See what a dollar really costs at the counter: the commercial rate plus the bureau spread and the IOF, for cash, prepaid card and credit card.
Travel Dollar Rate (Dólar Turismo): R$ 5,1359.
The dollar quoted on the news and the dollar sold at an exchange counter are two different prices. The commercial rate is the interbank reference: what banks pay each other for dollars in large volume, in the market supervised by the Banco Central. Nobody buying US$ 500 for a holiday reaches it. The travel rate — the dólar turismo — is the retail price, and it carries the bureau's margin: it buys your dollars at one price, sells them higher and lives off the gap. That spread is fixed by nobody. It commonly runs between 4% and 10% above the commercial rate, and it widens with a small amount, an airport counter, or the absence of a competitor next door.
On top of the spread comes the tax. The IOF on foreign exchange for individuals is 3.5%, and since the 2025 decree that unified the rates it is the same 3.5% for banknotes at a counter, for an international prepaid card and for a credit or debit card used abroad. That was a change of regime: cash used to be taxed at 1.1% and cards at 3.38%, under a 2020 schedule that was taking the card rate to zero by 2028, which the decree cancelled. Because the figure comes from a decree and has moved twice in recent years, this page does not hard-code it — the IOF field is editable, and so is the spread, so the estimate follows your bureau and your card rather than an average.
What the page gives you is an estimate, and it says so on the screen rather than in the small print. It starts from the stored commercial rate, applies the spread you set and then the IOF, and shows the three numbers side by side, so you can see how much of the final price is market and how much is margin and tax. The real figure is the one on the bureau's screen — and a credit card has a second catch: it converts on the day the issuer processes the transaction, not the day you spent, so the rate you saw in the shop is rarely the one you are billed at. The page makes no request at all until you press "Refresh rate".
Estimated travel rate = commercial rate × (1 + spread ÷ 100). Estimated cost with tax = estimated travel rate × (1 + IOF ÷ 100). Cost in reais = amount in dollars × estimated cost with tax, and the reverse divides. The commercial rate is the USD-BRL bid published by AwesomeAPI from the Brazilian interbank market, stored by a scheduled job every 30 minutes and fetched live only when you press the refresh button.
From AwesomeAPI, which tracks the Brazilian interbank market. A job on our server stores it every 30 minutes and prints it into the HTML with its date and time. Past two hours the page says the number is old instead of presenting it as current, and the refresh button fetches the value of the moment.
Because the news quotes the commercial rate — the wholesale price between banks. A counter sells a small retail amount with staff, cash handling and its own margin on top, and then the IOF is added. The commercial rate is the floor of the calculation, never the price.
3.5%, the same for banknotes, prepaid cards and credit or debit cards, since the 2025 decree unified rates that had been 1.1% for cash and 3.38% for cards. It is set by decree and can change again, which is why the field here is editable.
Not because of the tax: the IOF is 3.5% on both since 2025, so the choice comes down to the spread and the timing. Cash and prepaid cards lock the rate when you buy; a credit card converts at the issuer's rate on the day it processes the purchase, which you cannot know in advance.
This page does not answer that, and no page honestly can. It shows today's reference and what a purchase costs at it — no forecast about the exchange rate, and no investment advice. The spread you set is an assumption too, so treat the result as a yardstick for comparing offers.
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