The holidays are the one time of year a lot of us still go looking for cash. There are tips for the mail carrier and the building staff, money tucked into birthday cards, a farmers market that doesn’t take cards, a parking garage with a broken reader. So you end up at whatever ATM is closest, tap through the screens, and pay a fee that seems to come out of nowhere.
It doesn’t come out of nowhere, though. An out-of-network ATM withdrawal usually involves two separate fees charged by two separate companies, and once you see how the system is wired, the price makes a lot more sense. It also gets much easier to avoid.
The two fees hiding in one withdrawal
When you use an ATM that doesn’t belong to your bank, the first fee comes from whoever owns the machine. That’s called the surcharge. The second comes from your own bank, which charges you for going outside its network. That’s usually called the out-of-network fee, or the foreign ATM fee.
According to Bankrate’s 2025 Checking Account and ATM Fee Study, the average surcharge is $3.22 and the average home bank fee is $1.64. Together that’s $4.86 per withdrawal, a record high. When Bankrate started tracking in 1998, the combined average was $1.97, so the cost of grabbing cash from a stranger’s machine has risen by nearly 150%.
Where you live matters too. Bankrate found Atlanta had the highest average total fee at $5.37, while Boston had the lowest at $4.37. Neither number is cheap.
If you use an out-of-network ATM once a week, Bankrate estimates you’ll pay about $253 a year in fees. That’s roughly what a lot of people earn in interest on a few thousand dollars in a high-yield savings account, gone in exchange for convenience.
Why the ATM owner charges you
An ATM is surprisingly expensive to run. Someone has to buy or lease the machine, pay the store or landlord for the space, keep it stocked with cash, fix it when it jams, and handle security. Bankrate analyst Stephen Kates told Scripps News that fewer people are using ATMs, so those fixed costs get spread across fewer transactions. That’s a big part of why fees keep climbing while cash use falls.
Banks put ATMs in their own branches mostly as a service to their customers. Independent operators, like the machines you see in gas stations, bars, and convenience stores, are running a business. For them, the surcharge is the main source of revenue. That’s why the standalone machine in a corner store often charges more than a big bank’s ATM down the street.
The law does require the machine to tell you about the surcharge before you’re on the hook. Under the federal rule known as Regulation E, an ATM operator that charges a fee has to disclose that a fee will be imposed and how much it is, on the screen or on paper, before you commit to the transaction. That’s the screen asking whether you accept a $3.50 fee. You can always hit cancel and walk away without paying anything.
Why your own bank charges you too
This is the part that tends to annoy people most. You’re already paying the machine’s owner, so why does your bank want a cut?
Part of the answer is how the plumbing works. When you withdraw cash from another bank’s ATM, your bank has to approve the transaction through a card network and typically pays the ATM owner a small fee for handling it. So your bank has a cost, and many pass it along to you. Some banks also simply use the fee to nudge you toward their own machines.
The key detail is that the ATM screen only discloses the surcharge. Your bank’s out-of-network fee won’t appear there. It’s listed in your account’s fee schedule, and you’ll usually see it show up later as a separate line on your statement. Some banks also charge for checking your balance at an out-of-network machine, so even looking can cost money. Check your fee schedule to see whether yours does.
How surcharge-free networks change the math
Plenty of banks, especially online banks and credit unions without big branch footprints, solve this problem by joining an ATM network. If your bank is a member, you can use any machine in that network without a surcharge.
The big ones are worth knowing by name. Allpoint says it has more than 55,000 surcharge-free ATMs worldwide, many of them inside drugstores and big retail chains. MoneyPass has tens of thousands of machines across the U.S., often in convenience stores and grocery stores. Credit union members often have access to the CO-OP network, which includes credit union ATMs plus shared branches. You can find nearby machines with the locator on Allpoint’s website or in your bank’s app.
Some online banks go a step further and reimburse a certain amount of out-of-network fees each month. If you travel a lot or live somewhere with few in-network machines, that perk can be worth more than a slightly higher interest rate.
Withdrawing cash abroad works differently
If you’re traveling outside the U.S. over the holidays, the fee structure changes. Bankrate says international withdrawals typically come with a flat fee of about $2 to $5 plus 1% to 3% of the amount you take out. That percentage is usually a foreign transaction fee from your bank, and it applies on top of anything the local machine charges.
Foreign ATMs may also offer to convert the withdrawal into dollars for you. It sounds helpful, but that conversion often comes with a worse exchange rate than your bank would give you. Choosing to be charged in the local currency is usually the cheaper option.
Keeping cash costs low without overthinking it
You don’t need a complicated plan here. The simplest habit is to pull out more cash less often. A $4.86 fee on a $40 withdrawal is more than 12% of the money, while the same fee on $200 is a little under 2.5%. If you know you’ll need cash for holiday tips, one trip covers it.
It also helps to check your bank’s app before you leave the house. Thirty seconds of looking for an in-network machine beats paying two fees at the closest one. And if you’re shopping somewhere that offers cash back at the register on a debit purchase, that can be a free way to get small amounts, though some stores do charge for it.
The bigger takeaway is that ATM fees are a pricing system, not a random penalty. One company is charging for the machine, the other is charging for leaving your network. Knowing which is which makes it easier to decide whether your current bank’s ATM access actually fits how you use cash.
