One answer, built from four honest feeds and a cost model that refuses to cheat. We price your bank, every transfer app, and the real stablecoin route for your exact corridor and amount, and we show the true all-in cost of each, including the fees most comparison tools quietly leave out.
Every price on the site traces back to one of these, and each is labeled live or indicative so you always know how current it is.
The real mid-market exchange rate, the midpoint between buy and sell before anyone takes a cut. Every path is measured against it, so a bank's hidden FX margin has nowhere to hide.
Mid-market rates from the fawazahmed0 currency-api (public domain); fallback rates by Exchange Rate API (exchangerate-api.com).
The live all-in cost of the mainstream money-transfer apps for your exact corridor and amount: the up-front fee plus their own FX margin, combined into one honest percentage.
Provider fee tables, priced per corridor and amount.
What a licensed local exchange actually pays out per USDT or USDC in the destination currency, the number that decides whether the crypto route is genuinely cheaper or just looks it.
Destination-market exchange prices (some venues feed the router quote only).
The real cost to move a stablecoin across the chain (a couple of dollars on Tron, cents elsewhere). Small, but we count it, because an honest all-in leaves nothing out.
Live network fee estimates per chain.
The crypto route is not one clean number. It is a sequence of small costs, and honesty means counting every one, then quoting the total as a range from best to worst case.
Buy the stablecoin (the on-ramp spread)
You convert your money into USDT or USDC. The exchange takes a spread above the mid-rate. First cost.
Move it on-chain (the network fee)
A flat, real cost to send the coin across the chain. A couple of dollars on Tron, cents on cheaper networks.
Sell into local currency (the off-ramp spread)
The recipient's exchange pays out the destination currency per coin, below the mid-rate. Second spread.
Cash out to a bank account (the withdrawal fee)
Getting the local currency from the exchange into a usable bank account carries its own fee.
Pay any local tax
Some destinations tax the transfer or the crypto gain. It falls on the recipient, so it belongs in the all-in.
Add those legs at their best and worst and you get a spread, not a point. We publish the full low–high all-in range and compare against the typical case. If a corridor's honest typical stablecoin cost still beats the bank and the best app, we route you there. If it does not, we say so.
A real example. India withholds 1% TDS at source and taxes any crypto gain at 30% (Section 115BBH / 194S). The recipient bears both. We fold that 1% straight into the all-in cost for that corridor, because the recipient really pays it.
For corridors that start in British pounds or euros, the deepest and cheapest stablecoin liquidity is priced in US dollars, not in the send currency. So the honest route takes two hops: your GBP or EUR converts to USD first, then into the stablecoin, then out into the destination currency.
That extra hop adds a small conversion spread. We include it in the all-in cost rather than pretending the money jumps currencies for free, which is exactly the kind of shortcut that makes other tools' crypto quotes look better than they are.
For some corridors, once every stablecoin friction is counted honestly, a mainstream transfer app comes out ahead, and occasionally even a bank does. When that happens we route you there and tell you plainly. A tool that always concludes crypto is cheapest is not comparing honestly, it is selling one.
When an app wins, we route to the app.
When even the bank wins, we say so.
When the honest crypto route wins, it is believable.
A word on risk. The stablecoin route carries real risks that a bank transfer does not: price movement during the transfer, and in some markets enforcement risk that can freeze a recipient's account. We show the specific risk for each corridor so the cheapest path is never the reckless one by default.