Sri Lanka Remittance Rate Calculator — Best Rate to Send Money Home Today

Every remittance service prices the same transfer in two places, and most people only look at one. The first is the transfer fee, which is advertised. The second is the exchange-rate margin — the gap between the mid-market rate and the rate you are actually given — which is not advertised anywhere. A “zero fee” transfer at a rate 3% below mid costs more than a 0.65% fee at the mid rate. This calculator adds both together, which is exactly how the World Bank measures remittance prices in its Remittance Prices Worldwide database.

The benchmark is the mid-market rate: the midpoint between the buy and sell price at which banks trade with each other, with no margin added. Nobody sells retail at that rate, which is the point — it is the only rate that is identical for every provider, so it makes their prices comparable. This page pulls it live from a free USD-base feed and cross-rates it into rupees using the identity LKR per 1 X = (USD→LKR) ÷ (USD→X), with Central Bank of Sri Lanka indicative rates as the reference.

For each channel the arithmetic runs in four steps:

1. Fee. A flat fee, a percentage of the amount, or both. Flat fees are held in US dollars and converted to your sending currency at the mid rate, so a corridor is never compared against a fee quoted in the wrong money.
2. Rate offered.The mid rate less the channel's typical margin — offered = mid × (1 − margin).
3. Rupees delivered. The fee comes off first, then what is left is converted — net = (send − fee) × offered. That ordering matters: the fee is charged in your currency, so it never gets the benefit of the exchange rate.
4. Total cost. What a mid-market conversion with no fee would have delivered, minus what actually arrives, as a share of the benchmark.

That total splits cleanly into the part lost to the fee and the part lost to the rate, and both are shown per channel, because they are the two things you can negotiate separately.

The page also reconciles itself against the published World Bank method as a check. The World Bank quotes headline cost as fee share plus margin share. That sum is very slightly too high, because the fee is never converted at the mid rate. The exact identity is cost = f + m − f × m, where f is the fee share and m is the margin. On a 0.22% fee and a 2.6% margin, the headline reads 2.820% and the exact figure is 2.815%. Both are shown under the results so the arithmetic on this page can be checked against the published one.

One honest limit. The exchange rate here is live; the fees and margins are typical published levels read off each provider on 2026-08-13, because none of them publish machine-readable pricing and all of them vary it by corridor, payout method and promotion. So every row is editable: type in the rate and fee you were actually quoted and the whole ranking recalculates against your real numbers.

All three use the rates verified on 2026-08-13: 1 USD = Rs 335.52 and 1 AED = Rs 91.36. Run them through the calculator above to reproduce them.

Typical pricing verified 2026-08-13. Margin is how far below the mid-market rate the channel's rate usually sits.

Flat fees are shown in US dollars and converted to your sending currency inside the calculator. Walk-in Gulf exchange houses appear only on the six Gulf corridors.

• World Bank — Remittance Prices Worldwide, cost methodology (fee + FX margin)
• World Bank — Remittance Prices Worldwide database
• Central Bank of Sri Lanka — daily indicative exchange rates
• Department of Foreign Exchange, Sri Lanka — rules on formal remittance channels
• open.er-api.com — free mid-market rate feed used for the live rate
• United Nations — SDG 10.c, the 3% remittance cost target
• Wise — published pricing
• Remitly (Economy) — published pricing
• Western Union — published pricing
• MoneyGram — published pricing
• Gulf exchange house — published pricing
• Sri Lankan bank partner channel — published pricing

Exchange rates on this page are live. Channel fees and exchange-rate margins were last cross-checked against the pricing pages above on 2026-08-13 and are reviewed quarterly. They are indicative, not live quotes — use the quote-entry box on any row for an exact comparison. This page is a price comparison, not financial advice.