Palladium Price Today

Palladium at a glance

The palladium price is quoted per troy ounce in U.S. dollars, like gold, but the metal behaves like an industrial commodity: much of it ends up in gasoline catalytic converters, and supply is dominated by Russia and South Africa. Its reference data looks like this.

Palladium next to its neighbors

Lighter than it looks

Palladium is much lighter than platinum. A palladium ring weighs a little over half as much as the same ring in platinum, which is one reason jewelers sometimes offer it as a lower-cost white metal. It also means a palladium piece holds far less metal by weight than its size suggests, so melt values come in lower than people expect.

Gold, for comparison, is about 19.3 g/cm³. A gold wedding band and a palladium band of the same size differ in weight by more than a third.

Why palladium swings harder than gold

A market tied to one use

Three-way catalysts in gasoline engines turn carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides into less harmful gases, and palladium is their main active metal. When gasoline cars gained share over diesel in the late 2010s, demand rose faster than mines could respond. For a stretch starting in 2019, palladium cost more than gold per ounce.

Supply risk

A large share of mined palladium comes from Russia’s Norilsk region, where it is a by-product of nickel mining. Output there follows nickel economics, so it does not rise just because palladium prices rise. Delays in Russian export shipments caused an earlier spike around the turn of the millennium. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, fears about exports drove another sharp jump.

What could reduce demand

• Battery electric cars have no exhaust and no catalytic converter.
• Automakers can swap part of the palladium in a catalyst for platinum when the price gap gets wide.
• Recycling of old converters returns metal to the market every year.
• Tighter emissions rules can raise the metal loading per converter, working in the opposite direction.

Hybrids still need converters, so the shift away from palladium is gradual rather than sudden. That tug-of-war between regulation and electrification is what makes long-range palladium forecasts so uncertain.

Reading palladium’s chart

Long palladium charts show a slow climb through the 2010s, a steep peak and then a steep fall. That shape reflects the automotive story above: demand rose faster than supply, then substitution, electrification and weaker car output took some of it away. Use the 5-year and maximum chart ranges on this page to see that whole cycle at once.

Rhodium, the costlier cousin

Gasoline converters also use rhodium, which handles nitrogen oxides. It comes from the same ores as palladium and platinum, and its price has at times climbed far above both. Rhodium trades in a thin dealer market with no futures contract on U.S. exchanges, which is why it is not quoted alongside palladium here. A converter’s scrap value often depends as much on its rhodium as on its palladium.

How a small market magnifies moves

The palladium market is small next to gold. A shift in one carmaker’s purchasing, or a single disrupted shipment, can move the price by several percent in a day. Daily swings that would be headline news in gold are routine here.

Other uses and how to value palladium you own

Outside cars, palladium goes into electronic components, dental alloys, nickel-free white gold and hydrogen purification. The metal can absorb many times its own volume of hydrogen, a property used in lab and industrial filters.

Dental and electronic scrap

Many older crowns and bridges were made from palladium-silver or gold-palladium alloys, so dental scrap often carries palladium alongside gold. Refiners assay it and pay for each metal separately. In electronics, palladium was long used in the electrodes of multilayer ceramic capacitors; much of that use has shifted to cheaper nickel, but older circuit boards still contain it. In both cases the palladium is spread thin, and only a refiner’s assay shows how much is really there.

Palladium hidden in white gold

Some white gold is alloyed with palladium instead of nickel, which suits people with nickel allergies. That palladium is not stamped separately; the piece carries a karat mark such as 14K or 18K and is bought and sold as gold. The palladium adds little to what a scrap buyer pays. More on that alloy is on our white gold price page.

Valuing a palladium ring

For a piece of jewelry stamped 950 Pd:

1. Weigh it in grams and leave any stones out of the figure.
2. Divide by 31.1035 for troy ounces, then multiply by 0.95.
3. Multiply by the spot price above to get the metal value.

Worked example at an example price of $1,000 per ounce: a 6-gram palladium band holds 0.183 oz of palladium, or about $183 of metal. Fewer buyers handle palladium than gold, so expect a wider gap between spot and what you are offered.

Buying, selling and scrapping palladium

Coins and bars

The U.S. Mint’s American Palladium Eagle was first issued in 2017 with a $25 face value. Its design adapts Adolph Weinman’s Winged Liberty from the Mercury dime. One-ounce bars and a few foreign coins round out the bullion choices. Because volumes are small, dealer spreads on palladium tend to be wider than on gold or silver.

Jewelry marks

Palladium jewelry is most often stamped 950 Pd or Pd950, meaning 95% palladium, with the balance usually ruthenium or other metals for hardness. A mark reading only “Pd” with no number calls for testing before you rely on it.

Scrap catalytic converters

Used converters are the largest recycled source of palladium. Buyers price them by what is inside, not by weight alone:

• The ceramic or metal core carries the metal; the steel shell has little value.
• Loadings of palladium, platinum and rhodium vary widely by make, model and year.
• Recyclers assay a sample of ground core to measure exact metal content.

Converter theft has become common enough that many states have passed laws requiring scrap buyers to record seller details. Those rules differ by state.

Short glossary

• Three-way catalyst: the gasoline converter design that treats carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides at once.
• By-product metal: a metal recovered while mining for another, as palladium is with nickel in Russia.
• Assay: a laboratory test that measures exact metal content, used for converters and dental scrap.

Taxes

Palladium bullion is a collectible for federal tax purposes, with long-term gains taxed at up to 28%. State sales tax rules vary, and some exemptions name only gold and silver.

Palladium has no direct link to the current gold price, although all four metals often react to the same dollar and interest-rate news.

For the metal it is most often compared with, see the platinum price page.

The full precious metals price table shows palladium next to gold, silver and platinum.