The rates, and what each one actually is
Argentina does not have one dollar price. It has a board of them, and every one is a different transaction rather than a different opinion about the same transaction. Understanding which is which is most of the battle.
| Rate | What it actually is | 2026-09-13 |
|---|---|---|
| Oficial | The retail rate at a bank counter, quoted here from Banco Nación. What you get selling dollars to a bank, and what you pay buying them. | 1,480 / 1,530 |
| Mayorista | The wholesale interbank rate. The one the central bank’s band is drawn around; everything else is priced off it. The central bank publishes it as a single reference rate under Comunicación “A” 3500, not as a bid and an ask — so a wide two-sided “mayorista” quote on a newspaper rate board is a copy error, not a spread. | 1,509.91 |
| Blue | The informal street market — the cuevas and arbolitos. Cash, no receipt, no paper trail. | 1,525 / 1,545 |
| MEP (dólar bolsa) | Buy a dual-currency bond with pesos, sell the same bond for dollars, settle locally. Entirely legal, done through a broker or a bank app. | about 1,533 |
| CCL (contado con liqui) | The same bond trade, but settled offshore. That is the whole difference, and it is why CCL prices above MEP: you are also paying to move the money out. | about 1,597 |
| Tarjeta | What a card issued here costs you for a purchase abroad: the official sell rate plus a 30% tax perception. | 1,989 |
| Cripto (USDT) | Buying or selling a dollar-pegged stablecoin on a local exchange. Tracks CCL, because both are ways of pricing a dollar you can move. | about 1,600 |
Retail, blue, MEP, CCL, tarjeta and crypto quotes as of 2026-09-13 — which was a Sunday, so they are Friday 11 September’s closes as reprinted by the Argentine press. The mayorista is the central bank’s own Comunicación “A” 3500 reference rate for 2026-09-11, taken from the BCRA’s published series rather than from a rate board. Every one of these moves daily.
Three things fall out of that table immediately. First, the card rate is arithmetic, not a market price: 1,530 × 1.30 = 1,989, to the peso. Second, MEP and CCL were about four percent apart that day, which is unusually wide — and the honest thing to say about that is the mechanism (CCL prices settlement offshore, MEP settles locally) rather than a number that will have moved by the time you read this. Third, the wholesale rate sits below the retail counter on both sides, which is what you would expect: the bank’s retail spread is built on top of it.
Why the gap existed, and why it collapsed
The brecha — the gap between the official and parallel rates — is what you get when a government fixes the official price of foreign currency and rations access to it. From 2019 onward individuals could buy only USD 200 a month at the official rate, and only if they met conditions; everybody else who wanted dollars bought them somewhere else, at whatever price that somewhere else charged. At its worst the street price was more than double the official one.
That is the world every English-language guide to Argentina describes: bring cash, never use a card, do Western Union runs, and your money goes twice as far.
On 2025-04-11 the government announced the end of those controls for individuals — the monthly cap abolished, the tax on currency bought for saving scrapped, and the peso moved to a managed float inside a band initially set between 1,000 and 1,400 pesos, with the edges crawling about one percent a month. The parallel rate fell hard within days and the gap has stayed in the low single digits since.
When the official rate is freely available, nobody pays a premium for the unofficial one. The brecha was never really a price. It was a measure of how hard the official rate was to reach.
The band, and how it moves now
The peso is not floating freely and it is not fixed. It moves inside a band the central bank defends, and the band itself moves — which is why any page quoting “the dollar trades between 1,000 and 1,400” is quoting the April 2025 launch settings and nothing else.
- April 2025 to December 2025: the floor and ceiling crawled at a fixed rate of about one percent a month.
- From 2026-01-01: the limits stopped crawling at a fixed rate and began indexing to the last published INDEC inflation figure, with a two-month lag. The January 2026 adjustment was 2.42%, reflecting November 2025 inflation.
- September 2026: the ceiling was around $1,919, with October’s calculated at about $1,951 using August’s 1.7% inflation. The wholesale reference rate was $1,509.91 on 2026-09-11 — which is about 21% below the ceiling, or equivalently a ceiling sitting about 27% above the rate. Both framings get quoted as “headroom” and they are different numbers; neither of them is 25%.
Band figures as of 2026-09-11. One outlet quoted the September ceiling as $1,891.68 in the same period; the ceiling crawls daily, which is the point. Take today’s from the central bank’s own published series, not from us.
September and October 2025 were the one real stress test: the wholesale rate touched the band ceiling on 2025-09-17, and the United States Treasury announced support including peso-buying intervention and a swap line. That episode is worth knowing about because it is the reason to treat the current calm as a policy outcome rather than a permanent condition.
What this means for you, practically
Do not bring cash for arbitrage
There is almost nothing in it. The blue buys at about 1,525 against the bank’s 1,480 — about three percent — in an unregulated transaction with counterfeit and robbery risk and no paper trail. And a paper trail is something you will actually want: for a lease, for an immigration file, for a tax return. The cueva’s structural advantage is gone.
There is a safety consequence too, and it is the single biggest change to a foreigner’s risk profile here in a decade. The old playbook made newcomers walk around as cash safes. Our safety guide goes into what that did and does not mean.
The spread that does still exist is legal, much smaller, and two different sizes
Selling dollars as a stablecoin on a registered local exchange, or converting through MEP, both price above the bank counter — but by materially different amounts, and the table above shows it. Against the bank’s buy rate of 1,480 on 2026-09-13: a stablecoin bid around 1,600 was about eight percent better, while MEP at about 1,533 was about 3.6 percent better. The reason is the one in the rate table: crypto tracks CCL, which prices offshore settlement, whereas MEP settles locally and therefore sits much closer to the counter. Anyone quoting a single “seven to eight percent” for both has spliced the crypto figure onto MEP. Either route requires a CUIT and identity checks and is fully taxable. The detail is in our guide to getting paid in USD.
Cards are no longer the expensive option they were
A foreign-issued card used in Argentina gets a preferential rate broadly in line with the MEP market rather than the old official rate — a scheme in place since December 2022 and described on the card networks’ own Argentine sites. That, plus the collapsed gap, is why paying by card is now reasonable for most things.
Going the other way, a card issued here used abroad costs you the official sell rate plus a 30% perception. Crucially, that perception is on account of income tax and wealth tax, not a pure levy: if you file a return, it is creditable. The Impuesto PAIS that used to sit alongside it applied up to and including 2024-12-22 — the tax authority’s own notice says “hasta el próximo 22 de diciembre inclusive” — and has not applied since.
Where to check today’s number
The only correct way to use any of the figures on this page is as an illustration of the mechanism. For today’s number:
- Dolarito and DolarHoy publish every rate, timestamped, with history.
- CriptoYa publishes live bids and asks exchange by exchange, which is the only way to see how wide the crypto spread is on the day — on 2026-09-13 it ran from about 1,540 at one venue to about 1,604 at another.
- The BCRA publishes the band limits as official statistical series, and the monthly adjustment rule that moves them.
- Argentine financial press — Cronista, Ámbito, Infobae — run a daily “dólar hoy” page with all of them side by side.
Commonly repeated, and now wrong
| You will read | The position as of 2026-09-13 |
|---|---|
| “The blue dollar gets you 50 to 100% more” | About one percent. This is the single most out-of-date claim on the English-language internet about Argentina. |
| “Bring crisp, new hundred-dollar bills” | Bill condition mattered because the street market discounted worn notes. With the gap gone, so is the reason to be in that market. |
| “Never use a card in Argentina” | Foreign cards get a preferential rate in the MEP range, and the gap is closed. Cards are now normal. |
| “Do a Western Union run” | The trick worked because it paid near the parallel rate. There is no parallel rate to speak of any more. |
| “Individuals can only buy USD 200 a month” | That cap was abolished in April 2025. |
| “There is a 30% PAIS tax” | PAIS applied up to and including 2024-12-22 and has not applied since. The surviving 30% on card purchases abroad is a perception on account of income and wealth tax, creditable if you file. |
| “The dollar trades between 1,000 and 1,400” | Those were the band limits at launch in April 2025. The band has moved and now indexes to inflation. |
| “Crypto is how you dodge the system” | Local exchanges are registered with the securities regulator and report to the tax authority. It is a legal route with a better rate, not a hidden one. |
One last honest note. The exchange regime here has been rebuilt three times in eighteen months — controls lifted in April 2025, the collection rules rewritten in September 2025, the band formula changed in January 2026, the rules rewritten again in April 2026. Nothing on this page should be read as a description of how Argentina permanently works. It is a description of 13 September 2026, with the sources that will tell you when it stops being true.
Common questions
What is the blue dollar in Argentina?
The blue dollar is the informal street price of the US dollar — cash, no receipt, no paper trail. It mattered because currency controls rationed access to the official rate, so the informal price ran far above it. On 13 September 2026 it was about one percent from the official rate.
Is the blue dollar still worth using in 2026?
Rarely. On 13 September 2026 the blue bought at about 1,525 against the bank counter rate of 1,480 — about three percent, in an unregulated transaction, with no documentation you can show a landlord, an immigration officer or the tax authority.
What is the difference between MEP and CCL?
Both are the same trade — buy a dual-currency bond with pesos and sell it for dollars. MEP settles the dollars locally; CCL settles them offshore. CCL therefore prices above MEP, because you are also paying to move the money out of the country.
Why is the dólar tarjeta so much higher than the official rate?
It is the official sell rate plus a 30% perception on account of income tax and wealth tax. On 13 September 2026 the official sell rate was 1,530 and the card rate was 1,989, which is exactly 1,530 times 1.30. Because it is a perception on account, it is creditable against your tax if you file a return.
Should I bring cash dollars to Argentina?
Not for the exchange rate — that reason disappeared in April 2025. Carrying large amounts of cash is now cost and risk without a corresponding benefit.
Where can I check the Argentine dollar rate today?
Dolarito and DolarHoy publish every rate with timestamps; CriptoYa shows live crypto bids exchange by exchange; the central bank publishes the exchange-band limits as official statistical series. Use those rather than any article, including this one.