The cheapest way to send money to El Salvador.

Remittances are about a quarter of El Salvador’s economy, and the fee you pay on a $300 transfer is a meaningful amount of money to the household receiving it.

The comparison

Service	Fee on $300	Speed	Delivery
Remitly (economy)	$0–3.99	3–5 days	Bank or cash
Remitly (express)	$3.99–6.99	Minutes	Bank or cash
Wise	$3–6	1–2 days	Bank only
Western Union	$5–12	Minutes	Cash pickup
Bank wire	$25–50	2–4 days	Bank only

Fees move; check before you send. The structural point does not move: because both countries use the dollar, there is no exchange-rate margin, so the advertised fee is close to the true cost. That is unusual and it makes comparison honest.

Cash or bank

Most receiving households still take cash, at a bank counter or an agent. Remitly and Western Union both have wide agent networks; Wise does not do cash at all.

If the recipient has a Banco Agrícola or Cuscatlán account, a bank deposit is cheaper and safer.

The bitcoin option

Lightning transfers cost fractions of a cent and settle instantly, and this was the explicit argument for the 2021 Bitcoin Law. In practice adoption for remittances stayed in the low single digits — the friction is not the transfer, it is converting to spendable dollars at the other end. It works well for recipients in El Zonte and poorly almost everywhere else.

First transfer

New-customer promotions are worth taking: most providers waive the fee on a first transfer and offer a better rate on the first few hundred dollars.