currency.ae The UAE's home for the world's money

Methodology

How currency.ae works

Everything here reflects exactly what the site does. Where a number carries a caveat, we state it.

Where the rates come from

Live rates are sourced from fastForex, a foreign-exchange data provider, and are mid-market rates — the midpoint of the interbank buy/sell price. This is a reference rate: it is not the price a bank or exchange will give you, which includes their margin.

Updated every 60 seconds

We fetch fresh rates and cache them at the edge for 60 seconds, so everyone who visits within the same minute sees the exact same numbers. The "updated X seconds ago" indicator counts from when we received the data.

How any pair is calculated

We hold every rate as "units per 1 US dollar" and derive any pair by a single division. The dirham is not treated specially — AED is one currency among many, and USD is only the common anchor the maths pivots on. So AED→EUR, GBP→INR, or any other pair is computed the same, honest way.

The 1-day change

The green/red change figure compares the current rate to the previous trading session's close. Because FX markets are shut on weekends and holidays, "yesterday" is often frozen — so we look back over recent days and use the most recent session that actually moved. It's an honest "vs previous close", not a fabricated daily wiggle.

History & the timing verdict

Each pair's chart shows up to 365 daily observations, subject to provider availability — each the provider's daily closing rate (UTC-based), so weekend and holiday gaps are normal — with the live "now" point appended from the 60-second feed. Above it, a one-line verdict describes the selected range (7 days, 30 days, or 1 year) in plain language, by these rules:

The chart's vertical scale never exaggerates: a change under about half a percent renders as a near-flat line, so the picture always agrees with the words.

The cost of exchanging money

Our Typical costs calculator shows what an amount is worth at the mid-market rate, then what you would typically receive once a bank, exchange house, or card adds its margin. It applies a typical proportional margin (the "spread") to the mid-market value — cost = amount × margin — so the estimate stays honest at any amount.

Spread vs. all-in cost. Widely-quoted figures — for example the World Bank's finding that banks are the most expensive way to send money, around 13–15% — are all-in costs on a small (about USD 200) transfer, where a flat fee dominates the percentage. That is not the proportional spread our calculator applies, so we don't use those headline numbers as the margin; we use the typical spread and note that small transfers cost more once flat fees are added on top.

These are the typical, illustrative ranges we use — not quotes, and not tied to any named institution:

As a public benchmark, the UN Sustainable Development Goal 10.c targets remittance costs of under 3% and the elimination of any corridor above 5% — a bar the global average (still above 6%) has yet to meet. It is the neutral frame for why the honest mid-market number matters. See UN SDG 10.

These are typical ranges for orientation, not a quote for any specific transaction, and we name no institution. We review them when the World Bank's figures update. Ranges last reviewed: 25 July 2026.

Crypto data

The crypto section — the market table, each coin's profile, and the AED↔crypto side of the converter — is separate from the fiat rates above and sourced from CoinGecko. One important honesty note: our "no markup, mid-market" promise applies to fiat only. A cryptocurrency has no single interbank midpoint, so for crypto we show the real market price as reported by CoinGecko — sourced and timestamped — never a mid-market or markup-free claim.

Honest disclosures

These are the caveats we make in the product, gathered in one place:

Have a correction? [email protected].

Last reviewed: 23 August 2026.