Methodology

For each card we calculate the amount charged to a euro account for a payment in a foreign currency: exchange rate × amount + fees. The result is compared with the mid-market rate, the midpoint between buy and sell prices on currency markets, which has no margin built in.

Where the rates come from

• Mid-market benchmark: taken from market data rather than from any provider we compare. First choice is the midpoint between the buy and sell prices of Swissquote, a Swiss bank, which covers the major and most European currencies (over the weekend, when the market is closed, that is Friday's closing rate). Next, while the currency market is open, the live midpoint between the best buy and sell prices on Kraken for the pairs it trades actively. Each is only used when its spread is tight. For the remaining currencies, we use the latest quote from Yahoo Finance. Yahoo's quotes for a few currencies are occasionally wrong, so a Yahoo quote more than 0.3% away from Wise's live rate is discarded (Wise is only used for this check, never as the benchmark). If no live rate passes, the benchmark falls back to the European Central Bank's daily reference rate, and the page says so.
• Visa: Visa's public exchange rate calculator, for today's date (or yesterday's if today's isn't published yet).
• Revolut: Revolut's public exchange quote, with each plan's fee rules applied on top.
• Wise: Wise's live rate and the conversion fee shown on its public pricing.
• American Express: EU card issuers must publish their total currency conversion cost as a percentage over the ECB reference rate. We apply the figure from Amex France's ECB comparison page to the ECB rate (refreshed every few hours). Amex converts on the processing date, so the real charge can differ slightly.
• Trading 212: its rates are only shown on a page that blocks automated access, so its card is shown as an estimate at the mid-market rate.
• Yuh: Yuh says it converts at the interbank rate plus its 0.95% exchange fee, but doesn't publish its rates, so its card is shown as an estimate at the mid-market rate plus 0.95%.
• Mastercard: Mastercard doesn't allow automated access to its rates, so the Mastercard row is an estimate at the mid-market rate plus the fee you enter, with a link to its own converter to check the exact rate.

Live rates are refreshed about every 10 minutes. Fee rules are checked by hand against each provider's published terms.

Checked or estimated

Each result says what its price is based on, for the rate and for the fees:

• Live: fetched from the provider a few minutes ago at most.
• Published terms: a fixed rule (for example “0% fee”) from the provider's terms, checked by hand on the date in the table below.
• Your input: a fee you entered in the options.
• Assumed: the provider's data isn't available to us, so we use the mid-market rate instead.

When any part of a result is assumed, its price is shown with a ≈ in front of it. Estimates are never given the “Cheapest” badge: when an estimate ranks first, the cheapest measured price is labelled “Cheapest confirmed price” instead. Every result links to the provider's own page so you can check the rate yourself.

What is not included

• Plan subscription fees (Revolut Plus, Premium, Metal, Ultra) and card ordering fees.
• ATM withdrawal fees and cash advance fees.
• Merchant or ATM operator fees, and dynamic currency conversion offered by terminals.
• Cashback and rewards.

Card by card

Referral links

Some “Get this card” buttons are referral or affiliate links: we may earn a commission when you open an account through them, at no cost to you. Cards are always ranked by cost alone, whether or not we have a referral link for them.