I'm doing freelance work as a Canadian resident living in QC. My one and only client is from the US, so they pay me in USD.

I set up a US bank account with one of the major banks in Canada, and use that to exchange my earnings into CAD.

However I've been reading on this sub that it's best to use Wise (or another foreign exchange company) to transfer USD to CAD, because of the better exchange rate.

Wise's current exchange rate USD to CAD is 1.33, while my US bank offers 1.29. So that checks out, but Wise also charges a 0.43% fee on transactions, plus $4 USD for every transaction made to my Wise account, which would end up costing more money than my bank's lower exchange rate.

What am I missing here?

Edit: The $4 fee is only for wire transfers, not bank to bank. So when I recalculated, converting money through Wise was better in the end.