The reference rate published by a central bank is a benchmark, not a price. It is what contracts, customs and accounting use. But when you actually change money at a counter, a different number applies — and it is always the one less favourable to you.
Buy rate and sell rate
An exchange bureau posts two rates, and both are written from its point of view, not yours:
- The buy rate is what the bureau pays to buy currency from you. When you are selling euros, this is your rate — and it is always below the mid.
- The sell rate is what the bureau charges to sell currency to you. When you are buying euros, this is your rate — and it is always above the mid.
Which gives the rule worth memorising: the best rate for you is the highest buy rate when you are selling, and the lowest sell rate when you are buying. That is the opposite of what is best for the bureau, which is exactly why it is easy to get backwards.
The spread is the actual price
The gap between the sell and buy rate is the spread, and it is what the bureau earns for moving money in either direction. A commission is often not charged separately at all — the margin is already in the spread.
Concretely: if a bureau buys at 1.14 and sells at 1.19 against another currency, the spread is five cents on every unit. Change money one way and straight back and you would lose roughly that spread, having done nothing at all.
What it costs on a real amount
Half a percent does not sound like much until it is multiplied:
| Amount | 0.5% spread | 3% spread |
|---|---|---|
| €100 | €0.50 | €3 |
| €500 | €2.50 | €15 |
| €5,000 | €25 | €150 |
At a hundred euros the difference is a coffee and walking to a better counter is not worth it. At several thousand — a car, a deposit, a large transfer — the same percentage becomes the reason to compare a few places first.
How to compare properly
Three rules cover almost everything:
- Read the column that applies to you. Comparing one bureau's buy rate against another's sell rate is not a comparison.
- Ask for the final amount, not the rate. A better rate with a one percent commission loses to a worse rate with none.
- Measure against the reference rate. The distance between what you were offered and the published mid rate is the whole cost, expressed in one number.
Why the spread varies so much
It is not arbitrary. A bureau's spread reflects how much it costs to hold that currency: how readily it can be resold, how much cash has to sit in a drawer, and how volatile it is. Widely traded pairs carry thin spreads. Currencies that rarely pass through carry wide ones — which is why buying an exotic currency far from its home market is almost always a poor deal.
Airport counters are the extreme case, and the reason is location rather than currency.
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Frequently asked questions
How an exchange rate is actually set, what a spread costs on a real transaction, what happens when your income and your debt are in different currencies, and what to check before paying or being paid abroad. They explain mechanisms rather than forecast rates, and each one carries the date it was last revised at the top.
No. We publish no forecasts, price targets or trading calls, and no article recommends buying or selling a currency. Exchange rates over short horizons are close to unpredictable, and a site that pretends otherwise is selling something. What the articles do instead is explain the mechanism, so that you can read the news for yourself.
They are written by the kursdanas.rs editorial team. We accept no commissioned or sponsored articles, and advertising has no influence on what is published or on the order of anything in our tables. Where an article states a figure it names the source, and where we get something wrong we correct it and change the revision date shown on the page.