Most Wise-versus-Revolut comparisons pick a winner in the first paragraph and then spend a thousand words justifying it. That is not useful, because the two products genuinely diverge depending on your pattern of use, and the crossover point is specific enough that you can work out which side of it you are on in about a minute.
Here is the actual mechanic.
They Price Currency Differently
Wise gives you the mid-market rate, the number you see on Google, every day of the week, and charges a visible percentage fee on top, typically in the range of 0.33% to 0.6% depending on the corridor. No plan tiers, no monthly allowance, no distinction between Tuesday and Sunday. Every conversion costs the same proportion of itself.
Revolut gives you a free monthly foreign exchange allowance, around £1,000 or $1,000 equivalent on the free Standard plan, and within it your conversions are effectively near-free at close to the interbank rate. Above the allowance, a fee applies. And at weekends, when wholesale currency markets are closed, Revolut adds a markup to protect against rate movement.
So one is flat-rate and predictable; the other is free up to a ceiling and then is not. That is the whole difference, and everything below follows from it.
Approximate cost of converting a given amount in a single month, free plans, weekday
View as a table
| Converted in a month | Wise | Revolut (free plan) |
|---|---|---|
| Under £1,000 | About £4 | Free |
| £1,000 to £3,000 | About £11 | About £12 |
| Over £3,000 | About £22 | About £38 |
| Any amount, weekend | No markup | Markup applies |
Schematic shape, not quoted pricing. Allowances and fees vary by region, plan and currency pair.
Which Side of the Crossover Are You On?
Wise fits better if...
- You convert more than about £1,000 in a typical month
- You send occasional large amounts, deposits, property, relocation
- You convert at weekends, because there is no weekend markup
- You receive money in foreign currencies and want local account details so payments arrive domestically
- You want a cost you can verify against the mid-market rate rather than estimate
- You would rather not manage a subscription tier
Revolut fits better if...
- You convert small amounts and stay under the free allowance
- You make lots of tiny transfers, splitting bills, sending £50 to a friend abroad
- You want one app for spending, budgeting, stocks, crypto and transfers
- You are already paying for a Premium or Metal tier for other reasons
- You convert on weekdays and rarely at weekends
The weekend thing is real and worth understanding
ATM Withdrawals
Both give you a monthly fee-free allowance and then charge beyond it, and the exact thresholds differ by region and card type. Broadly: each offers something in the region of a couple of hundred pounds or dollars per month free, after which a percentage fee applies, roughly 1.75% plus a small fixed amount on Wise, around 2% on Revolut's Standard plan.
Neither reimburses the local ATM operator's own fee, which is a separate charge set by whoever owns the machine. That is the one you avoid by using bank-operated ATMs rather than the standalone machines in tourist areas.
Worth more than either allowance
The Case for Holding Both
This is what a lot of frequent travellers actually do, and it is not a cop-out.
Wise becomes the account where the money lives: the multi-currency balance you convert into in planned chunks, the one that receives foreign income through local account details, the one you use for anything large. Revolut becomes the day-to-day app for small conversions inside the free allowance and for the features Wise does not have.
Both accounts are free to open and neither charges a monthly fee on its base tier, so the cost of holding both is nothing but the setup time. For anyone spending significant time abroad, having a second card in a different drawer is worth it for redundancy alone, because cards get blocked, swallowed, and demagnetised, and a backup turns a crisis into an inconvenience.
Verify before you switch
The Short Answer
If you are moving meaningful sums, receiving foreign income, or converting at weekends, Wise is the more predictable and usually the cheaper choice, and the cost is checkable against a rate you can look up independently. If you are converting small amounts on weekdays and want a single app that also does your budgeting and stock trades, Revolut's free allowance is genuinely hard to beat.
Most people who travel regularly end up holding both, and using each for the thing it is good at. If you are opening a Wise account, our Wise referral code page covers how the fee-free first transfer is applied.
The Other Half of Travel Costs
Currency is one layer. On any trip longer than a few days the larger cost is where you sleep, and it is the one that responds to structural change rather than optimisation. HomeExchange is a membership platform where verified members stay in each other's homes with no nightly cost, using either simultaneous swaps or a points system. Canadian readers can also pair Wealthsimple Cash as an everyday card: no foreign transaction fee and 1% back.