Gold Price per Gram Today

What a gram of gold is worth, worked out

One gram of 24K gold is worth the troy-ounce price divided by 31.1035. That is the entire formula for pure gold. For anything below 24 karat, you multiply by the purity as well.

Here is how it runs at an example price of $3,000 per troy ounce, a round figure picked for easy math rather than today’s quote:

1. $3,000 ÷ 31.1035 = $96.45 per gram of pure gold.
2. For 18K jewelry, multiply by 0.75. That gives $72.34 per gram.
3. For 14K, multiply by 0.5833, which gives $56.26 per gram.
4. For a 6.2-gram 14K chain, multiply by the weight: 6.2 × $56.26 = $348.84 in gold content.

Swap the live figure into step one and the same steps give you today’s melt value. The home page lists the ounce, gram and pennyweight versions of the gold price today side by side if you want to check the conversion yourself.

Why the 14K gold price per gram gets asked so often

14K is the most common karat in American jewelry, so the 14K price per gram draws almost as many searches as the pure-gold figure. A 14K piece is 14 parts gold in 24, or 58.33%. European-made 14K is usually stamped 585, meaning 58.5%. The extra fraction is a manufacturing cushion that keeps the alloy from ever assaying below the stated karat. Buyers price both stamps the same way. Karat-specific values and stamps are covered on the 14K gold price page.

24K per gram and the “four nines”

Pure gold bars are stamped 999.9, known in the trade as four nines, and some older or Asian products are stamped 999. The difference is one part in ten thousand, too small to change a per-gram price in any meaningful way. Anything marked 995 or higher is treated as investment-grade bullion.

18K per gram in white, yellow and rose gold

Color doesn’t change the price per gram. Yellow, white and rose 18K are all 75% gold; only the other quarter of the alloy changes. Yellow gold uses silver and copper, rose gold uses more copper, and white gold uses palladium or nickel and is usually plated with rhodium. The plating is far too thin to affect weight or value. The practical difference is that white-gold pieces are often set with small diamonds, which means more non-gold weight to subtract.

Grams: the unit that crosses borders

The gram is the one gold unit used almost everywhere. Swiss refiners stamp small bars in grams, jewelers in Europe, the Gulf and East Asia price by the gram, and many U.S. online gold buyers now quote per gram even though American bullion coins are still sold by the troy ounce.

Small gram bars and their premium

Bars of 1, 2.5, 5 and 10 grams are popular as gifts and first purchases. Their metal is the same four-nines gold as a kilo bar, but the cost of making, assaying and packaging each tiny bar is spread over very little gold. The result is a price per gram well above the spot figure shown here. Compare the premium per gram, not the sticker price, when you weigh a 1-gram bar against a larger one on the gold bar prices page.

Turning a gram price into other units

Because every unit is a fixed number of grams, one multiplication converts a per-gram price into any other quote you run into.

One gram can hold very different amounts of gold depending on what it is:

• A 1-gram 999.9 bar contains a full gram of gold, plus the premium you paid for the small format.
• One gram of a 22K bullion coin such as the Gold Eagle holds 0.917 gram of gold.
• One gram of a 14K chain holds 0.583 gram.
• One gram of an item stamped 1/20 12K GF holds only about 0.025 gram, because at least one-twentieth of its weight is a 12K layer and the rest is base metal.

South Asian shoppers who think in larger lots can find those values on the gold price per 10 grams page.

Getting the gram count right before you price

A weighing error costs more than people expect. At the example price above, a single gram of 14K is worth more than $56, so a scale that reads one gram off moves the answer by that much.

What buyers take off before pricing per gram

A gold buyer pays for gold, not for everything that sits on the scale. These are the usual deductions:

• Stones and pearls. A buyer who can’t remove a stone safely will estimate its weight and subtract it, and the estimate rarely favors the seller.
• Clasps and springs. Lobster clasps and spring rings often contain a small steel spring, and some chains carry a clasp of lower karat than the chain itself.
• Gold-filled and plated items. Stamps such as GF, 1/20 12K GF, RGP, HGE or GEP mean a thin gold layer over base metal. These pieces are not priced per gram of karat gold at all.
• Hollow chains and hoops. They are real karat gold but weigh little for their size, so the per-gram value is correct but the total is smaller than the look suggests.
• Soldered repairs and sizing. A ring resized with lower-karat solder can assay slightly under its stamp, and refiners pay on the assay.

Pricing a mixed lot, step by step

1. Sort pieces by stamp: 10K, 14K, 18K and anything unmarked in separate piles.
2. Weigh each pile in grams on a scale that reads to 0.01 g, after removing stones you can take out.
3. Multiply each pile’s weight by its purity (0.417, 0.583, 0.750) to get grams of pure gold.
4. Add those pure-gold grams together and multiply by the live 24K price per gram.
5. Treat the result as the ceiling. Buyers pay a percentage of it, and our scrap gold calculator shows typical payout ranges.

Unmarked pieces deserve a test before you count them. An acid test or an electronic tester gives a karat reading in seconds, and XRF analysis gives a more precise surface reading.

Terms you’ll see on per-gram price lists

• Gross weight: everything on the scale, including stones and findings.
• Fine weight: the grams of pure gold after purity is applied.
• Melt value: fine weight times the spot price, before any buyer margin.
• Payout percentage: the share of melt value a buyer offers, which falls as refining costs and risk rise.

For bullion, the same fine-weight idea runs the other way. A dealer’s price per gram on a coin or bar is spot plus premium, while on jewelry it is spot minus a margin, which is why the two numbers can sit so far apart on the same day. Converting ounce quotes is explained on the gold price per ounce page.