The State of Indian Remittance Fees, 2026

Headline numbers

• Average total cost to send ₹1,00,000 to the USA: ₹1,755 across the 6 banks covered.
• Cheapest today: Indian Overseas Bank at ₹1,065.
• Costliest today: Axis Bank at ₹4,148.
• Spread: ₹3,083 between cheapest and costliest on the same ₹1,00,000.
• USD TT rate spread: 156 paisa per dollar between Indian Overseas Bank (96.8900) and Axis Bank (98.4500).

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

Buy–sell spread on USD, bank by bank

The gap between a bank's TT Selling and TT Buying rate is its round-trip margin — the hidden charge that never appears on a receipt. Narrower is better for the customer.

How USD rates moved over the last 90 days

RemitFee records each bank's published TT Selling rate on every refresh. The table shows the range and net change over the trailing 90 days of observations; the per-bank forex-rate pages chart the full series.

Cheapest bank by currency at ₹1,00,000

The cheapest bank changes with the currency because commission tables, correspondent charges and rate margins all vary by corridor.

Inward remittance: usually invisible, sometimes not

2 of the 6 banks publish an explicit inward fee — Indian Overseas Bank, Axis Bank — while HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank charge no commission of their own. Every bank, however, levies 18% GST on the currency-conversion service under CGST Rule 32(2)(b), so "free" inward remittance still costs a few hundred rupees on ₹1 lakh, and the TT Buying rate applied on arrival carries the bank's margin. The per-bank inward pages itemise both.

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.

• HDFC Bank — fees and charges
• ICICI Bank — overseas money transfer charges (PDF)
• SBI — forex service charges (PDF)
• IOB — schedule of charges (PDF)
• Kotak Mahindra Bank — send money abroad charges
• Axis Bank — retail outward remittance charges (PDF)

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".