If you ever bought a plane ticket through Ryanair website you are already aware that the quoted price will be in a currency of the Departure country. In some occasions it is cheaper to buy two separate tickets: one way to your destination and then a return ticket later. It is also handy if you have not yet decided how long your visit is going to be. The problem you face is that the return ticket will be quoted in a currency of the country you will be staying in and not your preferred home currency.
Ryanair will convert your quote into the currency of your card automatically during the payment stage without you knowing, however the conversion rate they use is just terrible and you will have no idea how much they actually charged you until you have already paid and now you WILL be able to see how much you will pay, but that number will not make you happy! Same situation if you are staying in the UK and buying ticket from your UK card for your friends who will be flying form a different country with different local currency.
UPDATE 16/11/2013 Ryanair launched a brand new website! Here is the updated trick to save your money!
First of all, make sure you unselect the travel insurance when booking your ticket (unless you need it!)


Now, once you are in the payment section, as soon as you select your billing country and type in a valid card number, the balance will automatically be converted to your local currency using Ryanair’s own rates. Click on the “more info” to launch a pop-up window. Now make sure to UNCHECK that little checkbox at the bottom:


And you are done! You have just saved 3-6% off your tickets price ;)
How much do you actually save?
Let’s look at the example above. I have booked a cheap one-way ticket from Germany to London using my UK card. The ticket price came at €58.13 and was converted automatically to £51.88 by using a magic Ryanair’s conversion which, by the way, they strongly suggest to use (of course they do).
By unchecking that box, our bank will do the conversion and the rate will depend on the card type (Visa / MasterCard currency rate on the transaction date). If, for example, you have a Visa Debit or Credit card with no foreign transaction fee, you will be charged £48.77:


Saving of £3.11, or 6%!
If you are not that lucky to have a card with 0% foreign transaction fee, you will be most probably charged 2.95% for this transaction. But event with this fee, you would be charged a total of £50.20:


Saving of £1.68, or 3.2%!
Is there any other way to avoid currency conversion?
Here is the second way which used to work on the old Ryanair website, but we have not yet tested it it DOES NOT work on the new platform anymore, so we just suggest you use the steps above ;)
To avoid automatic Ryanair currency conversion and pay in the currency you prefer you can follow this little trick:
- Go to Ryanair website as normal and find the flight you wish to buy. For example: Dublin – London Stansted, but DO NOT click “Book Now” yet! The quoted price would be in Euros as departure airport is in the Republic of Ireland, where local currency is Euro. I am buying this ticket from my UK card and would like to pay in Pounds Sterling instead, without any terrible conversion rates.
- Open a new tab in browser, but DO NOT close the existing one! Now find ANY flight from the country which uses the currency you would like to use as a payment. For example: I wish to pay in pounds, therefore I select a flight London – Dublin. Date, time and destination does not matter. Now click “Book Now” (you are still in the new tab!)
- Come back to your first tab and click “Book Now”. Look at the top right and you will see that your currency has changed! No conversion fees, nothing. You will know how exactly much you will be charged straight away.
Have trouble finding official card exchange rates?
Here are the links:
Ok, I´m trying to sort this out from the conversion in this forum.
I´m a Swedish citizen with a Swedish VISA card but I also have a British issued prepaid Master Card with Euro currency.
I have tried in different languages without success, to find the information popup box, where I could uncheck the automatic currency conversion. I have Win XP and Ie9.
I will be flying with family round trip from Sweden to Italy and if instead I make two one way trips, the one from Italy and home is a lot cheaper than if I made a round trip starting from Sweden, because that part then payed in Euro.
Question is also if it´s cheaper to use my Swedish VISA card to pay the Sweden-Italy part, even though it´s an extra fee for not paying by prepaid card…specially since the prepaid card is in Euro and will give a double conversion.
So is there any way for me now to uncheck the automatic conversion, and is it any more possibility to pay everything in Euro.
Hi Rolf,
You use very non-standard set-up like a prepaid card which is issued in Britain (local currency pound) but card has a currency in Euros. I don’t think there is a way you could avoid one or another type of the currency conversion here I am afraid…
I wish I’d read this BEFORE I made my booking – I didn’t see an exchange conversion anywhere when I booked (and I did try to find the GBP equivalent) and I have paid about £14 more than my card company would have charged!
Lesson learned.
I fear that is a new change incporporated by ryanair! Currency conversion cannot be deselected anymore! Any new tips how to circumvent it? I will try filing a complain.
I can confirm it does work…checked as of 4/02/2013 ;) try different browser, try different page language, make sure the currency of the billing country is different to the currencry of your outbound flight…
Hi!
I’m traveling from the UK to Spain and wanted to pay in Euros (but obviously Ryanair showed GBP prices only). I’ve tried the first trick and it DID WORK! ooooh I’m so happy! they are so unfair with it… they wanted me to pay 15 pounds for a 15kilo bag and 25 pounds for a 20 kilo bag, and now i have to pay 15€ for 15kg and 25€ for 20kilo… A LOT CHEAPER.. haha THANK YOUUUUU I’M SO HAPPY!
I am glad it worked ;) this trick is not guaranteed to work now…
I followed the top information about opening two separate ryanair pages, I opened a second browser and it converted my price in euros into pounds, the exchange rate was not great but at least I could see the amount in pounds that I was getting charged from my card in sterling.
Hi, it worked for me when i bought a one way flight on 19 March 2013.
First I saw my prices in the local currency and i did not want to buy.
Then opened the second tab and went ahead with booking almost to the credit card details page.
Then got back to the original flight page, hit the next button.
The following pages were in my favorite currency.
Thanks for the great hack!
Thank you!!!! Awesome tip!
It was the first time I had booked with Ryaniar in 5 years, didn’t even know about the scam exchange rate they have introduced.
Booked flights from Northern Ireland, flying out of Dublin, Total 965.10 euros convert that at today’s exchange rate 1 EUR = 0.845991 965.10 EUR = 816.466 GBP
Ryanair charge
965.10 EUR Total Paid
FX rate : 0.90263 GBP
Total Paid in card holders currency : 871.13 GBP
871.13
– 816.47
total 54.66
So I just got ripped off for 54.66 for not unchecking a tick box I didn’t know was there
Regards
Sean Harkin
Thanks! Good tip. And still works (Win7 + Chrome)
Worked like a charm! I wish I could do that all those times before..
Last night i booked tickets with ryanair unchecked the box and still ryanair charged with their currency rate (1 EUR = 3,65 LTL instead of 1 EUR = 3,45 LTL). (Windows Vista + Chrome) So there is no way to avoid their bad currency rate anymore?
Unchecking the box works… One possibility is that your bank charged you currency conversion fee as some cards charge you for paying in different currency to the one of your account, you need to check your card terms and conditions. Second possibility Ryanair website glitch, possibly cached data? In this case make sure you clean all your cookies/history before ordering
The original mechanism described at the beginning of the article, works again.
Or it did for me earlier today.
Great, thanks for letting us know!
First tip worked for me 10 minutes ago.
Thank you so much
Just tried this on a one way flight from Krakow – Dublin (where I was charged Polish Zlotys) and this worked a treat for me! Thanks for saving me a few quid – everyone little helps. When I first tried on Google Chrome to book the flights I was not given the option to deselect their conversion rate, so I opened a new window on Google Chrome and tried to book a flight from London – Dublin where GBP are used (I have a UK debit card), however this did not work. I then tried to use Internet Explorer and entered in all the details again for my Krakow – Dublin and after I entered all of my debit card details the option came up to deselect the currency option. I don’t know what part of that made the option come up – that’s why I have said exactly what I’ve done. I’m just happy it worked! This would save a family booking an absolute fortune! Ryanair should be ashamed of themselves trying to con people like this! PS: The option to deselect did not show until AFTER I entered my debit card details.
Thanks again.
First tip worked, however I had to select in other tab trip UK – UK, for the same number of travellers. Thanks I hope I saved some money. I like when price is in pounds.
It’s works, thanks a lot
I didn’t read all the way down your column – drat – and so did the usual of opening up two windows etc. All worked perfectly except for one thing. Flights part (Euros) were converted at rate of 1.19 (which is fair), but Administration fee of €7 became £7.00 not €7 converted at 1.19 rate. My Euro flight of €29.98 became £27.60 because of the Admin Fee conversation ripoff – total rate ended up at 1.09. Not sure how one can get round this, but it was too late to see whether your second method would work any better. Any advice?
Unchecking the box will always work better but ONLY IF YOUR CARD DOES NOT CHARGE YOU FOR CURRENCY CONVERSION! some banks do charge around 3% for transactions in other currency, so you need to read the terms.
Hi just wanted to thank you for this website. I did first tip today and found it to work successfully. The ticket cost an additional £2 than it did when I viewed the ticket as a return, but an extra £2 is much better than the extra £7 I’d pay if I used Ryanair’s conversion rate. Thanks very much!
I just wanted to add I used Internet Explorer 10. Thanks again!
The trick with the browser seems to work. Admin fee seems reasonable too, when converting manually. One thing to note – when using the browser trick, make sure you select the right number of people traveling in the second tab/window as it will somehow change the number of people selected in the first window when you click next :) So if you are buying the tickets for 2 then in the second tab/windows also search for the flight for 2 :)
Cheers!
Does anyone know how to apply this for when you want to add a bag online after your initial purchase? I’ve tried opening separate windows in Chrome, Firefox and Safari and each time I open the new window in the currency I want (Euro), and then go back to my original page, it tries to add on the ‘new’ flight to my existing booking, which is in SEK. There must be a way to avoid these terrible rates, because to add a new bag they want 210 sek which is roughly 24€ instead! Can someone help?
To add additional bag you need to go to “Manage Booking” section. Good news is that after new website launch bag prices were reduced! Bad news you CANNOT pay for your bad in other currency.
I bought a flight from Poland to UK and so the price was quoted in Polish Zloty. That’s ok with me, I have a Polish bank account. The amount of the flight was 237.20zl. However, I’ve just checked my bank account and Ryanair have charged me an amount of 261.33zl. In UK money that’s about £4 more than the original price.
I can’t really understand it, the price was quoted in zloty and I paid in zloty and yet they still got more money from me. Has this ever happened to anyone else? Is there anything I can do about it? I am VERY angry!!!!
It was a credit/debit card charge, it is added once you select your card type. With some Debit cards there is no charge, but with other there is.
Thank you so much for the tip. it is totally bad faith of them. why would I think about unchecking that option if the whole purchase is shown in euros? they let u think that you’re buying in euro, so it never occured to me a possible conversion. wish they have a filial in Brazil. I would certainly take a legal action.
Thanks for this!
I couldn’t get the ‘open-two-tabs-choose-a-UK-flight-in-the-second-tab-to-have-your-flight-in-the-first-tab-switch-to-GBP’ option to work: Ryanair flashed up ‘Locked Out’ pages on both pages when I tried that – perhaps it’s a knack they’ve got smart too and have locked out? I’d be interested to know if anyone else has experienced this.
So I opted for the ‘uncheck-Ryanair’s-recommended-exchange-rate’ option. Thanks for this great, money-saving advice!
Best wishes, RMDS
Thanks for the information! I have just tested this myself and can confirm that after the website refresh a each new booking is stored in a brand new session, so this trick cannot be used anymore.
Amazing tip. Their currency is a ripoff indeed.
Thank you
This is an absolute scam – Ryanair’s skim is 9% and they only show the GBP price in small letters buried in the screen once you have entered your card details, whilst the total in the top-right is still displayed in the original currency which now bears no relation to what will be charged. What a bunch of skanks.
Hence the article!
Thanks – the currency conversion tips worked!