There's no central authority that sets what a bitcoin is worth in euros. Instead, the price you see anywhere is a reflection of what buyers and sellers are actually trading at, across dozens of exchanges worldwide, updating continuously as new trades happen. Coinbase, Kraken, Binance and many others each show their own live price, and while these numbers track each other closely, they're rarely identical to the decimal — each is simply a snapshot of trading activity on that particular platform at that particular second.
When you place an order, the BTC/EUR rate used is pulled live from Coinbase. If Coinbase's rate is unavailable for any reason, the system falls back to Kraken, and then to CoinGecko as a second fallback, so there's always a current market rate to work from rather than a stale or manually set figure. This is a deliberate choice to use recognised, high-liquidity price sources rather than an internally set number, so the rate you're quoted reflects what the wider market is actually doing at that moment.
On top of that live market rate, a flat commission percentage is applied to cover the cost of running the service — the transfer checks, the review of each order, and the operational side of sending Bitcoin out securely. That percentage is fixed and disclosed upfront rather than buried in a worse exchange rate, and the exact figure is published on the Fees page. It's worth reading before placing an order so there's no ambiguity about what you're paying for the convenience of a direct bank-transfer-to-wallet purchase.
When you first visit the buy page and enter an amount, you'll see an estimated amount of BTC based on the rate at that exact moment. But Bitcoin's price doesn't pause while your transfer makes its way through your bank and while your order gets looked at — it keeps moving, sometimes by a noticeable amount within an hour, occasionally more over the course of a day. Because of that, the figure used to calculate your actual payout is the live rate at the point your order is processed, not the rate shown when you first opened the calculator. In practice this usually means a small difference either way, not a dramatic one, but it's worth understanding rather than being surprised by it.
This is the part that differs most from a large automated exchange. On a fully automated platform, an order might be matched and settled within seconds of your payment clearing, locking in a price almost immediately. Here, because every order is checked by a person rather than released automatically, there's a short window between your transfer arriving and your order being confirmed — and the rate used is the one at confirmation, not at the moment your payment first lands. That gap is a direct consequence of having someone actually check that the payment, the reference, and the destination all line up correctly before Bitcoin moves, rather than trusting that entirely to software. It's a genuine trade-off: slightly less speed in exchange for a person actually looking at each transaction rather than an algorithm processing it blind. If timing precision matters a great deal to you — for instance, you want to buy at an exact price to the minute — that's worth factoring in before you order, since this service is built around care rather than speed.
In short: the price comes from the open market via Coinbase, with Kraken and CoinGecko as backups if that feed isn't available; a disclosed flat fee is added on top, detailed on the Fees page; and the final rate used for your order is set at the point of processing, which can differ slightly from what you first saw. None of this is unique to Bitcoin — any asset with a constantly moving market price works the same way — but it's worth understanding clearly before you send a transfer. For a full walkthrough of the order process itself, see How It Works, and for answers to specific pricing questions, the FAQ page is a good next stop. Details on how payments and orders are handled securely are on the Security page.