The live mid-market AUD→SLE rate and what it means for a transfer to Sierra Leone. We explain the process; we never recommend a provider.
| You send (AUD) | Mid-market equivalent (SLE) |
|---|---|
| 500 AUD | 8,187 SLE |
| 1,000 AUD | 16,373 SLE |
| 2,000 AUD | 32,747 SLE |
| 5,000 AUD | 81,867 SLE |
These are mid-market equivalents, not transfer quotes - a provider deducts its exchange-rate margin and any fee from these figures. STRUCK 11:00 AEST · TUE 13 OCT.
A continent pretending to be a country - Australia is the only nation that fills an entire continent, with most of its 27 million people clinging to the coast while the red-dirt interior does its own thing.
A blue field with the Union Jack in the canton, a large white seven-pointed Commonwealth Star below it, and the five white stars of the Southern Cross at the fly. Six of the big star's points stand for the states and the seventh for the territories; the Southern Cross marks Australia's place in the southern sky.
A West African nation on the Atlantic coast, Sierra Leone takes its name from Portuguese for 'lion mountains', and its capital Freetown was founded as a home for formerly enslaved people.
Three horizontal bands of green, white and blue. Section 3 of the constitution declares the flag and describes it as exactly that, three horizontal stripes from top to bottom, and fixes the normal size for official use at nine units across to six units down; it assigns the colours no meaning. They are conventionally read as green for the resources of the country and its people, notably agriculture and the mountains, white for unity and justice, and blue for the aspiration to contribute to world peace through the natural harbour at Freetown.
Sources: sierra-leone.org, constituteproject.org, britannica.com, parliament.gov.sl, thegazette.co.uk · checked 2026-08-27
Sierra Leone dropped three zeros from the leone in 2022, and old notes circulated beside new ones through the changeover, so a quoted amount still needs checking against which leone is meant. Anything written before that date is a thousand times the equivalent figure now.
Australia’s exchange controls went with the float. A Reserve Bank research paper dates their abolition to the December 1983 decision that ended the crawling peg and opened the country to capital moving in both directions. Sanctions are a separate matter and do still apply. Targeted financial sanctions prohibit making assets available to designated persons and entities, and the Australian Sanctions Office within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade maintains the Consolidated List that names them. The other requirement sits with the provider rather than the sender. Before it carries out a first transfer the provider must complete customer identification: collect identifying information, then verify it against reliable and independent documents or electronic data. That is the request for identity documents a first-time sender meets before anything can be sent.
The report that follows is the provider’s, not yours. A reporting entity must lodge an international funds transfer instruction report with AUSTRAC for a transfer of any value into or out of Australia, within ten business days of the instruction. There is no amount below which one is not filed, and on a transfer sent through a provider there is nothing for the sender to lodge. What is left to a sender is timing and route. The banking day that decides when money lands is the destination’s, not Australia’s, and Australian business hours run ahead of nearly every country on this list: Monday morning in Sydney is still Sunday in the Americas. The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures records that payments reaching a beneficiary country outside its operating hours stall until the system reopens. Route matters as much as the hour. A payment may pass through correspondent banks on its way, or through a provider that operates in both countries and, the Reserve Bank notes, avoids some of the costs of that intermediation.
New to sending money to Sierra Leone? The corridor guide walks through how a transfer works and what to check. Other views of the same transfer: the SLE → AUD page covers the opposite direction, the AUD/SLE converter page has amount conversion and history, and the currency converter handles any amount. On the other end of this transfer? The receiver’s view covers what arrives and what to check.
How much Sierra Leonean leone will the recipient actually get?
A little less than the mid-market figures on this page. Providers apply their own exchange rate (the mid-market rate minus a margin) and usually a transfer fee, so the amount that arrives in Sierra Leone depends on both. Comparing a provider's quote against the mid-market rate shown here reveals the real cost.
Is there a best day to send money to Sierra Leone?
Rates move constantly and Tradergy doesn't forecast them. What you can control is the cost of the transfer itself: the gap between the quoted rate and the mid-market rate, plus any fees.
Why is my provider’s rate worse than this one?
Retail rates are set away from the mid-market midpoint by a margin the provider keeps. Comparing a quote against the reference rate on this page is what makes that margin visible, since it is rarely stated as a fee.