How We Calculate Prices
Price source
Live prices are real-time spot prices for gold (XAU), silver (XAG), platinum (XPT) and palladium (XPD) in U.S. dollars per troy ounce, received from a third-party market data feed and usually less than a minute old. The day’s percentage change and day range come from the front-month futures contracts traded on COMEX (gold and silver) and NYMEX (platinum and palladium), part of CME Group, whose daily moves track spot closely. If the spot feed is unavailable, the futures price is shown instead.
Update schedule
Prices are refreshed on our server about every 30 seconds and open pages check for new prices about every 20 seconds, and a price cell briefly turns green or red when the price moves up or down. Futures trade from Sunday 6:00 PM to Friday 5:00 PM Eastern Time with a daily break from 5:00 to 6:00 PM ET. When the market is closed, the last traded price is shown along with its time.
Daily change
“Change today” applies the percentage change of the front-month futures contract since the previous session’s settlement to the spot price. Price history, charts and yearly or monthly archives use daily closing prices of the front-month futures contract.
Conversions
- Per gram: price per troy ounce ÷ 31.1034768.
- Per pennyweight (dwt): 1 dwt = 1.55517384 grams, or 1/20 troy ounce.
- Per kilogram: 1,000 grams = 32.1507 troy ounces.
- Karat gold: value = pure gold value × karat ÷ 24 (for example, 14K = 0.583). 24K is valued at 0.999.
- Coins: melt value = the coin’s legal fine metal content in troy ounces × the metal price. Collector value is not included.
- Gold/silver ratio: gold price ÷ silver price. Historical figures use daily closing prices matched by trading date.
What these numbers are not
Melt value is the value of the metal alone. Dealers sell bars and coins above spot and buy scrap below it, so the price you pay or receive will differ. See our scrap gold calculator for typical buyer payouts.
Currency conversions on country pages
Country pages start from the same U.S. dollar price per troy ounce and convert it with a live exchange rate (units of local currency per U.S. dollar), refreshed about every ten minutes.
- Price per gram in dollars = price per troy ounce ÷ 31.1034768.
- Local price per gram = dollar price per gram × exchange rate.
- Karat price = local price per gram × gold content (for example 0.9167 for 22K).
- Local units are then applied: 1 tola = 11.6638 g, 1 mithqal = 5 g (Iraqi market use), 1 pavan = 8 g, 1 Hong Kong tael = 37.429 g.
These are international prices converted to local currency, not the rates posted by local jewelers’ associations. Local rates add import duty, VAT or GST and making charges. On the India page an extra table estimates the landed price by adding the import duty and GST stated on that page; the rates used are shown next to the table so you can adjust them.
History, records and closing prices
Historical pages use one daily closing price per trading day for the front-month futures contract, going back to the year 2000.
| Figure | Calculation |
|---|---|
| Yearly open and close | First and last daily close of the calendar year |
| Yearly high and low | Highest and lowest daily close; intraday extremes are not included |
| Average | Mean of all daily closes in the period |
| All-time high | Highest daily close in the data set; a year is counted as a record year if any close exceeded every earlier close |
| 1970–1999 | Approximate annual averages of the London afternoon fix, rounded to the nearest dollar |
Because closing prices are used, an intraday spike that reversed before the close will not show as a record. Dates are in U.S. Eastern Time. You can compare the result with the live figure on the gold price today page.
Automated checks after every update
Every update is followed by automated checks across all pages of the site, in every language.
- Link check: every internal link must point to a page that exists, and no page may be left without links pointing to it.
- Language versions must reference each other in both directions (hreflang), so search engines show readers the right language.
- Structured data (FAQ, breadcrumbs, dataset and article markup) must be valid JSON-LD.
- Pages must render without horizontal scrolling on a 375-pixel phone screen.
- Explanatory text is compared across similar pages, such as karat or country pages, so each page answers its own question instead of repeating a template.
Known limitations
Quotes can lag the market by up to about 15 minutes. Coin values are melt values and ignore collector premiums. Sales tax and customs rules change; the state sales tax page shows the date its rules were last verified.