That is the default answer, and it is right most of the time. It is not right every time.
When Wise is the right app
Open Wise when you are sending from your UK bank account into a foreign bank account, and any of the following is true.
- The receiver has a working bank account and does not need cash in hand.
- You are sending as euros, whether to Germany, France, Ireland, Lithuania or elsewhere in the eurozone, and you are sending more than about £300.
- You are sending more than about £500 on almost any route.
- You are sending to India into a normal Indian bank account or a UPI ID, for family maintenance, education or medical costs.
- You are sending to a big established route (India, Philippines, Nigeria into a bank account) and you want the money there in seconds, with a fee you can see.
On all of these, Wise gives you the real exchange rate, the one you would find on Google if you searched it right now, and a small visible fee on the fee line. The fee is a small fixed part in the send currency plus a small percentage of the amount, so it scales with the send. On a euro send of a couple of hundred pounds the visible fee is around a pound; on a send of a few thousand it is still well under half a percent. Wise's edge on the amount that arrives is small on a two-hundred-pound send and clearer on the bigger one.
Wise is also fast on the routes it treats as instant. Wise itself says most transfers arrive in under half a minute. Wise also says a send over a weekend or before a holiday may only get processed on the next working day. It shows a delivery estimate before you press send, so read that first if the rent is due Monday morning. To see what each app delivered on one route on a recent Friday, check the latest Friday number.
When to open something else
Change any part of the send and the maths quietly changes with it. On these sends, a specialist can beat Wise.
Small sends of pounds to zloty, on next-working-day delivery
On small sends to Polish and Romanian bank accounts, check TransferGo. Its pricing page lists next-working-day delivery to bank accounts from 0.2%, and the price you see may be a new-customer one. Wise's own delivery estimate on GBP to zloty runs longer than the seconds it takes on most other routes. Open TransferGo's own calculator on the same amount before you press send; if it delivers more zloty or lei than Wise, send with TransferGo.
Direct to M-Pesa in Kenya
Wise sends to a bank account in Kenya and to an M-Pesa wallet. Ask your family which one they use. Wise's own pages give two different limits for one transfer into an M-Pesa wallet: 
150,000 shillings on one page and 250,000 shillings on another. If you are sending more than about £850, check the limit in your app first.
For M-Pesa, check Sendwave and WorldRemit too, because Sendwave can deliver more than Wise on a small send. Sendwave charges no upfront fee on sends to Kenya and takes its cost from a small gap in the rate. WorldRemit shows the fee in the app the moment you type the amount in.
An app going direct to M-Pesa puts the shillings in a phone rather than a branch queue. The Friday number for Kenya shows who delivered the most shillings on the same £300. If the money is going to M-Pesa, type the same amount into Wise and Sendwave and send with the one that delivers more. If the destination is a Kenyan bank account, Wise is fine and close on the total.
Nigeria, if LemFi delivers more that week
Wise usually leads the standard comparison feeds on Nigeria. LemFi does not appear in those feeds, so check both apps on the same amount before you press send. If LemFi is delivering more naira, use LemFi. If Wise is delivering more, use Wise. Keep both installed. The most recent Nigeria Friday number has the amount each app delivered on the same £200.
Pounds to euros under about £500, if you have Revolut and it is a weekday
Revolut's free Standard plan lets you convert money at Revolut's own exchange rate with no fee up to a monthly limit, on weekdays only. Outside that free amount, or over a Saturday and Sunday, Revolut adds a markup to the rate. The exact monthly limit and the weekend markup are set by Revolut and change from time to time; if the transfer matters, check the current numbers on 
Revolut's own fees page before you press send. Revolut sets its own rate, so type the same amount into Revolut and Wise and send with the one that delivers more euros.
Cash in hand at a village agent
Wise pays into bank accounts and wallets. It does not pay out cash. If your family member needs paper money in a place that only has a Western Union or MoneyGram counter for miles, use the Post Office counter, which is Western Union behind a Post Office logo, or Western Union directly. It costs a small extra in the rate. It is worth it for the service.
The one Wise trick worth knowing
If you already know that a chunk of euros is coming up soon, for family, for rent, for a trip, and today's rate is one you would take, you can convert pounds to euros inside your Wise account at the same fee you would pay to send them to a bank later. The euros sit in your Wise account until you need them, and you send them across when the moment comes. You are not paying the fee twice. You are paying the fee once, at the moment of your choice, and locking today's rate.
That is what people mean when they call it the swap trick. It lets you time the rate, but you still pay the fee. If you have no view on where the rate is going, do not bother with it. If you have watched the rate slide against you for three weeks, it is the tool that costs you nothing extra to use.
What Wise hides less well than its own marketing suggests
The fee scales with the amount
Wise's fee is a small fixed part in the send currency plus a small percentage of what you are sending. On a small euro send the visible cost sits a shade under one percent; on a bigger send it falls closer to a third of a percent. In pounds, that means the fee grows with the send even as its share falls. It is still much less than a bank keeps on the same send in a worse rate, but if you were expecting a flat 99 pence forever, that is not what Wise does. Read the fee line every time.
The Wise debit card charges you after £250 a month at the ATM
The card itself costs £7 to order and nothing to hold. Wise charges no fee on the first £250 you take out of an ATM abroad in a calendar month. After that, Wise charges 2.69 percent of anything above £250. Two ATM pulls of £200 on a Lagos trip carry no Wise ATM fee on the first pull and about £4 on the second. The ATM's owner may add its own fee.
Split larger cash needs across months, or pay by card in shops. Paying by card is free only in a currency you hold in your Wise account. In any other currency, Wise charges a conversion fee.
Where your money sits
Wise the UK entity is Wise Payments Limited, authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority as an electronic money institution, firm reference 900507. It is not a UK bank. Your Wise balance is safeguarded by law. Wise keeps it apart from its own money, as cash at banks and in assets such as government bonds. It is not covered by the UK bank compensation scheme the way money sitting in a normal UK bank account is.
The verdict
For a UK-to-abroad bank-to-bank send of any real size, Wise is the app to open first. The fee is on the screen, the rate is close to the one on Google, and the money usually arrives in seconds.
Before a small send to Poland or Romania, check TransferGo against Wise on the same amount. Do the same with Sendwave for direct-to-M-Pesa in Kenya, and with LemFi for Nigeria. For cash in hand at a village agent, the Post Office counter and Western Union behind it are still the right thing to open.
Whichever app you use, the number that matters is the naira, the pesos, the euros or the shillings that arrive in the other account. Open two apps, type the same amount into both, and send with the one that puts more of them there.
Corrections
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Wise's speed helps on a Sunday night when the rent is due on Monday, and gave Wise's speed figure for certain routes only. Wise says a weekend send may only get processed on the next working day, and its figure covers all transfers, so the page now says this.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page called Revolut in the UK a non-bank, said it converts at the real rate, and said its euro sends arrive in seconds. Revolut in the UK is a bank and sets its own rate, and we found no Revolut source for the speed, so the page now says this and the speed line is gone.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Wise keeps balances in ring-fenced accounts at partner banks, the same shape as TransferGo and other non-bank apps. Wise says it keeps the money as cash at banks and in assets such as government bonds, and TransferGo protects money differently, so the page now says this and the comparison is gone.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said paying by Wise card in shops costs nothing, and that a first ATM pull costs nothing. Card spending is free only in a currency you hold, a conversion fee applies otherwise, and the ATM's owner may add its own fee.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said no app can pay out cash where only a Western Union or MoneyGram counter exists. Western Union does this from the UK, so the line now says only that Wise does not pay out cash.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a specialist beats Wise most weeks, told readers to open TransferGo for small sends to Poland or Romania under a "Tomorrow" tier name its pages do not show, and treated a LemFi rate near the CBN rate as the sign that LemFi wins. The prices checked did not support these lines, so the page now says a specialist can beat Wise and tells readers to compare both apps on the same amount.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said we see Wise transfers arrive in a few seconds, that Wise is faster than almost everything else, and that a lot of Nigerian senders use LemFi. We do not make these sends and have no count or comparison behind these lines, so they are gone.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page linked "the most recent Friday number" to the 24 July Kenya issue and called its figures a live send. The link now goes to the latest issue, and the line says what an issue shows: what each app delivered on one route on one Friday.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Wise does not send to an M-Pesa wallet, and told readers not to use it for one. Wise does pay into M-Pesa, and its own pages give two different limits for one transfer, 150,000 and 250,000 shillings, so the page now says this and tells readers to compare Wise with Sendwave.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said an M-Pesa wallet is where most of your family in Kenya holds and spends money. No primary source counts this, so the page now tells the reader to ask the family which they use.
- 2026-07-27: Removed dated route-specific numbers to keep the review accurate as rates move. Specific arrival amounts on named dates (naira on £200 to Nigeria, euros on £200 and £1,000 to Germany, zloty on £200 to Poland, shillings on £200 to Kenya) have been reframed as structural framing or replaced with cross-links to the most recent Friday number for that route. Wise's own speed statistic has been softened from a named percentage to a stable structural claim. The fee-scales-with-amount section now expresses the mechanic in percentages rather than a dated per-route pence figure.
- 2026-07-13: An earlier version of this page named specific competitor-side figures (TransferGo's GBP to zloty send, and a direct-to-M-Pesa Kenya send on Sendwave or WorldRemit) that were not captured from those providers' own live surfaces on the day, described TransferGo's "Tomorrow" tier as "often at zero fee" against TransferGo's own "from 0.2 percent" bank-to-bank pricing, and put Wise's GBP to zloty delivery at "up to a day" against Wise's own estimate of more than a day on that route. The specific unsourced competitor numbers have been removed or reframed as directional, TransferGo's fee line has been corrected to about 0.2 percent, and the Wise GBP to zloty speed line has been widened to match Wise's own estimate.