A balance transfer at 0% is not free. Nine of the 98 personal credit cards we track publish a promotional transfer rate, and eight of those nine charge a fee to use it. The fee is a percentage of everything you move, it is charged on day one, and it is the number the advertisement leaves out.
The offer is always written as a rate and a term: 0% for twelve months, 0.99% for nine. Both of those are true and neither is the price. The price is the transfer fee plus whatever the balance costs after the term ends, and the second one only matters if you have not cleared the balance by then.
Which Cards Publish an Offer
Every figure in this table comes from the issuer’s own page and was checked on 18 August 2026. Three of the nine offers carry no published end date, and those rows say so instead of carrying a guess.
| Card | Promo rate | For | Transfer fee | Then | Annual fee | Offer ends |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BMO Preferred Rate Mastercard | 0% | 18 months | 2% | 15.99% | $29 | None stated |
| BMO Ascend World Elite Mastercard | 0% | 12 months | 2% | 23.99% | $150 | 31 October 2026 |
| MBNA True Line Mastercard | 0% | 12 months | 3% | 17.99% | $0 | None stated |
| Scotiabank Momentum Visa Infinite | 0% | 12 months | 2% | 22.99% | $120 | 1 November 2026 |
| CIBC Select Visa Card | 0% | 10 months | 1% | 13.99% | $29 | None stated |
| Scotiabank Value Visa Card | 0% | 9 months | 1% | 13.99% | $29 | 3 January 2027 |
| BMO CashBack Mastercard | 0.99% | 9 months | 2% | 23.99% | $0 | 31 October 2026 |
| Scotia Momentum Visa Card | 0.99% | 9 months | 2% | 22.99% | $49 | 3 January 2027 |
| Tangerine Money-Back Credit Card | 1.95% | 6 months | 1% | 22.95% | $0 | 30 September 2026 |
Two things stand out from the table rather than from any argument about it. The longest term is eighteen months and it belongs to a card with a $29 annual fee. And the lowest rate does not go with the lowest fee: three of the four cards charging the smallest transfer fee run shorter promotions than the ones charging more.
The Fee Is the Rate, for the First Year
A transfer fee is charged once, on the amount moved, at the start. On a balance you clear inside the promotional term, that fee is the entire cost of borrowing, so it is also the effective interest rate for the period.
| Transfer fee | Cost on $10,000 | What you actually paid to borrow it |
|---|---|---|
| 1% | $100 | $100 |
| 2% | $200 | $200 |
| 3% | $300 | $300 |
| 5% | $500 | $500 |
Read that against the alternative rather than against zero. A $10,000 balance sitting at 19.99% for a year costs roughly $2,000 in interest. Moving it for a 3% fee costs $300. The transfer is dramatically cheaper and it is not free, and both of those statements have to survive together for the arithmetic to be worth anything.
The comparison gets closer as the promotion gets shorter. A 2% fee for a six month term is 2% of the balance for half a year, which annualises to about 4%. Still far below a purchase rate, and no longer in the same territory as the headline 0%.
The Fee 70 Cards Do Not Publish
Of the 98 personal cards we track, only 28 publish a balance transfer fee at all. Seventy publish nothing. That is not the same as charging nothing, and this site never shows a blank as a zero, so those 70 cards appear with the fee marked as not published rather than as free.
It matters more here than almost anywhere else on the site, because the fee is the single largest component of what a transfer costs and it is the one component the headline rate hides. A card advertising 0% with no published fee is not a card offering a free transfer. It is a card that has not told you the price.
What to Ask For
The fee is stated in the cardholder agreement even where it is missing from the marketing page. It is worth reading before the transfer rather than after, because it is charged immediately and it is not refundable if you change your mind.
What Happens at the End of the Term
Whatever is left when the promotion ends stops being promotional. It moves to the card’s ordinary balance transfer rate, and among the nine cards above that rate ranges from 13.99% to 23.99%. The two cards with the lowest revert rate, at 13.99%, are also two of the three shortest promotions.
Across all 98 personal cards, 69 publish an ongoing balance transfer rate and 29 publish none. The published ones run from 12.9% to 23.99%.
This is the part of a transfer that decides whether it worked. Moving a balance to 0% and clearing it inside the term converts an expensive debt into a small fixed fee. Moving the same balance and clearing half of it converts the remainder into a debt at a rate that may be no better than the one it came from, plus the fee already paid.
What Happens to New Purchases
A promotional balance sits on a card that can also be used for purchases, and on most cards a new purchase made while any balance is carried does not get an interest free grace period. The purchase begins accruing interest from the day it is made, at the purchase rate rather than the promotional one.
That is the ordinary behaviour of a credit card carrying a balance rather than anything peculiar to transfers, and it is the reason a transfer card is usually easier to clear if it is not also the card in daily use.
Where to Run the Numbers
The balance transfer calculator takes a balance, a fee, a promotional rate and a term, and shows what the transfer costs against leaving the balance where it is. The card comparison carries the same fields for every card, including the ones marked as not published, and the payoff calculator shows what a balance costs at an ordinary rate if it is not moved at all.
None of the figures here are estimates. Where an issuer does not publish something, this article says that instead of filling the gap, which is the same rule the rest of the site runs on.
The Benchmark Weekly
One email a week. Elevated welcome offers while they are still open, new cards and accounts as they arrive, and any fee, rate or earn rate that moved, with the old figure and the new one. A quiet week gets no email.