That's the bottom line.

A little bit background:

Here is one thing to remember - in the US banks in general do charge quite steep outgoing wire fees (like USD $42 for BoFA) but do not charge an exchange fee. This is not the case with banks in other countries where fees are multi-layer.

When you send for example $10K from a bank in country A/currency A to a Bank B/currency B there might be the following fees involved:

1. Bank A's outgoing wire transfer fee. (like $20-$45)
2. Bank A's currency exchange fee - often a percentage of the total transfer amount, like 2-3%, so in this case it will be like $200-$300
3. Intermediate bank fee - $15-$25
4. Bank B's incoming wire fee - $15-$30

All these fees above make transfers via banks quite expensive.

However, if a bank does not charge a currency exchange fee, then using wire/SWIFT is better starting from $5000. For smaller amounts Revolut/Wise and other fintech alternatives make sense.

P.S. There is one more way to completely get rid of fees, but I would not recommend it to an 'average' person. It involves opening Interactive Brokers account, transferring source currency funds there, convert it using interbank exchange rates (either market rate or use all the trading tools - limit, limit stop, trailing limit stop, etc), then withdrawing funds at the destination bank's account. This will work if both source and destination bank accounts and IB account belongs to the same person and IB is quite anal, like Wise with KYC.