The State of Indian Remittance Fees, 2026
Data: 5 major Indian banks · TT Selling rates and fee schedules sourced from each bank's published PDFs · Updated 2026-08-07
Headline numbers
- Average total cost to send ₹1,00,000 to the USA: ₹1,214 across the 5 banks covered.
- Cheapest today: ICICI Bank at ₹1,065.
- Costliest today: HDFC Bank at ₹1,360.
- Spread: ₹295 between cheapest and costliest on the same ₹1,00,000.
- USD TT rate spread: 151 paisa per dollar between Indian Overseas Bank (95.4400) and HDFC Bank (96.9500).
What "remittance fee" actually means in India
The retail price of sending money abroad from an Indian bank is not a single number. It is the sum of three explicit charges — commission, Swift message fee, GST — plus an implicit charge embedded in the exchange rate (the spread between the bank's TT Selling rate and the interbank rate). Most fee-comparison pieces only address the first three. RemitFee includes all four.
How the four cost components stack up
On a ₹1,00,000 USD transfer, the explicit components typically split roughly: commission ~₹500–1,000, Swift ₹250–500, GST on the previous two plus a slab on the amount exchanged ~₹180. The exchange-rate spread is normally the largest single component but is invisible on a customer receipt — it shows up only as "you sent ₹X and your recipient got $Y".
Per-bank summary
| Bank | USD TT rate | Cost on ₹1L USD |
|---|---|---|
| HDFC Bank | 96.9500 | ₹1,360 |
| ICICI Bank | 96.7000 | ₹1,065 |
| State Bank of India | 95.5700 | ₹1,222 |
| Indian Overseas Bank | 95.4400 | ₹1,065 |
| Kotak Mahindra Bank | 96.9000 | ₹1,360 |
Inward remittance: usually invisible, sometimes not
Three of the four banks here charge nothing on inward remittance. SBI charges ₹50–100 tiered by USD-equivalent of the incoming amount; IOB charges ₹250 plus 18% GST. These are small absolute numbers but worth knowing if you are receiving recurring transfers.
The fee schedule, where to find it
Each bank's outward fee schedule is published as a PDF; pages on RemitFee link to the source for every number shown. See the table below; you can verify each fee against the bank's own PDF in under two minutes.
Caveats and what's not included
The numbers above exclude correspondent and intermediary-bank charges (which depend on the recipient's bank and corridor) and per-customer-segment exceptions (NRI vs resident, branch channel vs online, FCNR vs ordinary). TCS on LRS is computed by the calculator based on the purpose and the FY cumulative amount you enter. Each page on RemitFee documents any per-bank exceptions in a notes callout sourced from the bank's PDF.
Methodology and citation
The total cost formula, rate-spread treatment, and exclusions are documented on the methodology page. All aggregate statistics on this page are computed at build time from banks.json in the open-source repository and refresh whenever the underlying data is updated. Citations welcome — link to /research/indian-remittance-fees-2026 and attribute "RemitFee".