Wire Transfer Fee Calculator

Enter the transfer amount and the outgoing, intermediary, and receiving fees to find the net received.

How it is calculated

Three fees are entered separately. total fees = outgoing_fee + intermediary_fee + receiving_fee, which is the full cost of the wire. The amount that reaches the beneficiary is net received = amount − intermediary_fee − receiving_fee. The outgoing fee is not taken off the received amount, because the tool treats it as a charge your own bank bills you on top of the transfer. If your bank instead deducts it from the amount sent, subtract it yourself. All amounts are in one currency; the tool does not convert currencies or apply an exchange-rate margin. The transfer amount must be above zero and the fees cannot be negative, but any fee may be zero, and every fee box must be filled in. If the intermediary and receiving fees together are larger than the transfer amount, nothing could arrive, so the tool shows no result.

Worked example

You wire 5000 with a 35 outgoing fee from your bank, a 20 correspondent bank fee and a 15 fee charged by the receiving bank. Step 1: total fees = 35 + 20 + 15 = $70.00. Step 2: only the intermediary and receiving fees come out of the transferred money, so the recipient gets 5000 − 20 − 15 = $4,965.00. Step 3: your own cost is the 5000 sent plus the 35 outgoing fee, 5035 in all. Total fees are 1.4% of the amount, a share that rises quickly for small transfers.

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Common mistakes

  • Leaving the intermediary fee at zero because your bank did not quote one. International wires often lose money at a relay bank, so ask about it or enter an estimate. Leave the box empty and there is no result; enter 0 instead.
  • Expecting the net received to subtract the outgoing fee. It does not; that fee is paid by the sender on top, so the figure is what lands in the recipient's account.
  • Ignoring the exchange-rate margin on a cross-currency wire. It is often a larger cost than the flat fees and is not part of this tool.
  • Entering a percentage fee as a flat amount. A 0.5% fee on 5000 must be typed as 25.
  • Sending a small amount without checking the fee stack. If the intermediary and receiving fees alone exceed the amount, the tool shows no result, and even below that the net can be a small fraction of what you sent.

About this calculator

Wire transfers, especially international ones routed through the SWIFT network, typically involve fees at multiple stages rather than a single flat charge: an outgoing fee charged by the sending bank, an intermediary or correspondent bank fee deducted as the funds pass through one or more relay banks on the way to the destination, and a receiving fee charged by the beneficiary's bank on arrival. Domestic wires usually skip the intermediary step and are cheaper as a result.

Because intermediary fees are often deducted directly from the transferred amount rather than billed separately, the sender can rarely predict the exact amount that will land in the recipient's account — which is why businesses handling cross-border payments need to budget for the full fee stack rather than just the fee their own bank quotes. This calculator takes the transfer amount along with the outgoing, intermediary, and receiving fees to compute the total cost (all three fees) and the net amount the recipient receives. The recipient's net is the transfer amount minus the intermediary and receiving fees; the outgoing fee is paid by the sender on top of the transfer, so it counts toward the total cost but is not deducted from what arrives.

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