Wise or Revolut Business for payments to India? What each costs at five payment sizes

You have an invoice from an agency in India and two business accounts open in the UK, one with Wise and one with Revolut. Both can send the money. Both list one to two days. The question is which one should carry this payment, and the honest answer changes with how big the payment is and how many you make in a month.

We sell a way to pay Indian vendors too, so read this as a comparison from an interested party. Every figure comes from the pricing data behind the calculator on our homepage, with the plan and the date it was checked, and the sources are linked. We are not recommending either account. We are showing where the cost crosses over, so you can see which side of the line your own payments sit.

Two pricing models, two different shapes

Wise Business charges a fixed fee plus a percentage on every payment. Our data has $7.08 plus 0.4182% for USD to INR, taken from a bank-funded quote checked on 19 September 2026. Nothing is free first, and the cost rises smoothly with the amount.

Revolut Business (Basic plan) charges a £5 transfer fee plus 0.6% above £1,000 a month. Put simply, the first £1,000 you convert in a month carries no percentage charge, and everything above it does. The calculator converts that to $6.71 and $1,341 in dollar terms.

So Revolut's cost starts lower and climbs faster, while Wise's starts a little higher and climbs more slowly. Lines like that cross. For a single payment, the crossing point in our data is about $4,600. Below it Revolut Basic is cheaper, above it Wise Business is.

There is a catch in how Revolut's allowance works. It is monthly, so it is shared by every conversion you make that month, not renewed for each payment. Wise's fixed fee is also slightly larger than Revolut's, so the crossing point drifts up as you make more payments: about $4,600 a month for one payment, and about $6,500 a month across ten.

Five payment sizes side by side

The table prices five realistic months. Each row is the total sender-side fee for everything sent that month, with Revolut's allowance applied once across the month.

Sources: Wise, send money to India and Revolut Business plans. Provider pricing changes, and the plan you are on may differ from the ones shown.

The gaps are small in absolute terms at the low end, a few dollars, and larger at the top: $82 on a single $50,000 payment. If you pay India once a month in small amounts, the choice is close to a coin toss. If you send large invoices, the percentage is where the money goes, and we cover how to measure that part in the hidden FX markup on your payments to India.

What the table leaves out

• The exchange-rate margin. The table covers each provider's published fee and percentage charge. How far the rate you are given sits from the mid-market rate is a separate cost, and it can be bigger than the fee. Check it on the day with a live quote.
• The Revolut subscription. Revolut sells accounts as plans, and the plan itself has a monthly price that sits outside these per-payment figures. If India is the only reason you hold the plan, add it to the cost. If you use the plan for other things, it is a sunk cost.
• Timing. Ask whether the plan applies a different rate outside market hours before you send on a Friday evening. Both providers list one to two days for delivery in our data, but a weekend can push either one back.
• The route. Our data is for USD to INR. If your money sits in pounds, a conversion to dollars comes first and has its own cost. Our post on how long a payment to India takes covers why the route matters for timing too.
• The Indian side. A recipient's bank can charge to receive, and intermediaries can take a share on the way, as we set out in why your Indian vendor received less than you sent.

How to choose without a spreadsheet

1. Add up a typical month: how many payments, and the total.
2. Compare the total with the crossing points above. Well below them, the Revolut allowance helps you. Well above them, Wise's lower percentage does.
3. Run a live quote in each app on a weekday, with your real amount. Compare the rupees your vendor will receive, not the fee line.
4. Ask the vendor to confirm what their bank credited, so you learn the true landed amount rather than the quoted one.
5. Re-check every few months. Both providers change pricing, and a gap that is small today can reverse.

If you pay several vendors a month, remember that the fixed fee repeats with every payment. We worked through that in paying Indian contractors without sending ten wires a month.

Where Winvesta fits

Winvesta is not a third option in this comparison. Wise and Revolut are business accounts. Winvesta is a way to pay Indian vendors, contractors and teams. You send one USD transfer from a business account with the invoices attached, we split it across your vendors, and they withdraw rupees to their Indian bank accounts. Our homepage says there is no sender fee and no markup, that we convert the full net invoice amount at the live USD to INR rate, and that INR lands in one to two days.

Three limits. We are live on USD to INR today. You still need a business account to send the USD transfer from, and any cost of getting your money into dollars sits with that account. And Winvesta is not a UK bank account, and does not give tax advice. If you pay India every month, you can tell us about your payments and see the costs for your own volumes.