The commercial guaraní rate with the time it was taken, a two-way converter and an honest note on which currency Ciudad del Este actually runs on.
We could not load the stored rate. Use the refresh button or type a rate below to convert.
Ciudad del Este has drawn Brazilian shopping trips since the Friendship Bridge opened in 1965, and is still one of the largest informal trading hubs anywhere. Here is the twist that makes this page different from the rest: on those shopping streets you will barely see a guaraní. The shops quote in US dollars, take reais without blinking and give change in whichever of the three is nearest. The guaraní becomes the money you need the moment you step off that circuit — a bus, a meal away from the main avenue, a hotel, Asunción, Encarnación.
The unit is tiny: the smallest coin in circulation is fifty guaraníes and the largest note a hundred thousand, so a supermarket receipt is a six-digit number. That size is a leftover from the middle of the last century, not a symptom of today — a law to strike three zeros off the currency has been on the books and postponed more than once. Paraguay has run one of the calmer monetary records in the region for two decades, with an inflation target near 4% and no redenomination since the guaraní was created in 1943. What moves it is soy, beef and hydroelectric power, plus rain: the drought that emptied the Paraná in 2021 and 2022 hit exports and river transport at once.
The rate at the top is a stored quote refreshed every half hour, timestamped under the value, and it is the commercial one. Two caveats matter more here than on most pages. First, the guaraní is close to unbuyable in Brazil: outside Foz do Iguaçu few bureaux hold it, and those that do sell it at a spread far wider than the dollar's, IOF on top — one more reason people cross with reais and dollars. Second, what you carry back has rules: the duty-free allowance at the land border is lower than the air one, with limits on quantities as well as value. Check the current figures on the Receita Federal site before the trip.
From the market feed for the guaraní against the real, stored by a job that runs every 30 minutes; the date and time of the quote sit under the value. The refresh button fetches the current one live from your browser; at weekends it does not move, because the market is shut.
Usually not. The shops on the commercial streets price in dollars and accept reais, and cards work in the larger ones. Guaraníes matter outside that circuit — local transport, small restaurants, pharmacies, anywhere beyond the border strip. Many people spend a day there without holding one.
Because demand is thin. A bureau only stocks a currency it can sell on, and most Brazilians heading to Paraguay carry reais and dollars, so outside Foz do Iguaçu few branches keep guaraníes and those that do price them with a wide spread. That spread, plus IOF, is the distance between this page and what you pay.
Only the size of the unit. The guaraní was created in 1943 and never rebased, so decades of ordinary price increases left it far behind — it says nothing about Paraguay today, which has had comparatively stable inflation for twenty years. It is also why the table starts at ten thousand: converting one guaraní produces a row of zeros.
There is a duty-free allowance, lower at a land border than when arriving by air, with limits on quantities as well as value. Those numbers come from the Receita Federal and have changed more than once, so look them up before you go. This is a converter, not customs advice.
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