Changelly

Did you know that there are now some 200 cryptocurrency exchanges out there? Cryptos might have started off as cool, alternative, underground currencies, but they’re certainly not any more.

Of course, many of those supposed “exchanges” aren’t really exchanges at all. They simply allow you to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, either from them or from other users.

Changelly, however, really is an exchange, in the truest sense of the word. I’ll get into more detail on their unique, intelligent method of exchanging currencies throughout my Changelly review. In short, however, this is a crypto-to-crypto exchange (with an option to buy using fiats), which automatically gets the best rates available for you.

Want to find out about Changelly’s user-friendliness, available markets, payment methods, and more? Well, guess what—you came to the right place!

Let’s get started.

Changelly Key Features

Changelly was founded in Prague back in 2015 and is still headquartered there now. Its aim is to help you get the best possible conversion rates for your cryptos.

Here are a few of its key features:

AI Technology

I’ll get into this in more detail later on. In short, however, Changelly has developed some incredibly smart and useful AI. Tell them you want to make an exchange, and their algorithm will automatically—and quickly—find you the best possible exchange rate.

Proven Track Record

You’re obviously being asked to put a lot of faith in Changelly and trust that you’re getting a good deal. So is Changelly legit? The good news is they’ve got an excellent track record, which should put you at ease. Over 2 million people have signed up for Changelly, and they currently process around 15k transactions every week.

Security

When money is being exchanged online, security is obviously of the highest importance. Changelly doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail regarding its security measures. That said, it does place a large emphasis on being trustworthy, and a solid online reputation backs this up. It also offers two-factor authentication for its users’ accounts.

Low Fees

Changelly has low, low fees—one of its claims to fame. It charges a flat rate of 0.5% per transaction, which is extremely competitive. Considering how much money it could save you, in fact, this could be seen as a bargain.

API for Developers

To its credit, Changelly seems to genuinely want to be part of—and help—the cryptocurrency community. Alongside an excellent affiliate program, it offers its API for developers to use and allows them to set their own fees. It even gives those developers a dedicated support line, to further assist them.

Supported Currencies

Some supposed cryptocurrency exchanges only actually offer Bitcoin for trade. Others stick solely to the heavy hitters: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, etc.

By contrast, Changelly supports a huge range of cryptocurrencies. In fact, there are over 50 of them listed in all, from the aforementioned famous cryptos to the lesser-known options. In theory, their algorithm works just as well regardless of which currency you choose to trade. You should receive the best deal whether you’re making a Changelly Ripple trade or you’re dealing in “Viberate” (it’s a real crypto, I swear!).

The flip-side of that coin, unfortunately, is the tiny number of fiats Changelly supports. There are only two of them: USD and EUR. Technically you can pay using another currency, but it will need to be converted into dollars or euros for the transaction, and of course, you may incur a conversion fee from your bank.

Changelly Signup and Login

Changelly’s signup process is ridiculously simple and straightforward. Literally all you need to do to open a basic account is fill in your email address and tick a reCAPTCHA box. That’s it.

You can then immediately start trading, with no need for identification or any further details whatsoever, a nice plus in this Changelly review. For those who value cryptocurrencies for their anonymity, this is surely a dream come true.

Once you’ve completed this first step, you’ll receive an email with an automatically generated password. You can then change that password straight away within your account and set up two-factor authentication, if you wish.

If you leave your Changelly account for any reason, then logging back in is equally simple. Just pop in your email address and password, tick another reCAPTCHA box, and you’re done.

Interface

It’s not actually too difficult to attract first-time customers to a cryptocurrency exchange. The challenge, and the goal—as with any business—is to keep them coming back time and again. The interface plays a key part in this. Users might forgive a clunky UI once, but the chances are they won’t return to use it again.

Although there’s currently no additional Chagnelly app, I’m pleased to report that, like its signup process, Changelly’s overall interface is extremely user-friendly. Everything you might need, from the brief How It Works section, to a more detailed FAQ, to the My Account area, is all nicely lined up along the top menu.

Perhaps the most important of those is My Account. This is neatly separated into two parts: History and Profile. History outlines your previous trades, and the slim Profile section handles two-factor authentication, password changes, and so on.

The actual trading interface is extremely easy to understand and navigate too, but I’ll get into that properly in the How to Make a Trade section, below.

For this Changelly review, I only have one criticism of the interface, which is that, for a first-time visitor, it’s a little hard to understand what Changelly actually does. While attractive to look at, the homepage is extremely light on detail. It simply says that people can “exchange cryptocurrency at the best rate”—which is pretty vague—and makes no mention of Changelly’s algorithms, which are the main selling point.

There is a How It Works section that should generally explain how to use Changelly, but it’s pretty terrible. Literally the only thing on the page is this diagram, which goes into almost no detail whatsoever and might just confuse first-time visitors more!

I seriously worry that this might alienate newcomers, particularly if they didn’t already know what Changelly actually does, and how it’s different from other exchanges. That aside, this is an excellent, user-friendly interface.

Markets

Some people might be happy simply buying cryptos, perhaps holding onto them for a while, and selling them again. Others, however, look to trade them more actively. With the right exchange, it’s possible to trade cryptos against each other, and against certain fiats.

Technically the Changelly exchange will be suitable for either of these groups. If you’re making a long-term investment, it’ll get you the best starting price. People who will truly get the most out of it, however, are the active traders.

With its enormous range of markets, Changelly allows for flexible and versatile cryptocurrency trading. There are over 50 different cryptos on offer here, all of which can be paired against each other. These include the usual suspects like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, and Ethereum, all the way through to less common options, like Dent and Gnosis.

However, unlike on some other exchanges, you cannot trade cryptocurrencies for fiats. You can buy cryptos with USD or EUR, but you can’t work it the other way around.

Trading Tools

At this point, you might be thinking that Changelly could stake a claim to becoming the go-to cryptocurrency exchange on the market. It probably seems like a “Changelly vs Coinbase” debate is one worth having.

Well it is, for the most part, but when it comes to trading tools, Coinbase wipes the floor with its lesser-known rival. That is, at least, when it comes to tools that you can actually use.

Coinbase offers full price charts for every cryptocurrency on its platform, allowing you to track the action over a long period of time. They also give you other vital information, such as a crypto’s market cap, how much of it is in supply, the trading volume, and so on.

All of this is missing on Changelly. Other Changelly reviews will also point out that there aren’t any price charts, or really anything else whatsoever to guide your trade. It simply tells you the exchange rate for your chosen trade at that exact time, e.g., 1 USD = 0.0044 ETH. You can always use a third party website to get that other information, but should you really need to?

Of course, when it comes to below-the-surface trading tools, Changelly has an ace up its sleeve.

It might not sound sexy, but the biggest attraction with Changelly is its algorithms. It’s these that actually—in theory—save you money, separating this particular exchange from the crowd. I’ll explain this in more detail in the How to Make a Trade section, below.

How to Make a Deposit

You don’t technically make deposits on Changelly. There’s never any money sitting in your account, and there’s no Changelly wallet available. Instead, exchanges happen immediately and directly between you and whichever platform you end up trading with.

These exchanges can be made using any of the 50 or so cryptocurrencies Changelly supports. Alternatively, you can simply buy cryptos, although the payment methods for this are slim. Well, there’s only one method really—you have to use a bank card. There’s no support for PayPal, Neteller, or even wire transfer. I’d certainly hope to see these options fleshed out considerably in time.

How to Make a Trade

Right, this is the difficult part! As I touched upon earlier, I don’t actually think Changelly does a very good job of explaining its own trading process. Still, I’ll try to spell it out as simply as possible.

To start off, you simply select the currency you’re trading from, how much of it you want to trade, and what you want to acquire. You’ll then get an automatic estimate from Changelly of how much the exchange should get you.

Once you’re happy with that, you proceed to the next stage. This is when you enter the address of the wallet you want the new funds sent to (your wallet, presumably).

After that, you’ll be given a QR code and another wallet address. This is the wallet to which you need to send the cryptos that you want exchanged. Simply take that code, go to your wallet, and send the necessary funds to the address you’ve been given. If you use a mobile app for your crypto banking, you can just scan the QR code instead.

Once your money has been sent, the deal should go through. Transactions usually take 5-30 minutes to process, sometimes longer in the case of network delays. After that, you’ll get a hash receipt from Changelly when your wallet receives the new crypto.

Changelly’s main selling point is that it guarantees competitive exchange rates. In fact, it claims to provide “the best crypto-to-crypto rates on the market.” It achieves this via its robot, which has been integrated into some of the biggest cryptocurrency trading platforms on the internet.

If you want to buy 0.005 BTC, for example, the robot scans every platform it’s connected to, finds the best possible rate, and displays that on the site. All of this happens incredibly quickly and should guarantee that you get an excellent price.

Overall, Changelly’s trading process is fantastic, all the hard work being done by its algorithms. Changelly has managed to take something that’s actually pretty complicated and reduce it to its most basic steps.

Up front, I want to make it clear that there are no hidden Changelly credit card fees, nor are there any for trading only with cryptos, which is obviously great. Any fees that may be incurred are clearly stated on the website.

Since you don’t actually deposit or withdraw from your Changelly account, there are no fees you need to be aware of in that regard. There are still fees for actually making trades, which is to be expected, and I’ll cover those in the next section of my Changelly review.

Trading Fees

Every cryptocurrency exchange has to make money somehow, with most of them choosing to do so through taking commissions on trades. This is also the case with Changelly, but, again, they are very up front with those fees.

Every transaction on Changelly is subject to a flat 0.5% fee. This fee is clearly shown before you commit to the purchase, as a part of the overall price.

As far as commissions go, this is extremely reasonable. To give you a point of comparison, Coinmama—another crypto exchange—charges almost 11% per transaction for its services.

On top of the 0.5% for Changelly, you must also pay network fees for your purchases, but these have nothing to do with Changelly. They’re simply a fact of life when buying and selling cryptocurrencies. As Changelly smartly urges, however, make sure that the amount of cryptocurrency you’re buying is enough to cover the network fee.

Trading Limits

While the vast majority of things on Changelly are straightforward, its trading limits are certainly a little … unusual. Matters aren’t helped by an explanation in the FAQ section, which is strangely worded.

Regardless, the important thing for this part of the Changelly review is that there are trading limits in place for your first few purchases. These only apply if you’re using a bank card to buy cryptos, and the limits themselves vary depending on where you’re based.

If you’re from the UK, for example, you’ll have a $200 limit in place for your first transaction. You then have to wait four days before making another purchase, limited to $500, then another three days, this time limited to $3000. After that, there are no further restrictions.

For a full list of country-by-country limits, head over here.

These limits aren’t restrictive enough to be a dealbreaker. They are a little annoying, though, as they prevent you from making a medium-to-large purchase right away, instead forcing you to make smaller buys first. I’m sure Changelly has its reasons for these limitations—perhaps for security—but it’s still a negative point in my book.

Security

One question everyone surely wants answered: Is Changelly safe? Well, Changelly doesn’t actually provide a huge amount of security for its users. I know that sounds bad, but the simple fact is they don’t really need to.

Really, it’s simply a broker, helping two separate parties—you, and the actual exchange—make a deal. It doesn’t keep any of your money, and if you want to use a bank card to buy cryptos, Changelly demands that the bank has 3D-Secure for the transaction.

Changelly does have two-factor authentication in place to stop any unwanted individuals from accessing your account, which is easy to set up. Aside from that, there’s not much to report here. Again, though, this really needn’t be a concern for you.

Customer Service

One of the problems with using a relatively small cryptocurrency exchange is that it typically doesn’t offer much support for its customers. And according to many other Changelly reviews, this drawback proves to be the case with Changelly too.

The main way to contact Changelly is by sending a message via a ticketing system.There don’t seem to be any assurances whatsoever about response times to messages, and there are a number of complaints online about Changelly’s support team being slow to respond.

There’s no phone support, but – in better news – Changelly did recently add live chat to the website. Whilst they claim that it’s 24/7, the first time I tried to use it for this review the support team were offline. Maybe I caught them at a bad time!

Changelly also have a solid FAQ section in place. While certain things could be more clearly explained, all the major questions you’ll likely have are answered here.

My Changelly review has generally stayed pretty positive so far. Its customer support is certainly one of the weakest points of Changelly’s offerings, however.

Changelly Reputation

Changelly genuinely seems to care about the health and development of the cryptocurrency community. Their commitment to allowing developers to use their API (setting their own transaction fees in the process), and to dishing out healthy commissions to their affiliates, clearly shows this to be the case.

As you might expect, this has made it pretty popular online. Whether they come from professional critics or users, Changelly reviews tend to be nice and positive (just like this one). It also receives ringing endorsements across social media, even from noteworthy members of the crypto community like Charlie Shrem.

They don’t have the greatest Trustpilot score in the world—it’s only three stars at the moment. If you actually look at the negative reviews, however, you’ll see many of them have been written by people who clearly didn’t read Changelly’s FAQ section before using the service.

Finally, there are no reports of any major security breaches at Changelly, which is always nice to hear!

Conclusion

Are there more feature-packed cryptocurrency exchanges out there than Changelly? Certainly. For what Changelly offers, however, it’s an excellent option for crypto traders.

The basic idea—that you’ll get an extremely competitive price on your trades—is one that should obviously interest just about everybody. The execution of this idea, which we’ve explored in this Changelly review, also proves to be flawless.

I can’t speak highly enough of the trading mechanics on Changelly. Trading is phenomenally easy, whether you’re a first-time buyer or a veteran, with Changelly’s algorithms doing all the heavy lifting for you. The interface is extremely user-friendly, there’s a lovely wide range of cryptos to trade, and the low fees serve as icing on the cake.

That’s not to say that Changelly is a perfect exchange. The issues range from simple annoyances, like the frustrating trading limits, to the more serious, with poor customer support being the clearest example. In general, there’s still work to be done here. For example, I’d also love to see additional payment methods and trading tools added.

Having said that, even in its current form, Changelly represents an enticing option on the crowded cryptocurrency exchange scene. This is a user-friendly, incredibly useful exchange, and I have absolutely no problem recommending it in my Changelly review.