What does a currency converter do?
A currency converter multiplies an amount by an exchange rate to express it in another currency. This one asks you for the rate instead of fetching it: you type the number you have verified, add a row for each currency you care about, and the table shows what the amount becomes in every one of them at once. An optional fee field applies a percentage to each conversion, which is how a card, a transfer or a spread usually appears in a real transaction.
The rate is yours for a reason. An exchange rate is not one number but several: the mid-market rate a news site quotes, the rate a bank sells at, the rate a card network applies and the rate on a bureau's board all differ, and that difference is exactly where the cost of converting lives. A tool that fetches a single figure presents one of those as though it were the answer, and any rate returned without a timestamp is stale the moment it is stored.
The table therefore shows two things beyond the converted amount. It shows the inverse rate, so a rate pasted in the wrong orientation is visible rather than silently producing a result out by a factor of many thousands. And it applies the fee you enter, because a total that ignores the cost of converting understates what someone actually pays. The arithmetic is simple, but those two habits are what keep a converted figure honest.
How to convert a currency amount
- Enter the amount you want to convert, and the currency code it is in.
- Type the rate you have verified into a row: how many units of the target currency one unit of the source is worth.
- Add more rows with Add a currency to see the same amount in several currencies side by side.
- Check the inverse column against your rate — if it looks implausible, the rate is probably the wrong way round.
- Enter a fee or spread percentage if the conversion carries a cost, and read the reduced totals.
- Copy the whole set of conversions, or remove rows you no longer need.
Currency Converter limits and rules
| Item | Limit |
|---|---|
| Rates | Entered by hand; no feed is fetched and no rate is looked up |
| Currencies | Any code you type, up to eight characters — the tool does not validate them |
| Rows | As many target currencies as you add, each with its own rate |
| Fee | A percentage from 0 to 50, applied to every conversion as a spread |
| Outputs | The converted amount, the rate you entered and its inverse |
| Precision | Up to six decimal places, which suits both large and small denominations |
| Not covered | Live rates, historical rates, and any rate a bank or card network would actually apply |
When to use it
- Working out what an invoice in a foreign currency costs in yours at the rate you were quoted.
- Comparing what an amount becomes in several currencies before choosing where to send it.
- Checking that a rate a supplier sent is the right way round before agreeing to it.
- Adding an expected card fee to a purchase to see the real cost.
- Reconciling an expense claim against the rate printed on a statement.
Is it private?
Every conversion is worked out in this page from the numbers you type. No exchange rate is requested, no currency data is fetched, and nothing is uploaded, stored or logged.
Frequently asked questions
Because a live rate needs a market-data feed, and a figure that arrives without a timestamp and a named source is not something to base money on. More practically, the rate you actually transact at is never the free mid-market one — it is your bank's, your card's or the receiving party's, each with its own spread. Asking you to paste the rate you were quoted produces a figure that matches your transaction instead of one that merely looks authoritative.
As a row is written, the rate is how many units of the target currency one unit of the source currency buys. So a row for EUR at 0.92 against 100 USD gives about 92 EUR. The inverse column exists precisely to catch this: it shows what one unit of the target is worth in the source, so if the two numbers look implausibly far apart the rate has been entered the wrong way round. Getting it backwards is the single most common error in a manual conversion.
Any cost attached to converting: a commission, a spread, a card markup or a transfer charge, expressed as a percentage. Real fee structures are rarely a flat percentage — they often have a fixed component, a minimum, and a tiered rate — so this is an approximation rather than a quote. Its purpose is to stop a conversion from ignoring the cost entirely, which is what a comparison based on the mid-market rate quietly does. For a real payment, use the fee your provider states.
Only as a label. The tool does not look codes up, so it will accept anything you type and will not correct a mistake or reject an unknown one. That is deliberate: validating codes would mean carrying a currency table that goes out of date, and the arithmetic does not care what the currencies are called. It does mean a typo is your responsibility — if a row is labelled USD when it should be CAD, the figure beside it will be wrong and nothing will warn you.
Read the figure rather than trusting its length. Most currencies are quoted to two decimal places, some to none, and a few to three, so six places here are a precision to look through, not a sum you would write down. For a payment or an invoice, round to the convention of the receiving currency and to the number of places the counterparty expects, because a mismatched rounding is itself a discrepancy.
Only as the calculator, never as the source. Tax authorities generally require a specific rate from a specific date or publication, and an amount converted at a rate you typed will not satisfy that unless your rate came from the required place. Use this to check a figure, to compare options, or to see roughly what something costs; keep the bank statement, the invoice or the official rate table as the record you rely on.
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Written and maintained by Md. Nur Hossain Repon.