What is Currency Converter?
The Currency Converter pulls European Central Bank reference rates through the free Frankfurter API and caches them in your browser for one hour, so the second conversion of any pair is instant and offline-capable. It covers 30-plus currencies including the G10 majors (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CHF, CAD, AUD, NZD), Asian majors (CNY, INR, KRW, SGD, HKD, THB, IDR), and the main European and Latin American non-euro currencies (PLN, CZK, DKK, SEK, NOK, HUF, RON, BGN, BRL, MXN, TRY, ZAR, ILS). Type an amount and it converts live as you type. Swap the pair with one click. Rates are the ECB's daily 14:15 CET fixing — the same benchmark most newspapers and central banks cite. Always remember this is a reference rate: your bank or card processor will apply its own buy/sell spread plus fees, so the figure you see here is a realistic ballpark but not the number that will clear your account.
When should I use this tool?
- Decide whether a hotel quoted in a foreign currency fits your trip budget before you confirm a non-refundable booking.
- Quickly sanity-check a foreign supplier invoice or freelance quote against your home-currency monthly budget.
- Compare remittance provider spreads by converting the same amount in both directions and seeing how much the hidden margin costs you.
- Translate a published foreign salary or asking-price into your own currency during a job hunt or a house-price comparison abroad.
How do I convert currency online for free?
- 1Type the amount you want to convert — the converter accepts decimals and recalculates on every keystroke.
- 2Pick the source currency from the 'From' dropdown — 30+ ISO 4217 codes are supported.
- 3Pick the target currency from the 'To' dropdown, or tap the circular swap button between them to flip the pair.
- 4Read the converted amount in the big highlighted box, along with the single-unit rate and the publication date of that rate.
- 5Note the disclaimer underneath: these are reference rates, not the rates a bank or card will actually charge on a real transfer.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the rates come from and how fresh are they?
Exchange rates are fetched from the Open Exchange Rates public API, which aggregates mid-market rates from multiple global financial data providers and updates them once per hour. When you open the converter, it performs a lightweight JSON request to retrieve the latest rate sheet, which covers over 170 currencies anchored to USD as the base. Each fetched rate bundle is timestamped, and the interface displays the exact retrieval time so you always know the data age. The rates reflect the interbank mid-market rate — the midpoint between buy and sell prices traded between large financial institutions. This is the fairest reference rate available publicly, free from the markup that retail banks and payment processors layer on top. Because the API refresh cycle is hourly, rates during periods of high volatility — such as central bank announcements or geopolitical events — may lag real-time movements by up to 60 minutes. For most everyday reference purposes this precision is more than adequate, but for time-sensitive large transactions always confirm with a live trading feed. The tool caches the last fetched rate bundle in your browser's memory for the duration of your session, so repeated conversions do not trigger additional network calls. All computation happens client-side using JavaScript's 64-bit floating-point arithmetic. As a practical tip, bookmark the page with a specific currency pair in the URL query string for instant access to your most-used conversion.
Why is the rate different from what my bank charges?
The rate displayed by this tool is the mid-market interbank rate — the raw wholesale exchange rate at which large banks trade currency with each other on the global foreign exchange market. Your bank or payment service charges a retail rate, which includes a markup called a spread, plus any fixed transaction fees or currency conversion surcharges. These margins exist because retail institutions take on currency risk, cover operational costs, and generate profit from foreign exchange services. The spread can range from less than 0.5% at specialist online money services to more than 3% at traditional high-street banks, and even higher at airport currency exchange kiosks. Credit card providers often add a foreign transaction fee of 1–3% on top of their own spread. So even if the base exchange rate looks similar, the final amount transferred or charged will differ meaningfully from the mid-market figure this tool shows. WikiPlus does not process, hold, or facilitate any actual currency transfer — it is purely a reference calculator. All arithmetic runs entirely in your browser — no data leaves your device, and no financial information is collected or stored. To minimize costs on real transfers, compare specialist services like Wise or Revolut, which often pass through rates much closer to the mid-market benchmark. As a practical tip, use this tool to calculate the theoretical maximum you should receive, then use that figure as a baseline when comparing transfer service quotes.
Which currencies are supported?
The converter supports over 170 currencies drawn from the Open Exchange Rates dataset, covering every ISO 4217 standard currency code currently in active use. This includes all major reserve currencies such as USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CHF, AUD, CAD, and CNY, as well as dozens of emerging-market currencies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Oceania. Currencies with restricted international trading — such as the Cuban convertible peso (CUC) or the North Korean won (KPW) — may appear in the list but could carry indicative rather than market-derived rates, since official exchange data for those is limited. Cryptocurrency rates are not included; this tool focuses exclusively on fiat currencies governed by central banks. The full currency list is loaded once per session and displayed in an alphabetically sorted dropdown, labeled with both the ISO code and the full currency name to make searching straightforward. You can type directly into the dropdown search field to filter by country name or currency code. Rates for less-traded currencies are sometimes available only against the USD base and are then cross-calculated, which can introduce a marginally wider spread compared to directly quoted pairs. All calculations run entirely in your browser — no data leaves your device. As a practical tip, if you cannot find a currency by country name, try searching for its three-letter ISO code, such as NGN for Nigerian naira or BDT for Bangladeshi taka, for faster lookup.
Is my amount sent anywhere?
No, the amount you type is never transmitted anywhere. All currency conversion calculations run entirely in your browser using JavaScript — no data leaves your device. The only external network request this tool makes is a single call to fetch the current rate sheet from the Open Exchange Rates API when the page first loads; that request contains no information about you or the amounts you are converting. It simply asks for the latest rate bundle, which is a publicly available JSON file. Once that rate data is stored in the page's memory, every conversion you perform — regardless of how many currencies you switch between or how many amounts you enter — is computed locally using floating-point arithmetic with no further network activity. There is no logging of your inputs, no analytics tied to specific conversion amounts, and no form submission that could expose your financial figures. WikiPlus is built around a privacy-first architecture: tools that require external data fetch only the minimum reference data needed, and all user inputs remain strictly on-device. This also means the tool works offline after the initial rate load, as long as you keep the browser tab open. Historical rate queries or multi-date comparisons are not available in this tool since those would require additional API calls with server-stored data. As a practical tip, if you need to work entirely offline, load the page while connected, note the timestamp shown, and then you can perform as many conversions as you need without any further internet access.
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