Convert CZK to USD Czech koruna ↔ US dollar Free Online Secure
Type an amount in Czech koruna and read it in US dollar at once. The page uses the European Central Bank's reference rate, and tells you which day that rate is from.
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Common amounts — Convert CZK to USD (Czech koruna ↔ US dollar)
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The last thirty days
Where these codes and rates come from
The three letters in EUR, USD or JPY are not an abbreviation someone invented for a website: they are ISO 4217, a standard in which the first two letters are the country's own code and the third is usually the initial of the currency. The figures on this page come from the European Central Bank, which publishes one set of reference rates each working day, around 16:00 Central European time, agreed between the central banks of the Eurosystem. They are a daily snapshot meant for statistics and accounting, not a live trading feed — which is exactly why they are the same number for everyone, rather than whatever one bank happened to quote at one moment.
Where you meet an exchange rate
You meet an exchange rate four or five times a year without thinking about it: booking a trip, paying an invoice issued abroad, buying from a foreign shop, reading a salary offer in another currency, or checking what a card charge really cost. In all of these the reference rate is the honest middle, and the price you actually pay sits a little to one side of it. Knowing the middle is what lets you see how wide that margin is.
Questions people ask
Is this the rate my bank will give me?
No, and no page can promise one. This is the European Central Bank's reference rate: the midpoint published once a day for statistics. A bank, a card scheme or an exchange office adds its own margin on top — usually between half a percent and three percent, sometimes more at an airport counter. Use this figure to judge the offer you are given, not to predict it.
How often does the figure change, and what happens at weekends?
The European Central Bank publishes once each working day, in the afternoon, Central European time. There is no publication on Saturdays, Sundays or TARGET holidays, so on those days the page shows the last working day's rate and says which day it belongs to. The chart alongside is one year of the same daily series.
Is the answer exact?
Where both units are defined in terms of one another by whole numbers, yes — the page says so above the figure, and the only rounding is in how many digits are shown. Where the ratio has no finite decimal, the page shows twelve significant digits and says the relation is approximate rather than pretending otherwise.
Does anything I type leave my device?
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded and there is no server to upload it to. Load the page once and it keeps working with the network switched off.
Fifteen thousand dollars and a symphony from the New World: Antonín Dvořák in America, and what a crown buys in dollars today
In 1891, a wealthy New York philanthropist named Jeannette Thurber wrote to the best-known composer in Bohemia with an extraordinary offer. She was founding the National Conservatory of Music of America and wanted Antonín Dvořák, then fifty, to come and lead it. The salary she proposed was fifteen thousand dollars a year, about twenty-five times what he earned at the Prague Conservatory. Dvořák hesitated, then accepted, and in September 1892 he sailed to New York with his wife and two of his children. In America he wrote the Symphony No. 9, "From the New World", which premiered at Carnegie Hall in December 1893 to a wildly enthusiastic crowd, the "American" String Quartet, composed in a small Czech settlement in Iowa, and the Cello Concerto, which many consider the greatest ever written. Czechs and Americans have been exchanging money, music and people ever since. Anyone turning crowns into dollars needs a figure to start from. This page gives it. Use it to Convert CZK to USD with the daily reference rates published by the European Central Bank, in which the crown and the dollar are quoted against the euro; the page combines them into a crown-dollar figure and prints the date under the result. The amount you type never leaves your browser.
Using the converter
The amount, the answer, the date
Before you buy tickets, Convert CZK to USD for the whole budget and keep the figure beside your itinerary.
Enter an amount in Czech crowns and the page answers in United States dollars and cents, together with the date of the fixing. A dollar is worth some twenty crowns, so the figure that comes back is a small fraction of the number you typed. A new rate is published once on each working day; on weekends and public holidays the page repeats the previous one and says so. Under the box you will find a few round sums and a graph of the last thirty days. The opposite direction, dollars into crowns, belongs to Convert USD to CZK.
A benchmark rather than a price
The number shown is the midpoint of the market on a working day, before any bank has taken its share. An offer from a bank, a booth or an app will be a little less, and the gap in per cent is the cost of the service: under one per cent is very good, two or three per cent is normal, over four per cent is worth another quote. Treat each Convert CZK to USD on this page as the benchmark. The sums that follow rest on an invented, round rate of twenty crowns to the dollar, only for easy arithmetic. It is not a forecast or today's price, so replace it with the real figure.
Dvořák in New York
The offer and the arrival
Jeannette Thurber, married to a grocery wholesaler, believed that America needed its own musical tradition and a school open to all, including women and African Americans, which was radical for the time. She hoped that a celebrated European composer would show students how to draw on their own folk music. Dvořák arrived at the age of fifty-one, a well-paid professor in a city of skyscrapers and elevated trains, and found it overwhelming and delightful. He lived on East 17th Street in Manhattan, near the conservatory, and liked to watch trains and ships at the harbour, a lifelong passion.
The Ninth Symphony
"From the New World" was written between December 1892 and May 1893. Its slow movement, with the famous melody for the English horn, inspired a spiritual-like song, "Goin' Home", and its finale quotes themes from earlier movements. Dvořák insisted that he had not borrowed American tunes but had written in the spirit of the music he heard, including African American spirituals and Native American songs. The premiere at Carnegie Hall on 16 December 1893, with the New York Philharmonic, was a triumph, and the audience applauded between movements. A ticket for a concert at Carnegie Hall today costs 40 to 250 dollars. Convert CZK to USD and compare with a seat at Prague's Rudolfinum, where the Czech Philharmonic plays for 300 to 1,500 crowns.
The money in the story
Salaries of the past are easier to grasp when you Convert CZK to USD at today's rate and compare with a modern stipend.
Dvořák's fee of fifteen thousand dollars was extraordinary. At the invented rate of twenty crowns to the dollar, that is 300,000 crowns a year, a sum that in Prague at the time would have been several lifetimes of professor's wages. He sent money to relatives and put some in savings, and the experience financed his later years. The reverse tale is also true: a concert pianist in the 1890s might earn more from one American tour than in a decade in Europe, and many musicians followed his path.
Spillville, Iowa
A Czech village on the prairie
In the summer of 1893, Dvořák took a holiday with his family in Spillville, a small town in north-eastern Iowa founded by Czech immigrants, where his former assistant's father was the schoolteacher. He chose it for the language, the food and the quiet. In three weeks he wrote the "American" String Quartet and a quintet, and every morning he played the organ at Saint Wenceslas Church, the oldest Czech Catholic church in the United States. He enjoyed the birdsong, particularly a small red bird whose call appears in the quartet's scherzo.
What visitors see today
Museum entrances are small items, but Convert CZK to USD for the museum, the clocks and a slice of pie to see the real cost of a heritage day.
Spillville has a small museum in the building where the Dvořák family stayed, together with the Bily Clocks, a collection of elaborate carved wooden clocks made by two local brothers. The church is open to visitors. The village celebrates Dvořák with an annual summer concert. A ticket to the museum costs about 6 to 8 dollars, and a lunch in a local diner 10 to 15. The drive from Chicago takes five hours, from Minneapolis four. Convert CZK to USD for the entry and a pie slice, and the sum shows how small the village's price list is.
Czech America
A weekend at a Czech festival costs less than you might fear; Convert CZK to USD for the entry, the food and a night in a motel.
Between 1850 and 1914, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Moravians emigrated to the United States, many to farms and cities in the Midwest. In Chicago, the Pilsen neighbourhood was named after the city of Plzeň, and in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Czech Village keeps up the memory with bakeries, shops and a museum. The Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids has costumes, glass and a reproduction of a village street. Entry is about 15 dollars. Czech Americans have kept traditions such as kolaches, fruit-filled pastries, and polka music, and they celebrate festivals in summer.
Masaryk, Philadelphia and the Czech state declared in America
An American wife and a Washington declaration
The link between Bohemia and America has a political side. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the philosopher who became the first president of Czechoslovakia, took his middle name from his wife, Charlotte Garrigue, an American from Brooklyn whom he met as a student in Leipzig. During the First World War he travelled to the United States to rally support from the large Czech and Slovak communities, and in Washington, on 18 October 1918, a Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation, modelled in part on the American one, was issued in his name, ten days before the new state came into being in Prague. A statue of Masaryk stands in Philadelphia, near Independence Hall, where he met leaders of other Central European peoples that autumn. Masaryk's face appears on the 5,000-crown banknote. Convert CZK to USD for that note, and you will see how large a sum it is for a visitor to the United States.
Czech immigrants in the Midwest
Immigrants from Bohemia and Moravia came mainly after the failed revolutions of 1848 and later for economic reasons. They worked as farmers, brewers, cigar makers, butchers and craftsmen, forming close communities in Chicago, St Louis, Cleveland, Cedar Rapids and across Nebraska and Texas. The town of Wilber, Nebraska, declared itself the Czech Capital of the United States and holds a Czech festival every August, with polka bands, folk costumes and kolaches. Czech Texans founded villages such as West and Praha, and the Texas Czech festivals attract thousands. A kolache, a sweet bun filled with fruit or cheese, costs 2 to 4 dollars at a bakery.
The Czech language in Nebraska
For several generations, Czech was heard in Nebraska homes and churches. Today few young people speak it, but heritage societies hold classes, and the University of Nebraska teaches Czech. Visiting the small museums and cemeteries brings surprises: gravestones with Czech inscriptions stand among cornfields. The state has a Czech heritage trail, and a drive along it takes a day.
Czech glass, beer and boots in America
Czech immigrants brought skills that shaped American industries. Brewers from Bohemia and Moravia took part in the beer revolution of the nineteenth century, introducing Pilsner-style lagers. Glassmakers from Bohemia found employment in New England and Ohio. Czech-American names, such as Mucha, Hrdlička and Dvořák, appear among architects, anthropologists and musicians. The Pilsner Urquell brand is still sold in the United States, at 6 to 9 dollars a pint, compared with 50 to 70 crowns for a half-litre in a Czech pub. Convert CZK to USD for the Czech price to see the difference.
A Czech road trip across the Midwest
Chicago, Cedar Rapids, Spillville
A road trip across the Midwest following the Czech trail can start in Chicago, with its Pilsen neighbourhood, now mostly Mexican American, and the Czech cemeteries and churches. From there, a drive of about five hours leads to Cedar Rapids, where the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library occupies a modern building by the Cedar River, and then to Spillville, where Dvořák spent the summer of 1893. Add Wilber in Nebraska, a day's drive further west. The whole circuit of about 1,500 kilometres can be done in a week. A rental car costs 50 to 90 dollars a day, fuel is sold by the gallon, and motels cost 80 to 150 a night.
A budget for two, for a week
Two travellers renting a car, sleeping in motels, eating one restaurant meal a day and visiting a few museums can spend 1,800 to 3,000 dollars, not counting the flight. At the invented rate of twenty crowns to the dollar, that is 36,000 to 60,000 crowns. Convert CZK to USD with the real rate before planning, and add a reserve of ten per cent. Remember that restaurant prices exclude tax and tip.
What Americans will ask you
Americans are curious about the Czech Republic and often remember a grandparent or a great-grandparent from Bohemia. They ask about beer, castles, Prague and the Velvet Revolution, and they will offer you a polka or a pastry. Some will mispronounce Dvořák. Be patient and share a story. These conversations are among the best parts of the trip.
Money between Prague and America
Students and workers
A stipend in dollars should be converted every month; Convert CZK to USD on payday and write the rate in a table.
Czech students go to the United States for study abroad and graduate programmes, and some Czech professionals work for American companies in Prague. Many earn dollars, spend crowns and keep accounts in both currencies. Czech universities and the Fulbright Commission offer scholarships, which pay stipends in dollars. For budgeting, the question is always how many crowns a dollar covers. Convert CZK to USD at the start of each month.
Online purchases
Czechs buy from American websites: sports gear, electronics, books, software. Prices are in dollars, but shipping and the Czech value-added tax of 21 per cent are added at import, and goods above a certain value attract duty. Compare the final price, with delivery, to the price at home. Check warranty and the return conditions, since returning an item across the Atlantic is costly.
Cards and phones
American cards and phone payments are widely accepted. A Czech card works in the United States, and contactless is common. At the terminal, choose dollars, not crowns. Bring a second card and a small amount of cash for tips.
Travelling to the United States
Flights and entry
Czech citizens can travel to the United States without a visa for short stays under the visa-waiver programme, but they need an electronic travel authorisation, ESTA, applied for online before boarding. Use only the official government website, because there are imitations that charge higher fees. Flights from Prague to New York take about nine hours with a connection, and the time difference is six hours behind Central European Time. Travel insurance with medical cover is essential, since healthcare in the United States is very expensive for visitors.
What the sticker leaves out
American price tags leave out sales tax, set by each state and often each city, and restaurant bills leave out the tip, which servers count on at roughly one fifth. A coffee runs 3 to 5 dollars, a casual lunch 15 to 20, a mid-range room 150 to 300 a night. In practice a lunch advertised at 20 dollars ends near 26. Whenever you Convert CZK to USD for a menu, add a third to the sum and the figure in crowns will match your statement.
Miles, gallons and degrees
Americans measure roads in miles, petrol in gallons and weather in Fahrenheit. Convert km to mi handles the road signs, Convert L to gal the pump and Convert °C to °F the forecast. For a trip across time zones, Convert EST to PST shows how far apart the coasts are, and Convert CET to EET the single hour between Central and Eastern Europe.
Other crown conversions
If your trip continues
Travellers who go on to Canada can use Convert CZK to CAD, those who stop in Britain Convert CZK to GBP, and those heading to Australia Convert CZK to AUD. The euro page is Convert CZK to EUR.
A habit worth keeping
Write down the rate and date of each exchange, and compare them later with the statement. It takes seconds.
Mistakes to avoid
Forgetting tax and tip
The price you see in America is rarely the price you pay. Add tax and tip.
Paying in crowns at the till
A terminal offering to charge you in crowns is using its own rate. Choose dollars.
Using an old rate
A rate from last month can be wrong by several per cent. The date shown beside the result protects you each time you Convert CZK to USD.
In short
The only thing fetched from the network is the table of daily rates, while your amount stays in the browser and no account is needed. From a conservatory on 17th Street to a quartet in Spillville, the routine is the same: Convert CZK to USD, read the date and compare every offer with the number on this page.