Corridor Cost Comparator
What does it really cost to send money from the United States? Traditional remittance rails vs a stablecoin route, side by side, every figure cited or flagged. No accounts, no tracking, no recommendations.
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Traditional rail verified
Verification status:
verified primary source fetched and extracted
secondary reputable secondary source
estimate flagged assumption, see methodology
Methodology
- Traditional rail: World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide full dataset (2011–2025Q3), quarter 2025_3Q, $200 tier, per-provider "total cost %" (fee plus FX margin). Corridor figure shown is the plain average across all surveyed providers; the table shows the five cheapest. Negative values are promotional or FX-gain pricing as surveyed by RPW and are retained unmodified. Costs shown as % apply to the $200 reference tier; provider pricing at other amounts differs.
- Stablecoin rail: component model — USD to USDC on Coinbase (ACH funding), USDC transfer on Base, local off-ramp. Each component carries its own verification status and source; the total is the sum of percentage components plus fixed costs divided by the amount. Order-book spread and unlisted payout fees ship as flagged estimates rather than silently assumed away.
- Guatemala caveat: no regulated GTQ off-ramp was found at snapshot time; the P2P leg is shown as a flagged band. That gap, not protocol fees, dominates the corridor's stablecoin cost.
- Not included on either rail: the sender's time, recipient cash-out travel, crypto tax treatment, and provider KYC friction. This page compares published prices only and performs no regulated activity.
- Snapshots are dated and committed to the repository; nothing on this page is live data. Full data files: traditional, stablecoin.