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Fetching current reference rates…
- 1 USD reference—
- 1 USD reference—
- Reference rate date—
Rates come from free public data published by exchangerate-api.com (open.er-api.com), updated once a day — not a live market feed, and not any central bank's official rate: it is a third-party aggregated reference value. USDT is treated here as approximately one dollar; it usually trades very close to a dollar but is not one. P2P execution prices normally differ from this reference (those are set by supply and demand and include the counterparty's spread), so when you actually trade, the order book in front of you is authoritative.
Where the data comes from, and when the tool stops: Rates By Exchange Rate API. All three currencies are converted through the US dollar. If the data is more than two days old, the tool stops rather than let you decide on a stale rate. That limit is ours, not a promise from the data provider; a wrong clock on your phone or computer can also stop it working.
How to use this, and how to read the numbers
What problem it solves
Operating in Central Asia, money keeps hopping between three units of account: local spending in tenge, cross-border settlement in dollars or stablecoins, and dealings with China in yuan. Converting in your head is error-prone, especially with tenge, where the magnitude is large enough that dropping a zero costs you a factor of ten. This puts all three side by side.
How to use it
Type an amount into any field and the other two compute immediately. Clearing any field clears all of them. For larger figures, watch the big number above the results — that is the dollar value of whichever field you just typed into.
Why this differs from the price on the platform
Because they are two different prices. What you see here is a third-party aggregated reference rate, updated once a day. What you see on P2P is a market execution price, formed by live orders and including whatever spread the counterparty intends to earn.
A gap between them is normal and is a feature of the market structure, not evidence that anyone is cheating you. But if the gap is conspicuously wide, that is worth pausing on — which is the most useful thing this tool does: not computing an exact settlement figure, but telling you whether a quote is reasonable.
Using it to judge whether a quote is fair
The method: enter the amount here and note the figure at the reference rate; look at the quote you were actually given; take the difference and divide by the reference. That percentage is the quote’s deviation from the daily reference, not the total fee. Data timing, the USDT market price and quoted spreads can affect it; check separately listed platform, network and bank fees as well.
Within a normal range that is just market structure. Conspicuously wide is worth a question. It might be a poor order, or it might be the time of day (liquidity is generally worse late at night and over holidays). Checking again later or with a different counterparty costs nothing.
Why the tenge figures look so large
Because the tenge's unit is small, so one dollar corresponds to several hundred. That creates a very practical problem: it is easy to be out by a factor of ten in your head. Miss one zero and the amount is ten times wrong.
That is the actual reason this exists — not that the arithmetic is hard, but that reading an order book on a phone while doing arithmetic is where people misread. Three numbers side by side is measurably harder to get wrong.
Data source disclosure
When you open this page it makes one request to open.er-api.com for the current rates, taking USD against KZT and CNY. It is free public data from exchangerate-api.com, refreshed once a day. There are no rate figures hard-coded into this page — if the request fails, the tool says so explicitly rather than showing a stale number.
To be clear about what this is not: it is not the National Bank of Kazakhstan's official rate, and it is not a European Central Bank reference rate — the ECB's reference currency list does not include the tenge at all. It is an aggregated third-party figure: fine for estimating, not sufficient for formal accounting.
Treating USDT as one dollar is a simplification. Stablecoins float slightly around a dollar and can move further in extreme conditions (see the depegging section of what USDT actually is). Factor that in for large conversions.
The reference date, and why it matters
The results panel includes a "reference rate date" line showing when this data was refreshed. The source updates once a day, so what you see is that day's value rather than the price at this moment. That lag makes little difference for estimating, but you should know it is there and not treat this as a live feed.
Who it is for
People living or doing business in Kazakhstan who need to move between tenge and dollar-denominated figures. If you need exact settlement accounting for a trade, this is not sufficient — that requires actual execution prices at actual moments.
Related
- Cashing out to tenge — where the fees and spread sit
- Buying USDT with Kaspi — how to read P2P quotes
- Cross-border settlement — why the rate moment matters for your books
- Crypto terms in three languages