On a £1,000 international transfer, a UK high street bank typically charges a fee of around £15 to £25 plus an exchange rate margin of roughly 2.5% to 4%, which is hidden inside the rate rather than shown as a charge. That puts the realistic all-in cost somewhere around £40 to £65. Wise charges no fixed fee and a transparent percentage, typically 0.4% to 0.8% on major routes, using the mid-market rate, so the same transfer usually costs under £10. The gap is almost entirely the exchange rate, not the fee.
Most people comparing international transfer providers look at the transfer fee, because it is the number both sides put in front of you. It is also the smaller of the two costs.
The larger one is the exchange rate, and it is deliberately harder to see, because it is expressed as a rate rather than a charge. This article puts realistic numbers to both.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you sign up for Wise using our link we may receive a small referral fee at no cost to you.
The two costs, separated
The transfer fee is the flat amount charged for making the payment. UK high street banks typically charge somewhere in the region of £15 to £25. Wise charges no fixed sending fee.
The exchange rate margin is the difference between the rate you are given and the mid-market rate, which is the real rate at which currencies trade and the number Google shows you when you search "1 GBP to THB". Banks generally build a margin of a few percent into the rate. Wise uses the mid-market rate itself and takes its cut as a stated percentage fee instead.
The second cost scales with the amount you send. The first does not. That is why the fee matters most on small transfers and the rate matters most on everything else.
What it looks like on £1,000
Using typical figures rather than any one bank's published rates:
The headline is not that the fee is lower. It is that the fee is the small part. On a £1,000 transfer, the exchange rate margin is doing most of the damage and it never appears on a statement as a charge.
Why the hidden cost is hard to notice
If you send £1,000 and your recipient gets the local-currency equivalent of £960, nothing on your statement says £40. Your statement says you sent £1,000 and paid a £20 fee. The other £20 simply never existed as a line item.
This is not fraud and it is not hidden in any legal sense. Banks are entitled to set their own exchange rates and they disclose them. It is just that a rate is a much harder thing to compare at a glance than a fee, and most people do not stop to do the arithmetic.
Check it yourself in two minutes
Do not take our figures on trust, or anyone else's. The method is quick and works with any provider:
- Search "1 GBP to [currency]" on Google. That is your mid-market benchmark.
- Multiply by the amount you want to send. That is what the recipient would get with no costs at all.
- Get the provider's quote for the same amount, and note the amount the recipient receives, not the rate.
- Subtract. The difference is the total cost, fee and margin combined.
Step three is where people go wrong: compare recipient amounts, not rates or fees. It is the only number that captures everything.
Do this once for your own bank and once for whatever you are comparing it to. You will not need to do it again, because the answer does not change much.
When a bank is still fine
Being fair about it: there are cases where the difference does not justify changing anything.
Very small transfers. On £50, a percentage-based cost is trivially small either way, and if your bank happens not to charge a fee on a particular route it may be a wash.
One-off payments where speed inside your existing app matters more than £30. If you are already logged in and the money has to go now, that has a value.
Currency routes with thin coverage. Not every currency is well served by every provider. Check the specific route rather than assuming.
Where the difference genuinely compounds is regular payments. If you are sending money abroad monthly, rent, a deposit, a service, the annual gap between a few percent and a fraction of a percent becomes a meaningful number rather than an academic one.
What we do
We use Wise for every international transfer we make, and the reason is the one in the table: we can see exactly what the recipient will get before we confirm, and there is no intermediary deduction appearing afterwards.
Across the direct arrangements we have made while travelling as a family, we have saved around £500 compared with the alternatives. That figure is not a projection. It is what we have actually kept.
The one thing worth understanding before you move money in is that Wise is not a UK bank and your balance is not FSCS protected. We cover what does protect it in is Wise safe, and we treat it as a working account rather than a savings account for that reason.
For the wider comparison against everyday spending cards, see our Starling vs Wise vs Revolut verdict, and for the practical side of paying someone overseas, how to pay an overseas landlord from a UK account.
Fees, rates and margins change, and vary by bank and currency route. The figures here are typical ranges checked in August 2026, not quotes. Run the two-minute check above for your own numbers.
