Original research
The Remittance Cost Index 2026.
We price every corridor we serve, then publish what it actually costs — fee, margin and delivery time. Free to cite with attribution.
- 44
- Corridors measured
- 20
- Settling in minutes
- 2.3%
- Median all-in cost
- Monthly
- Refresh cadence
Four things the advertised fee never tells you.
2.3%
Median all-in cost
Across the 40 corridors we price, the median all-in cost of a 500-unit consumer transfer is 2.3% once exchange-rate margin is included — roughly three times the median advertised fee.
71%
Cost hidden in FX
On corridors marketed as zero-fee, an average of 71% of total cost sits in the exchange-rate margin rather than a disclosed fee line.
18
Corridors settling in minutes
Eighteen of the 40 corridors we serve settle in minutes, and every one of them relies on a domestic instant rail rather than correspondent banking.
3.1x
Weekend penalty
On corridors without instant rails, transfers initiated after Friday local cut-off take on average 3.1 times longer to arrive than midweek transfers.
How we measure.
For each corridor we capture the indicative payout rate, the mid-market reference rate at the same timestamp, any fixed transfer fee, and the payout methods available. All-in cost is calculated as the difference between the value delivered at mid-market and the amount funded, expressed as a percentage of the amount funded.
Delivery speed is recorded as the observed time from funding confirmation to beneficiary credit, excluding cases held for additional verification. Figures refresh monthly and corridor coverage expands as new payout rails go live.
Journalists and analysts are welcome to reproduce these figures with attribution to TotalRemit.ai and a link to this page. For the underlying corridor data as JSON, see the open rates endpoint.
Every corridor we price.
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