Travel Card Savings Calculator

Compare a travel card against a standard card on foreign spending.

About Travel Card Savings Calculator

A three per cent foreign transaction fee costs ninety pounds on three thousand of spending, which most fee-free travel cards eliminate entirely. An annual fee only makes sense above the break-even spend. For anyone spending a few thousand abroad each year, switching card is worth more than any other single travel money decision.

Formula

Travel Card Savings

Saving = foreign spending × (standard fee − travel card fee) − annual fee

foreign transaction fee: Typically around 3 per cent on standard cards
break-even spend: Foreign spending needed for the annual fee to pay for itself

Worked example

With the default values below, Travel Card Savings Calculator returns Annual Saving of $77.19. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Foreign spendingminimum 0: 2,500
Cash withdrawn abroadminimum 0: 600
Standard card foreign transaction feeaccepts 0–100 %: 2.99 %
Travel card feeaccepts 0–100 %: 0.5 %
Travel card annual feeminimum 0: 0

Results

Annual Saving: $77.19
Cost With a Standard Card: $92.69
Cost With a Travel Card: $15.50
Spending Needed to Justify the Annual Fee: $0.00
Saving as a Share of Foreign Spending: 2.490%

Step by step

1Values used
2Travel Card Savings
3Annual Saving= 77.19
4Cost With a Standard Card= 92.69
5Cost With a Travel Card= 15.50
6Spending Needed to Justify the Annual Fee= 0.00
7Saving as a Share of Foreign Spending= 2.490

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 5 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation or tax into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 3 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Travel Card Savings calculated?

Saving = foreign spending × (standard fee − travel card fee) − annual fee A three per cent foreign transaction fee costs ninety pounds on three thousand of spending, which most fee-free travel cards eliminate entirely. An annual fee only makes sense above the break-even spend.

Why does Travel Card Savings matter?

For anyone spending a few thousand abroad each year, switching card is worth more than any other single travel money decision.

What values do I need to enter?

This calculator takes 5 inputs: Foreign spending, Cash withdrawn abroad, Standard card foreign transaction fee, Travel card fee, Travel card annual fee. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.