Currency converter — the rate you see vs the rate you get
This converter shows the mid-market rate: the true midpoint between what buyers pay and sellers ask on the global currency market. It is the rate quoted on the news, and it is the honest reference point for judging any offer.
It is also, for most people, a rate they will never actually receive. Banks, cards and bureaux add a margin on top, and that margin is usually invisible — buried in the rate rather than shown as a fee. That gap between the real rate and your rate is the single most useful thing this page can teach you, which is why there is a markup slider built into it.
What makes this one different
- No invented data. Historical charts use official European Central Bank reference rates. If genuine history is unavailable for a pair, the chart is hidden rather than filled with a plausible-looking line.
- It works offline. The last successfully fetched rates are cached on your device, so conversion keeps working — with a loud warning showing exactly how old they are.
- It shows the markup. A slider from 0 to 12% reveals what any provider's margin costs you in real money.
- No account, no ads, nothing tracked. Your amounts never leave the browser.
What the markup really costs
Providers rarely advertise a fee. They quote you a worse rate instead. Typical margins on the mid-market rate:
| Where you exchange | Typical margin | Cost on 1,000 |
|---|
| Mid-market (reference) | 0% | — |
| Specialist transfer apps | ~0.4–1% | ~4–10 |
| Good travel / no-FX-fee card | ~0–1% | ~0–10 |
| High street bank transfer | ~2–4% | ~20–40 |
| Standard debit/credit card abroad | ~2–3% | ~20–30 |
| Airport bureau de change | ~5–12% | ~50–120 |
| Dynamic currency conversion (DCC) | ~3–6% extra | ~30–60 |
These are indicative ranges, not quotes — margins vary by provider, currency pair and amount. The pattern holds everywhere though: the more convenient and the more captive the customer, the wider the margin.
The one rule that saves the most money
When a foreign card machine or ATM asks whether you want to be charged in your home currency, always say no and choose the local currency. Accepting is called dynamic currency conversion, and it lets the merchant's processor set the rate — typically 3 to 6% worse than letting your own bank convert. It is presented as a helpful convenience and is almost never in your favour.
Where the numbers come from
Live rates are mid-market reference rates covering 160+ currencies, refreshed each time the page loads. The status bar always states when they were fetched.
Historical charts use European Central Bank reference rates, published every working day around 16:00 CET. The ECB covers roughly 30 major currencies, so charts appear for those pairs only. There is no weekend or holiday data because the reference rates are not published then.
Nothing is simulated. That sounds like it should go without saying, but generating fake history around the current rate is a surprisingly common shortcut in free converters, and it produces charts that look convincing while being meaningless.
Reading an exchange rate correctly
A rate always describes a pair in one direction. EUR/USD = 1.15 means one euro buys 1.15 dollars. The inverse, how many euros one dollar buys, is 1 ÷ 1.15 = 0.87. Both are shown here so there is no ambiguity about which way round it is — getting this backwards is the most common conversion mistake.
When a bureau displays two columns, they are the buy and sell rates. The mid-market rate sits between them, and the distance between the columns — the spread — is the provider's profit. A wide spread is an expensive provider, regardless of what the sign says about commission.
Deep links — URL parameters
The address bar stays in sync, so any conversion is shareable and bookmarkable:
?from=EUR&to=USD&amount=100
Privacy — nothing about you leaves the browser
Conversion happens locally. The only network requests fetch public exchange rates, and those requests contain no information about you or your amounts. Favourites, preferences and cached rates live in your own browser's local storage. No account, no ads, no analytics on your inputs, and the page keeps working offline.