WaveRate vs Xe: Which Currency App Should You Use?

A transfer service with a converter, or a converter built for travel

Xe's app is listed on the App Store as Xe Money Transfer & Currency, and that order is honest: its front door is sending money to more than 190 countries, with the converter, charts and alerts alongside. WaveRate does not move money at all. It is a converter and tracker: a list of your currencies, a calculator, charts and trip expenses, and nothing that asks for your bank details.

That difference explains most of what follows. Xe can give its converter away and earn on transfers, so the converter is free with ads. WaveRate has no transfer business, so it charges for the full app and shows no ads.

A disclosure: WaveRate publishes this comparison. Every fact about Xe below comes from Xe's own App Store and Google Play listings and help centre, checked on the date shown above the table.

Converting day to day

Both apps convert many currencies at once. Xe's Convert tab holds up to 20 currencies against a pinned base, for free. WaveRate keeps a list with your base on top; the free version holds two currencies and Premium removes the limit.

The difference is in what you can type. WaveRate's amount field is a calculator with + − × ÷ and %, so 3 × 4.50 for three coffees or 120 ÷ 3 for a shared dinner converts straight into every currency on the list. Xe's listing and help centre do not mention arithmetic in the amount field. WaveRate also has a Rates mode that turns the list into quotes, showing what one unit of each currency costs in yours, and posts weak currencies per 10, 100 or 1,000 the way banks do.

Both keep the last rates for offline use. Xe says so in its App Store screenshots; WaveRate stores rates on the phone and flags them when they are getting old.

Charts and rate history

This is Xe's strongest point. Its charts go back up to ten years, free. WaveRate's charts run from one week to five years, with a scrubber that reads out the rate on any day; one week and one month are free, and six months to five years are Premium.

Xe also offers rate alerts by push or email once you sign in to an Xe account. WaveRate has no alerts. If you are waiting for a specific rate before a large transfer, that is a real reason to keep Xe.

Travel and trip spending

Conversion tells you what something costs before you pay. It does not tell you what the trip cost once you are home. WaveRate's trips do: log each expense in the currency you paid in, and it is converted into your home currency at that day's rate, with a running total for the trip. Each expense keeps its own day's rate, so the total does not change when the market moves later. An expense logged without signal gets the historical rate filled in afterwards, and on iPhone, trips sync through iCloud.

Xe tracks money transfers, not expenses. If you want to know what a holiday cost in your own currency, Xe leaves you with a spreadsheet. The free WaveRate version includes one trip with three expenses; unlimited trips are Premium.

How to track travel expenses in several currencies

Price, ads and account

Xe's converter is free, and both the App Store and Google Play label the app as containing ads. You do not need an account to convert, but you do for alerts and transfers.

WaveRate has no ads and no account at all. The free version covers two currencies, one-month charts and one trip. Premium unlocks everything for $1.99 a month, $17.99 a year or $34.99 once on the US App Store, and every new install gets three days of full Premium without a card.

Language may settle it for some readers: Xe's iPhone app is available in English only, while WaveRate's interface comes in 21 languages on both iPhone and Android.

Where Xe is the better pick

• You send money abroad. WaveRate cannot; Xe can, to more than 190 countries.
• You want long history for free. Ten free years of charts beat WaveRate's free one-month window and its five-year Premium range.
• You want to be told when a rate moves. Xe has alerts; WaveRate does not.
• You want a home-screen widget. Xe brought one back in 2026; WaveRate has none.
• You also convert on a computer. Xe's converter lives on xe.com as well; WaveRate is a phone app.

Which one should you choose?

It comes down to what you open a currency app for.

• Choose Xe if transfers, alerts or ten-year charts are the reason you open a currency app.
• Choose WaveRate if you travel, split bills or live between currencies, and want the maths, the history and the trip total in one ad-free place.
• Keep both if you do both: plenty of people use Xe on the day they send money and WaveRate on every other day.

All seven currency converter apps compared