Starling International Transfer: Fees, Limits and How to Send Money Abroad (2026)

Starling is one of the cheapest UK banks for sending money abroad, and that is not a sentence this site gets to write often. It charges 0.4% on the conversion and a delivery fee starting at 30p, against 3.55% at Lloyds and up to 3.65% at TSB.

On £1,000 to US dollars that works out at about £4.30 with Starling and about £45 with Lloyds. There is no clever framing that makes a high street bank look good next to those numbers, so we are not going to attempt one.

The catches are not about price. Starling only sends to 34 countries, caps you at £10,000 a day, and charges 2% on money arriving from abroad, which is five times what it charges to send. Each of those is enough to rule it out on its own.

This guide sets out what a Starling Bank international transfer really costs across both routes it offers, the full fee list, the limits, the timings, which countries are missing and why that matters more than the price, and when something else is the better answer.

Find the Best and Cheapest Way to Send Money Abroad

A published fee list tells you the rules Starling applies. It cannot tell you what today's rate does to your amount on your route, and on the routes Starling does not cover it cannot tell you anything at all.

Enter your amount and destination below. The comparison shows what each provider delivers to the recipient, which is the single figure that already contains the fee, the conversion margin and any deductions along the way.

If Starling appears in the result, it will usually be at or near the top on price. If it does not appear, the country is not on its list, and that is the answer to the question rather than a gap in the tool.

How Starling Sends Money Abroad

Starling charges two separate things on every international payment. A conversion fee of 0.4% applied to the amount, and a delivery fee that depends on which route you pick. The delivery fee is 30p, 90p or £5.50, and choosing correctly is worth more than most people realise.

Two Ways to Send, Two Different Prices

When you set up a Starling international payment the app offers a choice between a low cost payment and a SWIFT payment. They are genuinely different products using different infrastructure, and the price gap between them is roughly eighteen times on the delivery fee alone.

The low cost route hands your money to a partner bank inside the destination country, which then makes what is effectively a domestic payment at the far end. It costs 30p across most of the eurozone and to the United States, and 90p to the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The SWIFT route sends the payment bank to bank through the correspondent network, which is how traditional international transfers have always worked. Starling charges a flat £5.50 for it to every country and labels it the priority option.

Starling states that the low cost route is cheaper and in most cases arrives on the same day as SWIFT, which removes the usual reason for paying more. On the countries where the local network exists, the £5.50 buys you a different set of rails and no measurable benefit.

The 0.4% Is On Top of the Delivery Fee

This is the part the delivery fee table hides. The 30p is not the price of the payment, it is the price of moving it. Starling separately applies 0.4% to the exchange rate on every conversion, and that charge sits on top of whichever delivery fee you selected.

On £1,000 the 0.4% comes to £4, which makes the real total £4.30 rather than 30p. That is still among the cheapest prices available anywhere in UK banking, and it is fourteen times the number that appears in the published fee table.

Every provider splits its price this way, with a small visible fee and a larger charge inside the rate. Starling is unusual only in how small the second part is: 0.4% against 2.2% at HSBC and 3.55% at Lloyds. Wise removes it entirely by converting at the mid-market rate. How the mechanism works across the market is explained in the guide to the mid-market exchange rate.

Only 34 Countries and 17 Currencies

Starling reaches 34 countries in 17 currencies, which sounds substantial until you read the list. It is mostly Europe, plus the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa and Turkey.

India is not on it. Nor is Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Morocco or the UAE. Those routes account for a very large share of the money leaving the UK each year, and for the people who send it, Starling's pricing is entirely academic.

This is the single most important fact on this page and it belongs above the fee table rather than below it. A price of 0.4% on a corridor you cannot use is worth exactly nothing, and no amount of cheapness compensates for a payment that cannot be made.

Starling International Transfer Fees in Full

The Starling international transfer fee is 0.4% of the amount, plus a delivery fee of 30p, 90p or £5.50. There is no separate flat charge, no branch price and no urgent surcharge, because Starling has no branches and does not sell speed as an upgrade.

What £1,000 to US Dollars Costs

Taking the payment most people actually make and pricing it end to end gives the clearest picture. Sending £1,000 to a US dollar account on the low cost route costs £4.30 in total, made up of £4 in conversion and 30p in delivery.

Choosing SWIFT instead makes the same payment £9.50, because the £5.50 delivery fee replaces the 30p while the 0.4% stays the same. Still cheap by high street standards, and more than double the price for money that normally arrives on the same day.

What Small Payments Cost

Small payments are where flat fee pricing does the most damage, and where Starling's percentage based model shows its advantage most clearly. A £9.50 flat fee on £100 takes nearly a tenth of the money before any conversion has happened.

Sending £100 to euros through Starling costs 40p in conversion plus 30p in delivery, which is 70p in total, or 0.7% of the money. Wise charges about 85p on the same payment and Lloyds charges about £13. Very little else in UK banking is priced that low on an amount that small.

So if you send small amounts frequently and your destination is on the list, this is a genuinely good deal rather than a marginal one. Saying so plainly is more useful than hunting for a catch that is not there.

Starling Against Wise on the Same Money

Wise converts at the mid-market rate and charges a stated fee. Starling adds 0.4% to the rate and charges a small delivery fee. Both publish their pricing clearly enough that you can calculate the cost before you start, which puts them in a different category from the high street entirely.

On the routes Starling covers it usually wins on price, by around £2 on £1,000 and around £12 on £10,000. On the routes it does not cover it is not in the comparison at all, which the last row of that table shows more efficiently than any amount of prose.

For the full picture across every UK bank, see the guide to the best UK banks for international transfers.

How to Send Money Abroad With Starling

Everything happens in the app, because there is no phone service and no branch network. That removes the channel pricing that complicates most bank comparisons: there is one price and one set of steps, and it takes about two minutes once you have the recipient's details.

The Steps in the App

The Starling send money abroad flow is short. Open the app and tap Payments, choose to send money abroad, then pick the country and the currency. Enter the amount, add the recipient's bank details, and review the summary before confirming.

The summary screen shows the exchange rate, the delivery fee and the total the recipient receives, all on one page before you commit. It is the clearest pricing screen of any UK bank, and reading it costs nothing while ignoring it costs whatever the difference turns out to be.

You then choose between the low cost route and SWIFT. Unless the destination has no local network available, pick low cost. It is cheaper by £5.20 and, according to Starling's own description, usually just as fast.

What You Need From the Person You Are Paying

The details depend on the destination and getting them wrong is the most common reason a payment fails. Europe needs an IBAN. The United States needs a nine digit routing number alongside the account number. Australia needs a six digit BSB, and Canada needs separate institution and transit numbers.

You also need the recipient's full legal name spelled exactly as their bank holds it, which is often not how they write it themselves. A name mismatch is one of the main reasons a payment bounces, and a bounced payment comes back short because the banks that handled it keep their charges. The full checklist by country is in the guide to what bank details you need to transfer money.

Copy and paste the numbers rather than typing or dictating them. A single wrong character usually triggers an automatic rejection, which is the good outcome. The bad outcome is an account number that happens to be valid for someone else, and unwinding that can take weeks.

The Rate Is Held for 30 Seconds

The Starling exchange rate shown on screen is held for 30 seconds. Take longer than that and it refreshes, which changes the amount the recipient ends up with by whatever the market moved in the interval.

This is honest rather than sharp practice. Rates genuinely move all day, and a provider holding a rate for longer is either hedging the risk or pricing it into the margin. It does mean you should gather the details before you start rather than halfway through, because 30 seconds is not enough time to go and find an IBAN.

On a large payment where the rate matters, check the mid-market rate on Google before you open the payment screen rather than during it. Starling's 0.4% means the number you see should be within about four pounds per thousand of the mid-market rate, and anything wider is worth a second look.

Starling International Transfer Limits

The Starling international transfer limit is £10,000 a day, applied identically to personal and business accounts. It is a daily total across everything you send rather than a cap on each individual payment, which makes it tighter than it first appears.

£10,000 a Day Is the Cap

This is the weakest part of Starling's international offer and it is not close. Lloyds and Halifax allow £100,000 a day online, TSB allows £75,000, and HSBC allows £50,000 per payment. Starling allows a tenth of what the Lloyds group allows.

For a property deposit, a car purchase abroad or the proceeds of a house sale, Starling cannot complete the payment in one go at any price. That is a hard stop rather than an expense, and the two failure modes are not comparable: a high fee makes a payment cost more, a low cap makes it impossible.

What to Do If You Need to Send More

You can send £10,000 today and another £10,000 tomorrow, and for a payment with no deadline that works fine. For anything with a completion date attached it introduces two problems: the rate moves overnight, so the two halves cost different amounts, and a payment arriving in instalments is harder to evidence to a solicitor or a foreign notary.

If you are moving a large amount, the guide to transferring large sums internationally covers what to prepare and what questions to expect before you start.

How Long a Starling International Transfer Takes

SWIFT payments take one to three working days depending on the destination. The low cost local route usually arrives on the same day as SWIFT, which is why the £5.50 option rarely earns its price on the countries where both are available.

SWIFT Takes 1 to 3 Working Days

Starling states that its SWIFT option takes between one and three working days depending on the country and currency, with Europe at the fast end and more distant destinations slower. The spread comes from the number of correspondent banks handling the payment rather than the distance it travels.

Each institution in that chain adds a processing cycle and is entitled to deduct a handling charge, which is how SWIFT works everywhere rather than something Starling does badly. The local network route avoids the chain entirely by using a partner bank inside the destination country, which is why it is both cheaper and no slower.

The full picture on timings across providers, and why the same £1,000 can take one day or five, is in the guide to how long an international money transfer takes.

Nothing Moves at the Weekend

Starling processes international payments only between 02:00 on Monday and 22:00 on Friday. No international payment leaves at a weekend or on a UK bank holiday, regardless of which route you chose or how urgent it is.

A payment set up on Saturday morning therefore does not begin moving until Monday, and the one to three day window starts from Monday rather than from Saturday. If rent falls due on the 1st and the 1st is a Sunday, the money needed to leave on the Thursday before.

The part that trips people up is that the app accepts the payment at any time, which makes it feel as though the money has gone. It has been queued, not sent. Check the processing window before relying on a payment that has a date attached to it.

If Your Payment Is Late

Message Starling in the app, which is staffed 24 hours and usually replies quickly. In app support that actually answers is one of the genuine advantages of a bank with no branch network, because the cost saved on premises pays for people.

Ask for the SWIFT reference, also called the UETR. That is a unique tracking number attached to the payment when it leaves, and any bank in the chain can use it to show exactly where the money is sitting and which institution is holding it.

Have the date, the amount and the recipient's account details ready before you message, because it saves a round of questions. Most traced payments turn out to be waiting at a correspondent bank on a compliance check rather than lost.

Receiving Money From Abroad Into Starling

Starling receiving money from abroad is where the real cost sits, and it is the mirror image of the sending story. Starling charges 0.4% to send and 2% on money arriving in a foreign currency, which is five times more on the side you cannot check before it happens.

Starling Takes 2% on Money Coming In

When someone sends you dollars, euros or any other currency, Starling converts it into sterling as it lands and applies a 2% margin to that conversion. The account holds sterling only, so there is no option to leave the money in its original currency and wait.

There is no rate screen, no confirm button and no decision put in front of you. The money arrives already converted and already charged, and nothing on the statement identifies the 2% as a charge. It looks like the exchange rate behaving normally, which is precisely why inbound margins survive everywhere.

How to Avoid the 2%

The fix is to hold the currency rather than converting it on arrival. If dollars land in a dollar balance and stay there, no conversion happens and there is nothing for a margin to attach to. Starling cannot do that, because its personal account is sterling only.

Wise issues real local account details in several currencies at no monthly cost. Someone in the United States pays you as a domestic transfer, the money sits in a dollar balance, and you convert when the rate suits you at the mid-market rate rather than at 2% on arrival. The options are compared in the guide to the best USD bank account in the UK.

The same applies to euro income. Being paid in euros monthly means paying the 2% twelve times a year, which is about £480 on £2,000 a month, and a euro balance removes it entirely rather than reducing it. The UK options are set out in the guide to the best euro account in the UK.

How to Give Someone Your Starling Details

Being paid from abroad needs three things: your full name exactly as Starling holds it, your IBAN, and the Starling SWIFT or BIC code. All three appear in the app under account details, and the sort code and account number you use domestically are not enough on their own.

Tell the sender which currency to send as well, because that single instruction decides whether the 2% applies at all. Sterling arriving from abroad is not converted and costs nothing on the rate. Anything else is converted on arrival at 2%, and almost nobody thinks to specify.

Copy and paste rather than typing. One wrong character in an IBAN is the main reason money gets stuck somewhere for a week, and an IBAN that happens to be valid for a different account is considerably worse than one that is simply wrong.

Starling vs Other UK Banks

On price Starling beats every high street bank by a wide margin, and it is not a close contest at any amount. On limits and country coverage it loses to all of them. Which of those matters more depends entirely on where your money is going and how much of it there is.

What Each UK Bank Charges

Read the second column before the first, because at every high street bank the exchange rate charge exceeds the fee on any payment above a few hundred pounds. Starling is the only entry on this list where the fee is the larger half, and that only holds because the margin is so small.

Each of these is broken down in its own guide: Monzo, HSBC, Nationwide, NatWest, Barclays, Santander, TSB, Lloyds and Halifax.

Where Starling Actually Loses

Not on price, at any amount, against any high street bank. It loses on three other measures, and each one is sufficient on its own to make Starling the wrong choice for a particular person.

The £10,000 daily cap rules out large payments entirely, at a tenth of what Lloyds allows. The 34 country list excludes most of the destinations UK senders actually use. And the 2% on money arriving is four times what Nationwide charges on the same income.

Those are different failure modes from an expensive bank and they need different answers. A bank charging 3.55% is expensive everywhere and you can always choose to accept it. Starling is cheap where it works and simply unavailable where it does not, and no price comparison resolves that.

Where Starling Cannot Help You

This is the section that decides the question for anyone sending money home. Starling's country list is short, and the destinations missing from it are disproportionately the ones with the largest UK remittance flows.

The Countries Missing From the List

Starling covers 34 countries, most of them in Europe. The rest are the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa and Turkey, which between them describe a fairly specific kind of international payment.

Missing: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Mexico and Vietnam. That list covers the majority of the corridors that carry money out of the UK to family.

If your family is in one of those countries, the whole Starling price list is irrelevant to you and reading further is a waste of time. Check the destination before you check the fee, because one of those two questions has a binary answer and the other one does not.

No Cash Pickup and No Mobile Wallet

Starling pays into bank accounts only. If the recipient has no bank account, or needs to collect the money as cash, Starling cannot complete the payment regardless of which country they are in.

It also cannot pay into a mobile wallet, which is how a substantial share of money moves in East Africa, South Asia and the Philippines. Remitly delivers to both cash pickup points and mobile wallets, which on those routes is often the difference between money arriving usefully and not arriving at all.

None of this is a criticism of Starling. It is a bank, it does bank things, and it does them at a price no other UK bank comes close to. It simply means a bank account is the wrong instrument for several of the most common ways money reaches families abroad.

How PayPal Compares With a Starling Transfer

PayPal charges 5% of the amount to send money internationally, with a minimum of £0.99 and a cap of £2.99. It then adds roughly 3% above its base exchange rate whenever a currency change is involved, which is where the real cost sits.

The Comparison Starling Wins Easily

PayPal's 3% conversion charge is more than seven times Starling's 0.4%, so the fee cap does very little work once the amount rises above about £100. This is the clearest demonstration on the site of why a capped fee tells you almost nothing about what a payment costs.

Starling is cheaper at every amount by a factor of seven or more, and the gap widens as the payment grows because both charges are percentages and one is far smaller. PayPal's only structural advantage is reach, since it operates in countries Starling does not.

Where PayPal Still Has a Use

PayPal works when you have an email address and no bank details, or when the recipient already uses it and getting them onto anything else is the actual obstacle. It also reaches many of the countries missing from Starling's list, which for some people is the only consideration that matters.

It is still an expensive way to solve that problem. Wise charges about £6.50 on £1,000 at the mid-market rate against PayPal's £33, and reaches almost everywhere PayPal does. The two are set against each other directly in the PayPal vs Wise comparison.

Other Ways to Send the Same Money

Starling is cheap, so this section is not about beating it on price. It is about the payments Starling cannot make at all, the amounts it cannot carry, and the receiving side where its 2% is beaten comfortably.

All three below are authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and required to safeguard customer money in segregated accounts held apart from company funds. None is a bank, so the protection model differs rather than being weaker, and the distinction matters before moving a large amount.

Wise

9.5

Read our review

Fees & Exchange Rates10.0

Transfer Speed9.0

Safety & Trust10.0

Service & Quality9.5

Go to Wise

Read our review

Wise converts at the mid-market rate and shows the fee before you confirm. It reaches far more countries than Starling's 34, handles much larger amounts in a single payment, and prices consistently across corridors rather than by how heavily traded the currency is.

On the routes both cover, Starling is usually cheaper by a small margin: about £2 on £1,000 and about £12 on £10,000. On the routes only Wise covers, which is most of the world, there is no comparison to make and the price difference is irrelevant.

Wise also issues local account details in several currencies, which is the direct fix for Starling's 2% on money arriving. Dollars land in a dollar balance rather than being converted on the way in, and you decide when to convert. The full assessment is in the Wise review.

Remitly

8.5

Read our review

Fees & Exchange Rates8.5

Transfer Speed8.0

Safety & Trust10.0

Service & Quality9.0

Go to Remitly

Read our review

Remitly is built around remittance corridors rather than general transfers, which makes it strongest for South Asia, the Philippines, Latin America and much of Africa. Those are precisely the destinations where Starling's coverage stops, so the two barely overlap.

It delivers to cash pickup points and mobile wallets, neither of which Starling supports at any price. For a large number of families that is the difference between money arriving in a usable form and not arriving at all, and it outweighs a few pounds of fee difference entirely.

Pricing is a genuine choice between speed and cost on every payment: an express option arriving within minutes at a higher price, and an economy option taking a few working days for less. Starling offers a similar choice between routes, but only across the 34 countries it reaches.

Xe

9.0

Read our review

Fees & Exchange Rates7.5

Transfer Speed10.0

Safety & Trust10.0

Service & Quality9.0

Go to Xe

Read our review

Xe covers a very wide currency range and is built for larger amounts, with rate alerts and the ability to fix today's rate for a payment you will make months later. Starling's £10,000 daily cap rules out most payments large enough for rate risk to matter.

On a £300,000 property purchase, a 4% currency move between exchange and completion is £12,000, which dwarfs every fee discussed anywhere on this page. Forward contracts exist for exactly that problem, and neither Starling nor any UK high street bank offers one on a retail account.

For small everyday payments Starling and Wise both beat it comfortably, because per transfer economics favour providers built around volume. Xe earns its place on large or scheduled payments where the rate matters more than the fee.

Find the Cheapest Option for Your Amount

Which provider wins depends on the amount, the currency and above all the country. On £500 to euros Starling is very hard to beat at about £2.30 in total. On £500 to Manila it cannot compete, because it cannot make the payment at all.

Check your own numbers rather than trusting any general rule, including the ones on this page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should You Use Starling to Send Money Abroad?

If the destination is on the list and the amount is under £10,000, yes, and without much hesitation. Starling is one of the cheapest ways to move money out of the UK, at roughly a tenth of what Lloyds or TSB charge on the same payment.

If your money goes to India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nigeria or most of Africa and Asia, Starling is not an option at all. Not expensive, not slow, simply unavailable, and no amount of price advantage changes a payment that cannot be made.

And if money arrives from abroad as well as leaving, price that side separately. The 2% on receiving is about £480 a year on £2,000 a month, which is more than the sending side costs across a decade.

Sources

Every fee, charge, limit and timing on this page comes from Starling Bank's own website and published fee documents, checked in August 2026. Bank pricing changes with little notice, so confirm the number that applies to your payment before you send it.

• Starling Bank, International bank transfer fees, the full country list, SWIFT and local network delivery fees.
• Starling Bank, Send money abroad, the 0.4% conversion fee, 34 countries, 17 currencies and the 30 second rate hold.
• Starling Bank, Fee Information Document, personal current account, the 2% margin on money received from abroad.
• Starling Bank, How to send money abroad, the £10,000 daily limit, SWIFT timings and the 02:00 Monday to 22:00 Friday processing window.
• PayPal, UK consumer fees, the 5% international fee with its £0.99 minimum and £2.99 cap, and the 3% conversion charge.
• Financial Conduct Authority, Financial Services Register, check Starling, Wise, Remitly and Xe are approved.
• Financial Services Compensation Scheme, what is covered for banks and building societies, how much of your money is protected.

Prices for Wise, Remitly and Xe were checked on the same day against the same £1,000 to US dollars payment. The method behind those calculations is in the guide to how banks charge for money transfers.