Format a String as Currency in C#

When building a string for output to a web page, it’s useful to format any currency value in a human-friendly money format. This is extremely easy in C#.

The system format string works like this: {0:C}

For example, the following code example:

decimal moneyvalue = 1921.39m;
string html = String.Format("Order Total: {0:C}", moneyvalue);
Console.WriteLine(html);

Outputs the following:

Order Total: $1,921.39

It’s worth noting that you must pass in a numeric value to the String.Format statement. If you pass in a string value, it won’t format correctly. If your currency value is in a string, you need to convert it into a double first.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 11/27/06 and tagged with: Programming

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Comments (11)

1. April 2, 2008 2:32 pm
   Justin

   You can also use:

   decimal moneyvalue = 1921.39m;
   string html = “Order Total: ” + moneyvalue.ToString(”C”);
   Console.WriteLine(html);

2. June 1, 2008 2:21 pm
   Kingsley Magnus-Eweka

   how do i format the currency value i.e from $ to £ that isd from dollars to pounds using the string.format ?

3. July 18, 2008 1:20 am
   abdou

   I can give help I think look at control panel , regional option and look you can change your currency value there

4. August 17, 2008 10:44 pm
   Soniya

   Ultimate one ..really helpful

5. October 25, 2008 4:15 am
   Barbaros Alp

   decimal moneyvalue = 1921.39m;

   You can use
   moneyvalue.ToString(”N”)
   instead of
   moneyvalue.ToString(”C”)

   by this way you get the formatted string just like currency, without Currency sign

6. November 30, 2008 4:42 am
   sameer

   by this way you get the formatted string just like currency, without Currency sign

   thanks i searching about this

7. December 22, 2008 9:08 pm
   Joseph Marinaccio

   Thanks for a great article, direct and to the point!

   -Joseph Marinaccio
   Marinaccio Family Design

8. March 4, 2009 8:49 am
   Mehmet

   Thank you.

9. April 9, 2009 10:15 pm
   Jeppe

   Is there a way to force the currency to be a specific one? Just because some has different regional settings it does not change the fact that a price is listed in (for example)pound.

10. May 5, 2009 11:13 am
    hk

    You can provide IFormatProvider. In this case you can do something like this

    using System.Globalization;

    decimal = moneyValue = 100.00m;
    string output = String.Format(CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture, “{0:C}”, moneyValue);

    With the above approach you don’t need to worry about culture specific format.

11. June 27, 2009 3:41 pm
    jemala

    use this method
    public static string formatmoney(Decimal d)
    {

    return String.Format(CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(”en-us”), “{0:C}”, d);
    }