How to receive USD in Portugal: conversion costs, invoicing, and what you actually keep
Portugal is a euro country inside SEPA, so the hard part of this corridor is not moving the money. Once euros exist, they reach a Portuguese IBAN in seconds for nothing. On the two accounts worth using, almost all of your cost is the USD to EUR conversion, and who does it cheapest depends on how much you convert in a month and which day you do it. Wise and Revolut are both fully available to Portuguese residents, which is rare among the corridors we cover, and on a small weekday conversion Revolut can come out ahead on the fees we model. The platform routes work differently: Payoneer and PayPal both charge you to receive the dollars before any conversion happens. Payoneer earns its place as the Upwork and Fiverr default rather than on price, PayPal is the expensive habit worth breaking, and a bank wire only makes sense on large payments. One thing to know up front: there is no forced conversion and no remittance certificate regime here, because capital moves freely inside the EU. Your proof of foreign income is the fatura-recibo you issue through the Portal das Financas, not a document your bank hands you.
By George I. · Last updated:
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Provider comparison: receiving $1,000 USD in Portugal
Using live mid-market rate as of 2026-08-28 · open.er-api.com
| Provider | Net received (EUR) | Effective fee | FX margin | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revolut | 855.69 | 0.30% | Mid-market | ~1 day |
| Wise | 853.98 | 0.50% | Mid-market | ~ 1 hr |
| Western Union | 847.13 | 0.30% | +1.0% | ~1 day |
| Payoneer | 832.69 | 1.00% | +2.0% | ~2 days |
| Bank Wire | 819.94 | 3.50% | +1.0% | ~3 days |
| PayPal | 791.54 | 4.43% | +3.5% | ~1 day |
How much does Wise charge to receive USD in Portugal?
Portugal is one of the corridors where Wise works the way the marketing says it does. You open a full account with a Portuguese ID and proof of address, and you get US account details, a routing number and an account number, that a US client pays by ordinary domestic ACH. Receiving that ACH is reported to be free, while an incoming US dollar wire is reported to carry a fixed fee of a few dollars, so ask for ACH. The dollars sit in your USD balance until you decide to convert, and the conversion runs at the real mid-market rate for a fee shown on screen before you confirm. Two details trip people up. Your euro details are normally a Belgian IBAN beginning BE, issued by Wise Europe SA, not a Portuguese PT50 IBAN. Some Portuguese clients and accounting systems push back on that, and they are not entitled to: refusing a valid EEA IBAN for a euro transfer is IBAN discrimination under Article 9 of the SEPA Regulation, and Banco de Portugal describes itself as the national authority that monitors the SEPA Regulation in Portugal and takes reports of non-compliance. The second is timing. The conversion is quick, but your client's ACH still takes one to three business days to arrive before you can convert anything. The conversion fee we model here was last checked against Wise's own pricing page in June 2026 and we could not reopen wise.com to recheck it for this page, so treat it as the last figure we confirmed rather than today's quote. Check the fee the app shows you before converting.
How much does Revolut charge to receive USD in Portugal?
Also fully available to Portuguese residents, and on the fees we model it can undercut Wise on small weekday conversions, which is unusual enough to be worth understanding. Two separate charges matter. The first is a transfer fee: our comparison models 0.3% on this route, taken from Revolut's published international transfer pricing for US-originated transfers. The second is currency exchange, which Revolut prices by allowance rather than by a flat percentage: on the Standard plan a monthly amount of exchange is reported to be free at the interbank rate, with a percentage charge above that allowance and a further percentage charge on exchanges made over the weekend. Paid plans are reported to raise or remove the allowance. So the honest answer is that it depends on your invoice size and which day you press the button. One modest invoice a month, converted midweek, is cheap but not free. Several thousand euros a month and you are paying the over-allowance rate on most of it, which puts you behind Wise. We could not open Revolut's Portuguese pricing pages for this page, and the published numbers differ between Revolut's US and European entities, so treat the allowance size and the percentages as unconfirmed and read the current ones in the app. The other thing we could not confirm is more practical: whether a Portugal-resident Revolut account gives you US account details that accept a domestic ACH, or only a SWIFT route. Check what the app shows under your USD balance before you hand anything to a client, because a SWIFT-only route changes the arithmetic.
How much does Payoneer charge to receive USD in Portugal?
The reason to use Payoneer in Portugal is Upwork and Fiverr, where it is often the default payout. As a way to bill direct clients it is the expensive option here. Payoneer charges up to 1% to receive into your local receiving details, then up to 2% above mid-market when you move dollars into a euro bank account, so roughly 3% all in. Both legs are "up to" rather than fixed, which means the rate you actually get is the rate in the portal on the day, and Payoneer's disclosed maximum is not a quote. There is also an annual account fee of $29.95 if the account receives less than Payoneer's minimum activity threshold over twelve consecutive months, and Payoneer's own material has quoted two different thresholds at different times, so verify yours in the portal. If your income is direct invoices rather than platform work, Wise or Revolut will keep more of it.
How much does PayPal charge to receive USD in Portugal?
Available, familiar, and the one to talk your recurring clients out of. A US client paying a Portugal-based seller is a cross-border transaction from outside the EEA, so PayPal's international surcharge applies on top of its commercial transaction rate, and a currency conversion charge applies on top of that when the dollars become euros. PayPal publishes a Portuguese merchant fee schedule, and that document is the only thing that settles the actual percentages for a seller here. We could not open it, so every PayPal percentage on this page is an estimate carried over from PayPal's US schedule and should be treated as one. Check your own transaction receipts, where the receiving fee and the conversion are itemised separately. What we can say confidently is the shape rather than the size: this is the most expensive mainstream route on this corridor by a wide margin, and the conversion charge is the half people forget to count.
How much does Western Union charge to receive USD in Portugal?
It exists, it pays into Portuguese bank accounts, and on this corridor it has no real use case. Western Union is built for people sending money to family, not for clients settling commercial invoices, which is the same classification mismatch we flag on the Pakistan page. On a corridor where two properly licensed multi-currency accounts are available to you, there is no version of this that wins. Western Union also states that fees vary by amount, payout method and channel, and it does not disclose its exchange rate margin as a separate line, so verify the quoted euro amount against the mid-market rate before accepting anything.
How much does Bank Wire (SWIFT) charge to receive USD in Portugal?
The old route, and still the right one occasionally. A US bank charges roughly $25 to $45 to send, a correspondent bank may take a cut in transit, and your Portuguese bank charges its own inbound foreign transfer commission, published in its precario, before converting. On a $1,000 invoice those flat costs are brutal. On a $20,000 project payment they round to nothing, and the wire produces the cleanest paper trail your accountant will ever see. The trap is automatic conversion: dollars arriving into a euro-only account are converted at whatever rate the bank applies that morning, and you do not get to wait for a better one. Portuguese banks do offer dollar accounts, but they carry maintenance fees, so price that against what timing your own conversions would save you. We could not open any Portuguese bank's precario, so the receiving-side commission is not modelled in the comparison above and the FX spread we show is likely optimistic for a retail customer.
Providers not available in Portugal
GrabrFi: not available
GrabrFi opens accounts against a fixed eligibility list keyed to your government-issued ID, and Portugal is reported to be on that list, so opening a US dollar account may well be possible. What we could not confirm is the other half: whether GrabrFi pays out euros to a Portuguese IBAN. Until that is confirmed we do not model it on this corridor, so treat it as unproven here rather than as a route we know works.
How we calculate these figures
The net received figure deducts the provider's published flat fee and percentage fee from the send amount, then converts at the live mid-market rate from open.er-api.com minus the provider's FX markup in basis points. Rates on this page refresh hourly (ISR). Fee data is sourced from each provider's public pricing page and verified periodically. Not every provider publishes an FX spread. Where one does not, we estimate it, mark the row “est.” in the FX margin column, and exclude it from the best-value badge, so the option we highlight is always one whose spread we can source.
Fee data for this corridor last verified 2026-06-02 or later; each provider card shows its own date. · Open-source fee data on GitHub
Frequently asked questions
Wise or Revolut for receiving dollars in Portugal, which is actually cheaper?
It depends on how much you convert and when, which is why nobody gives you a straight answer. Wise charges a small fixed fee plus a percentage of the amount, at the real mid-market rate, and the percentage moves a little with the size and the route rather than with the day of the week. Revolut charges a transfer fee on the route, which we model at 0.3%, and prices the currency exchange separately: Standard users are reported to get a monthly allowance of exchange at the interbank rate, with a percentage charge above it and a further charge on weekend conversions. On the fees we model, one modest invoice a month converted midweek comes out cheaper on Revolut than on Wise, though not free. A freelancer converting several thousand euros a month blows through the allowance and pays the over-allowance rate on most of it, at which point Wise is usually cheaper and considerably more predictable. We could not open either provider's Portuguese pricing pages for this page, and Revolut's published numbers differ between its US and European entities, so check both in-app for a conversion of your actual size before committing. If you want one answer and no arithmetic, Wise is the safer default.
Can I get US account details as a Portugal resident, so my client can pay by ACH?
With Wise, yes. A full Wise account opened with a Portuguese ID gives you US account details, a routing number and an account number, and a US client pays them like any domestic account. Receiving that ACH is reported to be free, and the money lands in your USD balance as dollars. With Revolut we could not confirm it. Revolut does issue USD details to accounts in some markets, but whether a Portugal-resident account gets ACH-capable details or only a SWIFT route is something we could not establish from a source we could open, and it matters: a SWIFT route means your client pays a wire fee and the money takes days rather than hours. Look under your USD balance in the app and confirm what kind of details you have before you send them to anyone.
Do I charge IVA to a US client, and what do I put on the invoice?
You do not charge Portuguese IVA to a US client, but the reason is not the one most people give. Reverse charge, autoliquidacao, is the EU business-to-business mechanism and it does not apply to a US client at all. Services supplied to a business established outside the EU are simply not located in Portugal under the general business-to-business rule in paragraph 6 of Article 6 of the CIVA, so they fall outside the scope of Portuguese VAT, and the invoice carries a non-taxation mention citing that article rather than a reverse charge note. The supply is still reported on your periodic IVA return even though no tax is charged on it. Services to a non-business person outside the EU sit under a different paragraph of the same article. Portuguese practice also requires you to hold evidence that a non-EU client is genuinely a business rather than taking their word for it. Separately from all of this there is the small-business exemption in Article 53 of the CIVA, reported to sit at 15,000 euros of prior-year turnover, which decides whether you are inside the IVA system at all, and how foreign-client income counts towards that threshold is not something we could confirm from a source we could open. The exact wording and your own IVA position matter to the tax authority and vary by which paragraph applies to you, so get both from a Portuguese accountant rather than from a template you found online. This site covers transfer costs, not tax advice.
Is my coefficient 0.75 or 0.35 in the regime simplificado?
This decides how much of your income is taxed at all, and a lot of guides state 0.75 as though it applied to every freelancer. It does not. The 0.75 coefficient applies to professional activities specifically listed in the table referenced by Article 151 of the CIRS. Other service provision that is not in that table takes 0.35 instead. Which activity code you registered under when you opened activity is what settles it. There is also a condition people miss, and it attaches to both coefficients rather than only to 0.75: the presumed expense allowance built into them is only fully recognised if you can justify expenses, largely through e-Fatura, amounting to a set share of your gross income, otherwise part of the allowance is added back to your taxable income. First-year and second-year reductions to the coefficients are also reported to apply, with conditions. We could not open the Ordem dos Contabilistas Certificados or the tax authority pages directly, so confirm your own coefficient and the current conditions with a Portuguese accountant before you plan around either figure.
Does my US client have to withhold the 23% retencao na fonte?
No. A US client with no establishment in Portugal has no obligation to withhold Portuguese IRS, so you issue the receipt marked as being without withholding and you receive the full invoice amount. The 23% people are thinking of is what a Portuguese business client with organised accounting withholds on a domestic invoice and pays to the tax authority on your behalf, and it is the rate for the professional activities listed in the table referenced by Article 151 of the CIRS. Other activities are reported to carry a different and lower rate, and there is also a reported exemption from withholding for freelancers below an annual turnover threshold, so 23% is not automatically your number even on domestic work. That money is not lost when it is withheld, it is a payment on account against your eventual IRS bill, but with foreign clients it simply never happens. The practical consequence is that your tax is not being prepaid during the year, so budget for the full amount at settlement rather than being surprised by it.
What do I pay to Seguranca Social on this income?
This is the cost that surprises people more than IRS, and it is the one thing this page would otherwise leave out. Contributions for the self-employed are reported to be charged at 21.4% on a relevant income base of 70% of your service invoices, declared quarterly, with a minimum monthly contribution and a ceiling tied to the IAS. There is also a reported exemption from contributions for the first twelve months after you open activity for the first time, which you can waive if you would rather start building social protection sooner. Foreign clients change nothing here: income from a US client counts exactly like income from a Portuguese one. We could not open Seguranca Social pages directly, so confirm the current rate, the base and your own exemption status before you budget around them.
Do I qualify for IFICI, the NHR replacement, as a freelancer with US clients?
Probably not, and this is the single most misreported item we found on this corridor. The original NHR is closed to new entrants and IFICI replaced it, offering a flat rate on Portuguese-source employment and self-employment income from qualifying activities for ten years, plus exemption on most foreign-source income other than pensions. Eligibility requires that you were not Portuguese tax resident in the previous five years, that you have not used NHR or another Portuguese incentive, and that you register with the tax authority by a deadline in January of the year after you become resident. The part almost every guide omits is that the qualifying activity generally has to be carried out within an eligible entity, and the eligible list is specific: certified startups, companies benefiting from investment-support tax regimes, exporters in listed sector codes, entities certified for research and development, and public research units and higher education institutions. Plain freelancing for foreign clients on recibos verdes generally does not qualify on its own, even when your profession appears on the qualifying list, because there is no eligible Portuguese entity in the picture. Working through or for one, as an employee or as a service provider, is the route that can qualify. We could not open the legal text, the implementing portaria or the tax authority page, so treat this as a strong signal to get advice rather than a ruling, and do not build a relocation plan on a blog post that says your job title is on a list.
Do I have to report incoming transfers to Banco de Portugal?
Almost certainly not at freelance scale. Portugal has no exchange controls and no forced conversion on inward transfers. Banco de Portugal does run a statistical reporting regime for external transactions and positions, but natural persons are reported to have been taken out of its scope back in 2013, and the exemption threshold for the entities that remain in scope is reported to have been raised to 250,000 euros of external operations a year. We could not open Banco de Portugal's own page to confirm either point, so if you trade through a company rather than as a sole trader, check it with your accountant. Separately, your bank applies ordinary anti-money-laundering checks and may ask the purpose of a larger inbound transfer. A copy of the invoice and the client contract answers that in one email. Keep the fatura-recibo for every client payment regardless, since that is your actual evidence of foreign income, not anything the bank issues.
My client will only pay by bank wire. Will my Portuguese bank convert it automatically?
If the account is euro-only, yes, and at whatever rate the bank applies that morning. You do not get to wait for a better one, and the retail spread a Portuguese bank applies is usually well above what Wise or Revolut charge. On top of that the bank takes an inbound foreign transfer commission from its published precario, and a correspondent bank may have already deducted its own fee in transit, which is why the amount that lands is often less than the amount your client sent. On a large payment a wire is still defensible, since the flat costs shrink as a percentage and it produces excellent documentation. If you take dollar wires regularly, ask your bank about a dollar-denominated account so the conversion becomes your decision rather than theirs, and weigh its maintenance fee against what timing your own conversions would save.
Written by George I. (20+ years in international payments). Last updated: .
Fees are estimates from publicly available pricing. Verify with your provider before transferring. Nothing on this site is financial or tax advice. How we make money.