The headline rate is not the cost
Every provider advertises one number. PayPal says 3.49% plus a fixed fee. Stripe says 2.9% plus 30 cents. Those are real, and they are also the smaller half of the story on a cross-border invoice, because two more charges arrive after them.
The first is the cross-border surcharge. PayPal adds 1.50% when the payer is international, Stripe adds 1.5% on an international card. Nothing about the work changed; the card was issued somewhere else.
The second is the currency conversion, and it is the one that hides. It is not billed as a fee. It is taken as a margin on the exchange rate, so the line on your statement looks like a rate rather than a charge. PayPal's published conversion fee is 4.00%. A retail bank's spread is usually somewhere between 1.5% and 4%. Wise publishes a floor of 0.23% and charges more on most corridors.
- Percentage fee. The number on the pricing page.
- Cross-border surcharge. Added because your client is somewhere else.
- Conversion margin. Taken on the rate, not shown as a fee.
- Fixed and payout fees. Small on a large invoice, painful on a small one.
Why a fixed fee is a percentage in disguise
A 0.49 fixed fee on a 2,000 invoice is nothing. On a 60 invoice it is 0.8%, on top of everything else. If you bill in small amounts, the fixed fees and the minimum withdrawal charges decide the ranking, not the headline percentage. Run your real invoice size through the calculator rather than a round number, because the order of the list changes with the amount.
The second column: who the invoice comes from
Cost is one axis and it is the one everybody compares. The other axis decides whether you can take the work at all.
PayPal, Wise, Payoneer, Stripe and a bank wire are rails. They move money. The invoice is still yours to issue, which means you need to be registered to issue it where you live. For plenty of freelancers that is already true and the cheapest rail simply wins.
It is not true for everyone, and it is the point where a client says they can only pay against an invoice from a registered business. Invoicing without a company is the other route: Ruul is the legal counterparty, so the document the client receives comes from a registered entity while the work and the relationship stay yours, in 190 countries.
That is why Ruul will not always be at the top of the cost ranking, and the tool does not pretend otherwise. On a straight comparison of percentages, a cheap transfer rail usually wins. It just does not issue the invoice.
What this tool does not do
It uses published rates, read on the date shown under the results, and providers change pricing without telling anyone. It does not model volume discounts, negotiated pricing, promotional rates, or the dispute and chargeback fees that appear when a payment goes wrong. The bank wire row is a typical range rather than a quoted rate, because the beneficiary fee, the intermediary fee and the spread all depend on the two banks involved.
Treat the output as a way to see the shape of the cost, not as a quote. Before you commit to a route for a large invoice, check the current rate at the source links on each row.
Getting the money in, after the comparison
If the answer is that you need the invoice itself handled rather than just the transfer, invoicing through Ruul issues it, shows you whether it has been paid and sends the reminders. Payouts arrive in 140+ currencies, usually within one business day of the client's payment clearing. There is no setup cost and no monthly fee: Ruul charges 5% of each transaction, which is the figure in the Ruul row above.
If the same client pays you every month, recurring invoices raise it on a schedule rather than you rebuilding the document twelve times. Keeping the paperwork in one place also makes the year-end easier: documents and transaction summaries stay exportable instead of scattered across five providers.
Still deciding what to charge before any of this matters? The hourly rate calculator gives you a starting number, and the invoice generator turns it into a document you can send.
