Revolut vs Wise in India: Fees, Limits and Which One You Can Use (2026)

Wise is built for one job: moving money between countries at the mid-market rate, with the fee shown separately instead of buried in the rate.

Revolut is built for a different one: an app that runs your everyday spending, budgeting, travel and investing, with international transfers as one feature among many. For most of the world, that is the whole comparison.

From India it is not. Revolut has not opened to the public here yet, and Wise works through three separately capped routes, none of which includes a card for Indian residents.

So the question that decides this is not which one is better. It is which one you can actually use, and for what.

This page compares their fees, transfer limits and payment methods, then sets out what each one is licensed to do for a reader in India as of 2026.

• Revolut - best if you live in a market where it is fully available and want day-to-day banking, spending, travel and investing in one app.
• Wise - best for cheap international transfers and for holding several currencies, and it can take business payments into India inside its cap.
• If you are in India - neither is a complete fit, and that comes down to licence scope rather than product quality.
• On exchange rates - Wise uses the mid-market rate every day with the fee shown separately; Revolut uses the interbank rate on weekdays, free to GBP 1,000 a month on its free plan, then 1% at weekends on Standard.
• On availability - Revolut in India is a waitlist and a controlled beta; Wise receives into India for registered businesses only, capped at ₹25 lakh a transaction.

These three are not built for the same job. Revolut is a consumer money app. Wise sells transfers and a multi-currency account, and also runs a licensed inward route into India.

Every figure below was checked against the providers' own pages on 28 July 2026. Where a provider's own pages contradict each other, the row says so.

Two definitions the table leans on: PPI is a Prepaid Payment Instrument authorisation, AD-II an Authorised Dealer Category-II licence. FIRA is a Foreign Inward Remittance Advice and eFIRC its certificate equivalent. Both matter for export receipts, and both are explained below.

One reading note. Revolut's currency, card and rate rows describe the product it sells in markets where it has launched. What a beta user in India gets today is narrower, and the availability row is the one to read first.

The table settles the numbers. What it cannot show is how each product is shaped, and each has one catch that matters more than any fee.

Revolut's catch is reach: the app is excellent where it has launched, and India is not yet one of those places.

Wise's catch is asymmetry: it is genuinely cheap and genuinely transparent, but from India it sends more freely than it receives, and it will not issue you a card.

Both sections below cover who each one suits, its pros and cons, and what you actually get.

Revolut started as a travel card and grew into a consumer money app. One account holds several currencies, spends on a card, tracks budgets, sends money abroad, and buys stocks and crypto on the higher tiers.

In its home markets people use it instead of a current account.

Pricing works as a subscription rather than a charge per transfer, across five tiers.

Exchange is free at the interbank rate up to GBP 1,000 a month on the free plan, Monday to Friday.

At weekends a fee applies: 1% on Standard, 0.5% on Plus, and nothing on Premium and above.

Above that monthly allowance on a weekday, Revolut's own pages genuinely disagree with each other, and this was still the case when checked again in late July 2026.

Its US help centre states a 0.5% fair usage fee once you exceed the monthly allowance; its UK-facing legal fee table states 1% for the same scenario.

Plan around the higher 1% figure until Revolut resolves the discrepancy on its own site.

Someone living in one of Revolut's supported markets who wants spending, budgeting, travel cover and investing in one place.

Its own list covers Australia, Brazil, the EEA, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

Frequent travellers whose monthly exchange sits inside the free allowance get the most out of it. An India-based business collecting export receipts gets nothing from it, because Revolut's India entities are not licensed for that work.

• Plan tiers - Standard free, Plus £3.99, Premium £7.99, Metal £14.99, Ultra £55 a month, on UK pricing checked July 2026.
• Currencies - 38 on the EEA entity. The count moves by region, so check the page for your own entity.
• Local account details - your home-market IBAN, plus a UK sort code and account number for UK users. It is not a general multi-country local-details product.
• Free exchange allowance - GBP 1,000 a month at the interbank rate, weekdays, on the free plan.
• Transfer limits - Revolut's own blog states it does not set hard caps for most currencies and destination countries. Transfers above USD 10,000 trigger US federal reporting, which is a regulatory threshold rather than a Revolut cap.
• Cash access - free ATM withdrawals to £200 or 5 withdrawals a rolling month, then 2% with a £1 minimum.
• Extras - stock trading, crypto, commodities, savings vaults, spend analytics, and travel or device insurance on higher tiers. Revolut's own feature pages blocked automated fetching during this research pass, so treat those specifics as third-party sourced rather than independently confirmed. There is more detail in our Revolut review.

G2: 3.7 out of 5 from 21 reviews.

• Praise - "It's relatively easy to effect payments and the process is relatively efficient. Funds are always transferred very quickly" (Philip A., September 2019, 5 out of 5, an incentivised review through a G2 invite).
• Criticism - "Everything requires 4-step authentication, and fails if you don't have your phone, email, and camera at hand" (Alina S., December 2025, 0 out of 5).

Wise, formerly TransferWise, converts at the mid-market rate and shows the fee before you confirm. The cost sits on its own line instead of being folded into the rate.

That fee is not one number. On Wise's own USD-to-India page, checked 28 July 2026, sending $350 costs $3.03 by direct debit (0.87%), $8.54 by bank transfer (2.44%), $14.73 by debit card (4.2%) and $20.62 by credit card (5.9%).

That is the same amount down the same corridor, with close to a sevenfold gap between the cheapest and the dearest option. Above USD 25,000 a discount applies automatically, although Wise does not publish the percentage.

Anyone sending money across borders who wants the rate and the fee visible before confirming, and anyone holding balances in several currencies.

Registered Indian businesses collecting client payments inside the inward cap also fit, including sole proprietorships, private limited companies, LLPs and partnerships.

It is a weaker fit if you want a card in India, or if a single client invoice runs past ₹25 lakh.

• Rate and fee - the live mid-market rate, with a separate upfront fee priced by funding method. Our full Wise review works through the account in more detail.
• Currencies and reach - 40 currencies in a Wise Account, covering 160 countries and territories.
• Local account details - 8 to 9 currencies come with full local bank details, and several more carry eligibility restrictions. Wise's marketing page puts the figure at 20; its own help centre documents 9, so the figures here follow the help centre.
• Funding methods from India - Wise balance, bank transfer, debit or credit card, and sending from online banking. No UPI and no India direct debit.
• India business receiving - account details in 11 currencies, a USD 5 minimum and a ₹25 lakh maximum per transaction, auto-converted to INR and paid into your registered Indian bank account in 1 to 2 days.
• Compliance paperwork - an eFIRC within three working days, for a USD 2 equivalent fee.
• Idle balance option - Wise Assets can place a balance in a money-market fund. The yield moves, so check the live figure.

G2: 3.9 out of 5 from 96 reviews. The score and both quotes come from the Wise Business product page rather than the consumer product.

• Praise - "I love that currency convertion rates are very low" (Brayan F., February 2019, 5 out of 5, an incentivised review through a G2 invite), though the same reviewer notes "the transfer time frame for funds to be available has some room for improvement".
• Criticism - "They suspend our business account with more than 60,000 euros, after 4 months of usage, ignoring all the documents we sent to confirm the nature of the transfers" (Lena D., October 2021, 0 out of 5).

As of July 2026, Revolut cannot receive your export income at all, and Wise can, but only if you are a registered business and only within a cap.

• Not open to the public - its own India page shows a waitlist, and India is absent from Revolut's global list of supported countries. A resident cannot open the standard multi-currency account described above.
• A controlled beta is running - TechCrunch reported on 1 June 2026 that a few thousand users, drawn from a waitlist of roughly 450,000, were using e-money wallets, UPI payments, domestic prepaid cards and multi-currency spend cards.
• No joint or family accounts - those need a banking licence Revolut does not currently hold in India.
• Two entities, two permissions - Revolut Payments India holds a Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) authorisation (COA 224/2025, granted 7 April 2025). Revolut Forex India holds an Authorised Dealer Category-II (AD-II) licence.
• Neither permission covers export receipts - receiving export income with a Foreign Inward Remittance Advice (FIRA) needs a Payment Aggregator Cross Border (PA-CB) authorisation or an AD Category-1 licence. AD-II licences cover specified non-trade current-account transactions instead, such as private visits, business travel, medical treatment and overseas education, per RBI's Master Direction on Other Remittance Facilities (updated 6 May 2026). That list does not include trade or export receipts, which is the settled conclusion here; exactly how a separate 13 May 2026 RBI circular reshapes the wider non-bank remittance framework is a live regulatory change still being worked through, so treat that specific mechanism as directional rather than fully settled.

• Sending out works, inside LRS caps - available to verified Indian tax residents under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, capped at USD 250,000 a financial year and USD 60,000 a transfer, and not permitted for investment or donations.
• Receiving in is business-only - capped at ₹25 lakh a transaction, receive-only, with funds auto-converting to INR. A personal account cannot take client income this way.
• No card for Indian residents - Wise does not issue one to an Indian residential address.
• Why the inward route exists - Wise announced in-principle RBI approval to act as a cross-border payment aggregator for exports on 3 June 2025. That approval is also what raised its inward per-transaction cap.
• One open flag - Google's answer panel, along with several 2026 news reports, states that Wise paused onboarding new outward-remittance users in India while it revamped its infrastructure under its RBI licence. That pause is not stated anywhere on Wise's own India help pages, and press coverage in mid-2026 suggested Wise intended to resume onboarding new customers, so treat this as a live, moving situation rather than a confirmed, permanent restriction.

Limits decide whether one invoice clears in a single payment. The rails decide whether your client can pay you domestically at their end or has to send a wire.

• Wise, into India - up to INR 100,000,000 a transfer for inbound personal transfers, with instant rails capped lower: IMPS to ₹5,00,000 and UPI to ₹2,00,000.
• Wise, out of India - USD 250,000 a financial year and USD 60,000 a transfer under LRS, personal accounts only, and not from a business bank account.
• Wise, business inward - ₹25 lakh maximum a transaction, USD 5 minimum. This is the ceiling that matters if you invoice in dollars. At the rupee rate prevailing in late July 2026, near ₹95.7 to the dollar, that caps one payment at roughly USD 26,100; check the live rate before relying on the exact dollar figure, since it moves daily.
• Wise, large transfers - an automatic fee discount applies above USD 25,000, with the percentage unpublished.
• Revolut - its own blog states it does not set hard caps for most currencies and destination countries, and no fixed per-transfer maximum is published. The USD 10,000 figure often quoted is a US federal reporting threshold, not a Revolut limit.
• Xflow - no per-transaction cap is published, and pricing above $10,000 moves to the custom Scale plan.

None of the three publishes a rail-by-rail list, so the table below is assembled from each provider's own local account details.

A US local detail is paid by ACH, a euro IBAN by SEPA, a UK sort code by Faster Payments, and everything else arrives as a SWIFT wire.

Xflow's rail and local-details list per currency was not independently re-verified against a live product page beyond what its pricing page discloses in this pass, so the “Not published” cell above is a deliberate placeholder rather than a confirmed gap.

Revolut's US local details also depend on entity and region, so treat that row as indicative rather than universal.

Invoice size decides which pricing shape is cheaper. A flat fee costs a lot on a small payment and very little on a large one, while a percentage does the opposite.

The fee also does not always sit with the same person. On Wise the sender usually funds the transfer and pays the fee, while on a receiving account it comes out of what lands with you.

So compare the total cost of getting the money to India rather than a single column.

Revolut has no priced row below, because its India entities cannot receive export income at any size.

Xflow's cells come straight from its published plans, confirmed against the live pricing page: $12 flat up to $2,000 then 0.6%, $20 flat up to $5,000 then 0.4%, and custom pricing on the Scale plan above $10,000. The $40 figure at $10,000 follows directly from the Growth plan's own published structure.

Wise's cells are left open on purpose. Its fee is fixed plus variable, so scaling the verified 0.87% at $350 up to $10,000 would misstate it. Run your own amount and funding method through Wise's calculator.

On the rupee side, 0.4% reads as 40 paise on every ₹100 that lands, charged as a mark-up on the mid-market rate rather than buried inside it.

• Revolut - exchange Monday to Friday and stay inside the free GBP 1,000 monthly allowance. The weekend fee is 1% on Standard and 0.5% on Plus, and Premium and above remove it, so only pay for a tier if your monthly exchange genuinely exceeds the allowance. Plan cash withdrawals around the £200 or 5-withdrawal free limit.
• Wise - fund by direct debit rather than card. On Wise's own $350 USD-to-INR example that is 0.87% against 5.9% by credit card, on identical money. Ask clients to pay into your local account details so the payment travels domestically at their end rather than as a wire. If one payment runs above USD 25,000, the automatic discount applies.
• A freelancer invoicing overseas clients - Wise's inward route needs you registered as a sole trader or sole proprietorship, which is the same paperwork threshold most India-based freelancers already meet for tax. A personal Wise account is not built to take client income into India, so registering properly is the step that unlocks it.
• A licensed receiving account - match the plan to your usual invoice size, because the flat fee below the threshold is what makes small invoices cheap. At $1,000 a $12 flat fee is 1.2%; at $2,000 the same fee is 0.6%.

• Do not assume a Revolut card works inside India - Revolut's help centre states that multi-currency cards are available only to selected customers in India, and can be used only for transactions outside India, except Nepal and Bhutan.
• Do not treat a waitlist place as an account - India is a controlled beta, a few thousand live users against a waitlist of roughly 450,000 as of June 2026. The app in the Indian store is not the full global product.
• Do not fund a Wise transfer by credit card if cost matters - 5.9% against 0.87% by direct debit, on the same $350 transfer. It is the single largest avoidable cost on either platform.
• Do not exchange on Revolut Standard at the weekend - it adds 1%, and the markets it prices against are shut anyway.
• Do not use a personal Wise account to receive client income into India - inward receiving is business-only, capped at ₹25 lakh a transaction, and receive-only, so there is no balance to hold the money in.
• Do not expect export paperwork by default - Revolut's India entities cannot issue a FIRA, holding PPI and AD-II licences only. Wise does issue an eFIRC for business receiving, within three working days, for a USD 2 equivalent fee.

All three hold Indian licences. What differs is which licence, and what it permits.

Revolut's India entities hold PPI and AD-II authorisations, which cover wallets and specified non-trade forex rather than trade receipts, so they cannot issue a FIRA.

Wise holds in-principle PA-CB approval for exports, which is why it can receive for registered businesses inside a ₹25 lakh per-transaction cap.

Xflow holds final PA-CB authorisation covering exports and imports, per its Series A announcement of 24 February 2026.

That is the distinction this section turns on, not a question of one having a licence and the others not.

Indian freelancers and exporters whose main job is turning an overseas invoice into rupees with the compliance trail attached, and who do not need a card, a wallet or an investing app alongside it.

• Best for - receiving client or platform payments from abroad into an Indian bank account, with the remittance paperwork issued automatically.
• Not for - spending abroad, holding a personal foreign-currency balance, or sending money out of India.

If a card, a wallet or an investing app is the job, Revolut or Wise is the correct tool and this is not a close call.

• Pricing - $12 flat up to $2,000 then 0.6% on Starter, $20 flat up to $5,000 then 0.4% on Growth, and custom pricing on the Scale plan above $10,000.
• Rate and fee - conversion at the live mid-market rate, with the variable fee charged as an FX mark-up so it stays visible rather than sitting inside the rate.
• Compliance - an eFIRA with each payment, purpose codes applied, and no change to the Export Data Processing and Monitoring System (EDPMS), SOFTEX or GST-refund workflow your accountant already runs.
• Reach and speed - 140+ countries and 25+ currencies, settling in one business day.
• Onboarding and security - about ten minutes of online business verification with same-day activation. The receiving account is ring-fenced and issued by the banking partner, money moves only to a bank account you registered in advance, and Xflow is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified.

G2: 4.8 out of 5 from 27 reviews.

• Praise - "the transparent pricing and the fast Forex rate updates", with setup "better than expected" (Laxman W., March 2026, 5 out of 5).
• Criticism - "They can allow converting one currency to another... I will deduct 1.5 marks for missing out on the cross-currency swap" (AQUIB S., January 2026, 4 out of 5).

Two caveats on all three scores. Every sample here is small, from 21 reviews for Revolut to 96 for Wise, so none of these figures is statistically robust and a handful of ratings moves any of them.

And they sit on business-product listings, which is the right like-for-like comparison for this audience but is not the same as consumer-app sentiment, where all three have far larger review bases elsewhere.

The six quotes are also not matched for severity or recency.

Both competitor positives are incentivised G2-invite reviews from 2019 and both competitor criticisms are 0-out-of-5, while the Xflow pair is organic, from 2026, and its criticism is a 4-out-of-5 feature request.

Read them as individual experiences rather than as evidence of which product is better.

• Choose Revolut if - you live in a market where it is fully available and want spending, budgeting, travel cover and investing in one app. Inside India, as of July 2026, it is not yet that app.
• Choose Wise if - you send money abroad and want the mid-market rate with the fee visible before you confirm, or you hold balances in several currencies. It also works if you are a registered Indian business receiving client payments inside the ₹25 lakh per-transaction cap and you value one account for both directions.
• Choose Xflow if - your main job is turning overseas invoices into rupees and you want the eFIRA issued automatically, flat-fee pricing on smaller invoices, and import-side cover as well. It replaces neither of the others: no card, no wallet, no budgeting or investing, and nothing sent out of India.
• If you are a freelancer in India invoicing overseas clients - Wise works once you are registered as a sole proprietor, your invoices stay under the cap, and you are comfortable paying for each eFIRC. A licensed receiving account fits better if you want the eFIRA issued automatically and flat-fee pricing on smaller invoices. Revolut does not serve this at all today. There are more options in our round-up of Wise alternatives for India.
• If you are a registered exporter or ITES company - the ₹25 lakh per-transaction ceiling becomes the real constraint, since one enterprise invoice can exceed it and split payments mean split paperwork. Weigh EDPMS and SOFTEX continuity, purpose-code accuracy for your GST refund, and whether you also need to pay suppliers abroad, which needs import-side authorisation that Wise's India approval does not currently cover.