Checked Friday morning, 7 August: 300 pounds from the UK to an India bank account, sent through five apps with a fresh price this morning. Between the sharpest fresh price and the worst named one, the gap came to 1,831.57 rupees. That is about £14.29.
The number to beat this week is Wise’s. It is not always, but it is today: on 300 pounds Wise put the most rupees on the phone, at the real market rate, with a small fee you can see. The apps that sometimes edge Wise on this route by charging no visible fee (Skrill, WorldRemit) do not have a fresh price in the comparison this morning, so they are not in the table this week.
Here is what each one delivered.
| App | £300 arrives as | Visible fee | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wise | INR 38,188.91 | £2.01 | The sharpest fresh price this morning. Real market rate, visible fee, arrives in seconds. |
| Remitly (regular) | INR 37,994.20 | £1.99 | Second-best of the fresh prices. About 195 rupees behind Wise, or £1.52. The exchange rate takes about 0.5 percent quietly, worth about £1.53 on 300 pounds. |
| Xoom (PayPal) | INR 37,669.52 | £1.99 | About 519 rupees behind Wise, or £4.05. The exchange rate takes about 1.4 percent quietly, worth about £4.07 on 300 pounds. |
| PayPal | INR 36,401.48 | £2.99 | About 1,787 rupees behind Wise, or £13.95. The exchange rate takes about 4.4 percent quietly, worth about £12.96 on 300 pounds. |
| OFX | INR 36,357.34 | £7.00 | The least money arrived. A £7 upfront fee, plus about 3.2 percent in the rate on top. Around £16.30 gone in all. |
| Remitly (first send only) | INR 38,817.00 | £0 | Promotional rate of 129.39 rupees to the pound. Only on your first transfer with Remitly. |
Rates checked Friday 7 August 2026, morning UK time. Wise’s number is from Wise’s live rate feed at around 6:25am UK time, alongside its own price comparison. Wise’s own row in the comparison was sampled at 05:05 UK time. Remitly’s regular rate was sampled at 04:40 UK time, OFX at 04:20, PayPal at 04:35, and Xoom at 02:06. Remitly’s promotional first-transfer rate is taken directly from the Remitly UK site this morning.
To sanity-check the exchange rate, we cross-referenced open.er-api.com, an independent source: it puts the rate at 128.14 rupees to the pound, within 0.02 percent of Wise’s live rate. The rate matches.
Skrill’s last sample in the comparison is from Wednesday 5 August at 15:30 UK time, close to two days old, and WorldRemit’s is from Tuesday 4 August at 18:39 UK time, nearly three days old. Neither is in the table this week. Western Union’s last sample is also from Tuesday 4 August, and its quoted rate sits slightly above the real market rate, which is the shape of a first-transfer promotional rate rather than the regular UK-to-India price, so it is dropped too. LemFi, Taptap Send and Sendwave do not show a price on this route in the comparison today.
What to actually open
If you are a new Remitly customer, take the first-transfer rate. On 300 pounds this morning it would deliver 38,817 rupees, which is 628 rupees more than Wise and 823 rupees more than Remitly’s regular rate. That is about £4.90 you keep by sending on the first-transfer rate rather than at Wise’s. The offer is one send only, so use it on a send you were going to make anyway.
If you already send with Remitly, or you have used up the first send, Wise is the sharper pick on today’s numbers. On 300 pounds Remitly’s regular rate gave 195 rupees less than Wise, worth about £1.52. Small, but going in the wrong direction.
If you want the safest, best-known option and you do not want to open a new app, use Wise. On 300 pounds this week Wise gave the most rupees of any fresh regular price, at the real market rate, with the fee on the screen. The plainness costs you £2.01 upfront and, this week, nothing on top.
Do not open PayPal for this send unless there is no other option. The visible fee looks small at £2.99, but the rate takes about 4.4 percent quietly. On 300 pounds this morning PayPal gave 1,787 rupees less than Wise. That is about £13.95, most of it invisible.
OFX gave the least money on 300 pounds this week. A £7 upfront fee on a 300-pound send is a big proportion, and there is more taken in the rate on top. If you have a bigger transfer to make, look at OFX again on that day; on a 300-pound send it is not the number to open.
One thing the table cannot show
The table is for a bank-deposit send. In India you can also have the money land straight into an account linked to UPI, the phone-to-phone payment system that most people in India now use for everyday spending. Most UK-based apps deposit into a normal bank account and the recipient can then send it into UPI in one tap; a few will deposit to a UPI ID directly if the recipient gives them one. Either way, once the money is in the account, it is one tap away from being spent on a phone.
Bank deposit is the plain answer for most households: the number in the table is what lands, and the recipient chooses whether to move it to UPI afterwards. If your recipient does not use a bank account and asks specifically for a UPI ID or a mobile wallet, check the number inside the app before you send, because the rate on wallet delivery is sometimes a little different.
For the fuller story on picking the right kind of account on the receiving side, see how to send money to India.
Next Friday: another country, another number.