Is a $0 International Wire Actually Free?
Disclosure: Chase and PayPal pay us nothing. Wise, which is the cheapest route we could verify here, pays us through a marked link on another page — there is no paid link on this one. Full disclosure.
Every other page on this site costs money coming in. This one costs it going out. You owe a developer in Lisbon $5,000, and Chase will wire it for $0. Wise wants $21.43 for the same transfer. The cheaper of those two is not the one you think, and working out which it is turns on a single number that Chase does not print.
The answer
The $0 is real. The fee is not the cost. Chase wins only if its exchange-rate margin is under 0.43% — and it does not publish that figure anywhere we could find.
- 🏦Chase charges $0 only on a foreign-currency wire of $5,000 or more, sent online. Send the same money in US dollars and it is $40. The $0 exists only where a conversion does.
- ✅Wise: $21.43 on $5,000, measured in its own calculator today. That is 0.4286%, converting at the mid-market rate.
- 💳PayPal: $219.20. A 2% payout fee capped at $20, then a conversion spread PayPal itself prints as 4.00%. Ten times Wise, and it is the only one of the three whose total you can calculate in advance.
- ❗The break-even is 0.43%. If Chase keeps more than that on the exchange, its $0 costs you more than Wise’s $21.43. We could not find out whether it does.
Jump to: What Chase actually charges The same $5,000, three ways The number that decides it What we could not verify Which one are you?
What Chase actually charges
Four prices sit in the same fee schedule, and the $0 is the one that gets quoted. Here is the whole list, from Chase’s published fees for a Total Checking account:
| How you send it | Fee |
|---|---|
| Foreign currency, online, $5,000 or more | $0 |
| Foreign currency, online, under $5,000 | $5 |
| US dollars, online | $40 |
| Either currency, sent by a banker | $50 |
Read the first and third rows together. The transfer that costs nothing is the one where Chase converts your money. The transfer where no conversion happens costs $40.
We are not going to tell you why it is arranged that way, because we do not know and Chase does not say. What we can say is what the schedule does: the waiver applies precisely to the transaction that carries a second, unpublished price, and not to the one that carries only the published one.
The same $5,000, three ways
$5,000 is the threshold where Chase’s fee reaches zero, so it is the only amount at which the three routes can be compared on equal terms. Everything below was read or measured on 4 October 2026.
| Route | Fee | Conversion | $5,000 costs you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chase, foreign currency, online | $0 | Rate not published | $0 + unknown |
| Wise | Built into the rate | Mid-market, published | $21.43 |
| PayPal international payout | 2%, capped at $20 | 4.00%, published | $219.20 |
Wise: we put $5,000 USD to EUR through Wise’s own calculator on 4 October 2026 and it returned a total fee of
21.43 USD — 0.4286%. Measured, not quoted.PayPal: the payout fee is
2% of $5,000 = $100, which exceeds PayPal’s own $20 cap, so it is $20. The remaining $4,980 is converted at the 4.00% spread PayPal publishes = $199.20. Total $219.20, or 4.384%.
Sources. Chase Total Checking fee schedule — $0 per transfer in foreign currency via chase.com or the Chase Mobile app when the amount is equal to $5,000 or more; $5 in foreign currency below that; $40 in US dollars; $50 if a banker sends it. (This is the personal-account schedule; business accounts are priced separately and are not costed here.) PayPal US merchant fees — international payouts at 2% of the total transaction amount, USD cap $20.00, and a 4.00% conversion spread whose definition names PayPal Payouts explicitly. The Wise figure is our own measurement; two earlier measurements, on other pairs, are shown here.
The number that decides it
A currency conversion has two prices. The fee, which everyone prints. And the rate — the gap between what a currency is worth on the open market and what you are actually given for it. That gap is not a fee in any legal sense, so nothing requires anyone to show it to you.
Wise charges $21.43 on $5,000 and converts at the mid-market rate, which means the $21.43 is the whole price. Chase charges nothing and converts at a rate of its own. So the comparison comes down to one question with one number in it:
If it keeps less, the $0 wire is genuinely cheaper than Wise. If it keeps more, the $0 wire costs you more than $21.43 while appearing to cost nothing. 0.43% of $5,000 is $21.43 — that is the entire decision, and it is the one figure the fee schedule does not contain.
This is not an accusation. Banks not publishing an FX margin is ordinary practice rather than misconduct, and we have no evidence about the size of Chase’s. The useful statement is narrower: two of these three let you work out your total before you send, and one does not. On a site built entirely on figures a reader can check, that is what settles it.
What happens if you avoid the conversion
You can sidestep the rate question by sending US dollars instead, so that no conversion happens on your side. Chase charges $40 for that, which is more than Wise’s $21.43 and considerably more than $0.
It also does not remove the conversion. The money still has to become euros or pesos somewhere, and it now does so at the other end, at whatever rate your freelancer’s own bank gives them, possibly with a receiving fee on top. We have not costed that side and are not going to guess at it — the rates vary by country and by bank, and this site does not publish numbers it has not read. What is certain is the structure: a cost you cannot see has become a cost the person you hired cannot avoid, and you chose it for them.
That shape recurs throughout this site. A free tier is rarely a gift. It is usually a relocation. It turns up in invoicing software that is free until a card is involved, and in booking software that is free until someone pays through it. Here the cost does not move to a card rate. It moves to a person.
What we could not verify
Chase’s exchange-rate margin. Not published as a number on its fee schedule. We searched the page for rate, spread, markup and margin, and the only hit was a Foreign Exchange Rate Adjustment Fee attached to ATM withdrawals, which is a different product and is not given as a figure either. We have not quoted a number for Chase anywhere on this site, and anyone who quotes one to you should be asked where they read it.
What a receiving bank charges. Not costed. It decides whether sending US dollars is kinder or crueller to your freelancer than converting at your end, and we do not have the figures.
Other US banks and business accounts. We costed Chase because its schedule is public and specific, and the personal-account one at that. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase’s own business accounts are not covered by anything on this page.
Wise varies by pair and by day. $21.43 is one measurement, USD to EUR, on 4 October 2026. Wise says conversion starts at 0.23% and varies, and our own earlier measurements came out at 0.458% and 0.488% on other pairs. Expect the break-even above to move by a tenth of a percent or so; it will not move by a whole one.
Disclosure. Chase and PayPal pay us nothing and we have no arrangement with either.
Wise approved our affiliate application on 27 August 2026. There is no paid link on this page, but there is one at the end of our Wise breakdown, marked as paid, and Wise pays us if a reader uses it and subsequently sends money. Wise has paid us nothing to date.
So a page that ends up favouring Wise is written by someone who gets paid when you use Wise, and you should weigh it accordingly. Two things are offered against that. The Wise figure is the one number here anybody can reproduce — its calculator is public and takes under a minute. And the conclusion is deliberately left open rather than closed in our favour: if Chase’s margin is under 0.43%, Chase wins, and we have said so in the verdict rather than burying it. If any of this is wrong, tell us and we will correct it in public.
Which one are you?
Which one are you?
💼 I pay an overseas contractor every month
Ask Chase what rate it will give you, in writing, before the next one. If it beats mid-market less 0.43% you are already fine. Twelve $5,000 payments is $257 a year through Wise and $2,630 through PayPal, so the one route worth ruling out immediately is PayPal.
🏦 I bank with Chase and want to keep it simple
Then at least send in the foreign currency, not dollars. Dollars cost $40 and move the conversion onto your freelancer; foreign currency over $5,000 costs nothing up front. Simple is a legitimate reason to pay a bit more. It is not a reason to pay $40 for the privilege.
🧾 I send one payment a year
Use whatever you already have. The whole argument above is worth about $20 on a single $5,000 transfer, unless Chase’s margin is much larger than we have assumed. Worth ten minutes once; not worth opening an account for.
📊 I want to see every route at once
Eighteen routes are costed in the calculator, and the full ranking of what it costs to be paid is in the summary table. This page is the paying-out side of the same arithmetic.
What to do about it
There is one action here, and it takes a phone call. Ask your bank what exchange rate it applies to an outgoing wire, and ask for the answer as a percentage away from the mid-market rate. You are entitled to ask, the person on the phone can usually find out, and the answer converts the unknown in this article into a number you can put next to 0.43%.
If they will not tell you, that is also information. The three companies on this page all charge something; only one of them makes you phone up to discover how much.