GUIDE

How to read Myanmar exchange rates

Last updated: 27 October 2026

If you have ever seen two different "USD to MMK" rates on the same day and wondered which one is real, you are not confused — Myanmar genuinely has more than one. This guide explains where each number comes from, what ဝယ် and ရောင်း actually mean, and why the gap between them is not an error.

The rates you will run into

• Market rate — what changers in the street actually trade at. This is what most people mean, and it is what the main table on this board publishes.
• Bank counter rate — what a bank will exchange for a customer, usually with paperwork and limits. It sits well below the market rate and exists for customs, imports and official use.
• Central Bank reference rate — an official accounting rate. It moves slowly and is far below the street rate. We do not publish it, and here is why.
• P2P rate — the price on a peer-to-peer marketplace where traders advertise. It is a starting point, not the street rate itself.

None of these is a trick. They answer different questions, and the right one depends on what you are doing: trading cash, importing goods, or settling a payment.

ဝယ် and ရောင်း

Every two-sided row on this board is labelled with both sides, and the difference between them matters.

• ဝယ် (buy) — the rate at which the dealer buys your dollars. You receive fewer kyat than the mid.
• ရောင်း (sell) — the rate at which the dealer sells you dollars. You pay more kyat than the mid.

The spread between the two is the changer's margin, and in Myanmar it typically runs around 2–3% of the mid. A board that printed a single "rate" without labelling which side it was would be hiding the most useful number on the page.

Why a P2P price is not the street price

P2P marketplaces are useful because they are automated and always on, but they are not a changer's counter. A P2P bid is what one trader offers another for a digital dollar; the street price includes cash handling, security, transport and the risk of holding physical currency. The two are therefore close but not identical, and the P2P spread itself is much narrower than the street spread.

This is why we do not print P2P numbers as the board's ဝယ်/ရောင်း pair. We use the P2P mid as a reference point and apply the street spread around it. A row labelled "buy / sell" on this site means what a changer would quote, not what an advertisement said.

Reading the change column

The change shown next to each currency is the move against the previous calendar day, not against the last published snapshot and not against the price you saw an hour ago. It is calculated from the sell side, because the sell side is what someone walking in with cash actually meets.

When there is no rate from the previous day to compare against, the column shows a dash. That is not "unchanged" and not "0%" — it means no comparison is available. The two are different facts, and a dash is the honest one.

Where the other currencies come from

The board publishes 21 currencies. The major ones — US dollars, Thai baht, Chinese yuan, Japanese yen — are read directly from a money-changer board. The smaller ones — the Emirati dirham, Indian rupee, Vietnamese dong, Cambodian riel, Lao kip and others — are calculated by taking the US dollar rate and applying the currency's official cross rate, then adding the same street spread.

That means the extra currencies inherit the dollar rate's timestamp and its uncertainty. They are useful for a quick conversion and for a rough idea of what something costs in Cambodian riel; they are not the precise number a changer in Phnom Penh would quote you. The board labels them so you know which is which.

What the table does not tell you

A rate table tells you where a source published a price. It does not tell you where you can get the best one, whether a dealer has stock, or what a particular transaction will cost after fees. The spread you actually receive depends on amount, payment method and the dealer. Treat the board as the reference point, then confirm before a large trade.

Questions people ask

• Why is the market rate so far above the bank rate? Because official supply is limited while demand for foreign currency for imports runs high. The gap is the market's answer to that imbalance, and it can widen or narrow quickly.
• Should I use the ဝယ် or the ရောင်း column? If you are converting kyat into dollars, the ရောင်း column is the one that applies to you. If you are converting dollars into kyat, use ဝယ်.
• Is the USD row a P2P rate? No. Every row on the main table comes from the same publisher so they all share one timestamp and one quote type, which is what makes the table comparable.
• How current is this? Each row carries the time its source recorded it, and the board never carries yesterday's number forward as today's. A rate that has not been updated is marked stale rather than quietly repeated.

Ready to see today's numbers? Open the exchange-rate table or read how to read Myanmar gold prices.