RedRate is live. It is small, fast, and does one thing well: convert between currencies, including offline.
It also exists because every other currency app we have used in the last three years opens to a flash of advertising, asks you to log in, or shows you a chart you did not ask for. We were on a trip to Lisbon and the app we trusted for years had become unusable. Bohdan said, half-joking, "we should ship one this weekend." It took twelve weekends, but here it is.
Design rules
Three, written on a sticky note above Oliver's monitor:
- Open-to-answer in under one second. This includes a cold start.
- Offline first. Cached rates work for 72 hours. The app tells you when they are stale, but it does not refuse to work.
- Two taps, one number. No menus. Currency picker is one tap, conversion is another.
What we cut
A lot. No watchlists, no charts, no news ticker. We have a list of "things we considered and removed" longer than the actual feature list. A converter does not need to be a finance app.
A note on monetisation
RedRate is free with a small one-time unlock for offline-rate refresh on a wider list of currencies. No subscription, no ads. We can do this because the app is genuinely small and our hosting cost is negligible. If our usage explodes, the model may need to evolve. Until then, this is the simpler, more honest thing.
What it is not
It is not a remittance app. It is not a crypto tracker. It is a converter for travelers, freelancers who invoice in three currencies, and anyone who has ever stood in a hotel lobby and wondered if they are about to overpay.
If that sounds useful, RedRate is here.