, and it will update in real time as long as the currency trading market is open (you’ll need to refresh the page every so often to get an updated exchange rate).

How does the currency converter work?

It’s simple, yet effective, and always accurate. We compare the exchange rate of over 52 of the most popular currencies around the world, using the real exchange rate, the mid-market rate (explained above), to give you an up-to-date, real time estimate of how much you’ll get from sending and receiving two currencies.

When you send money abroad, convert money, or spend on your holiday, you might get this rate, or you might get a rate set by the provider (like your credit card company), it all depends on which provider you use – we’ve compared all the top providers so you can compare all the top options for yourself.

Our criteria for comparing money transfer services

As sending and receiving money is focused mostly on the best price you can get (saving you the most money), our comparison table is based on how much you’ll receive after you send money, and includes the exchange rate used and the fees.

So, the figure ‘you get’ is the actual amount received with fees already accounted for. We’ve then ordered the results in order of how much you’ll receive, apart from the very first result…

We’ve put our top pick at the top of the results, as it’s often one of, if not the cheapest option anyway, but we think it’s a great option overall, as it uses the real exchange rate, it's easy to use, super quick, and there’s no long process to opening an account like with a bank account. Plus, you can use it for things like spending money on holiday (you'll get a card to use, or add it to things like Apple Pay). Plus you can hold different currencies in one account.

We review lots of different companies across a range of money services (e.g. mortgage brokers, investment platforms and pension providers too), but if we haven’t researched or reviewed a money transfer company yet, we’ve still added them into our table, so you can compare all of the top options out there – but we haven’t added a link…

That’s because we can’t be sure it’s a great option for you, and there could be things like hidden fees or account fees, and maybe bad customer service – so we encourage you to do your own research if you’re thinking about using one of those, otherwise, you can have confidence that if there’s a link, it’s a great choice, and that it’s popular and widely used, and generally a low cost option.

We’ve also included the high street banks in our comparison table – but to use them you’ll typically have to sign up for a full bank account (unless you are already a customer), which can often take some time, and often not worth it.

We’ve added them as a reference so you can see how cheap the more modern money transfer services are – and why you should typically never use your normal high street bank card when spending abroad!

Just need travel money for your holiday?

If you’re just looking for travel money for your holiday, you’re in the right place – you can sign up for a travel money card, transfer money from your bank account to your new account, and start spending away, knowing that you’re typically getting a great rate.

Sometimes, depending on the provider, you don’t even need to transfer money to your account, you can spend away on your card, and it can come directly out of your existing bank account, just using a better exchange rate than your bank. Pretty cool right?

Learn more about that, and all our top picks for travel money, with our best travel money cards.

Which currencies can I convert with the currency converter?

We use the mid-market exchange rate data from independent sources, and currently, we can compare the prices of all of these currencies:

Nuts About Money tip: if you’d like to compare a currency not listed, let us know, and we’ll try and add them.