Wise vs PayPal fee calculator

Guide

About the Wise vs PayPal Fee calculator

Sending money abroad is exactly the situation where the headline fee hides the real cost — and the difference between Wise and PayPal is one of the clearest examples. This Wise vs PayPal fee calculator computes the true total cost of each on the same transfer, including the exchange-rate markup that PayPal doesn't show as a line item, so you can see precisely which is cheaper and by how much.

Two very different ways to charge

Wise (formerly TransferWise) built its business on transparency: it charges a small, explicit fee — a fixed amount plus a fraction of a percent that varies by route — and converts your money at the mid-market rate, the real exchange rate you'd find on Google, with zero markup. PayPal works the opposite way. It charges a 5% international transfer fee that's capped at $4.99, which looks cheap, but then it adds roughly a 4% markup to the exchange rate it gives you. That 4% isn't shown as a fee — it's baked into a worse rate — so most people never see it. On a cross-border send where the recipient gets a different currency, that markup is the dominant cost.

What the numbers actually look like

On a $1,000 transfer from US dollars to euros, Wise charges about $9.87. PayPal charges its $4.99 capped fee plus roughly $40 of exchange-rate markup (4% of $1,000) — about $44.99 in total. So Wise saves you around $35 on that single transfer, and because PayPal's 4% markup is uncapped, the saving grows with the amount: on $5,000 the hidden markup alone is about $200. The calculator shows the effective percentage cost for each, so you can see Wise sitting near 1% while PayPal sits near 4.5%. This is the gap the affiliate comparison articles describe but rarely quantify for your specific amount.

When PayPal can actually be cheaper

It's not a clean sweep, and an honest calculator should say so. On very small transfers, Wise's fixed fee — around $7 when sending from the US — is a large share of the amount, while PayPal's costs scale down with the transfer. Below roughly $60, PayPal's capped fee plus markup can come out lower than Wise's fixed-fee-heavy cost. The calculator will show PayPal winning in that range. For the everyday case of sending hundreds or thousands of dollars, though, Wise is dramatically cheaper.

Who this is for

Freelancers paid by overseas clients, people sending money to family abroad, and small businesses paying international contractors all face this choice. The instinct is to trust PayPal because the visible fee looks small, but the exchange-rate markup usually makes it the more expensive option by far. Running your real amount and route here turns that hidden cost into a concrete number. Note that this models a consumer cross-border send; PayPal's business and goods-and-services flows have their own fees, and the exact FX markup can vary slightly at checkout.

Accuracy and notes

We model Wise's per-route fee from its published pricing and PayPal's 5%-capped transfer fee plus the 4% currency-conversion markup from PayPal's official consumer fee schedule, each stamped with a "fees last verified" date. Because the exchange rate itself moves constantly, we compare total cost (which is rate-independent) rather than quoting a live received amount — check the live rate on each service at the moment you send. These are standard published figures; PayPal reserves the right to vary its FX spread per transaction, so treat the result as a close estimate. For a fast, honest read on which service costs less to send money abroad, this side-by-side gives you the answer in seconds.