Comparing dealer prices…
Fetching data…
Live gold spot price (USD per troy ounce) with 1-year, 5-year, 10-year, 50-year, and full historical charts back to 1900.
The U.S. Mint's flagship gold bullion coin, available in 1, 1/2, 1/4, and 1/10 oz.
The first 24-karat gold coin ever struck by the U.S. Mint, introduced in 2006.
The Royal Canadian Mint's 24-karat (.9999) gold flagship since 1979.
The original modern gold bullion coin, struck by the South African Mint since 1967.
The Royal Mint's .9999-fine gold flagship, featuring the allegorical figure of Britannia.
The Austrian Mint's .9999-fine gold coin, Europe's best-selling gold bullion.
The gold spot price is the live, per-troy-ounce dollar value of unallocated investment-grade gold for immediate ("spot") delivery on global wholesale markets. It is the benchmark every retail dealer prices against, expressed in U.S. dollars per troy ounce — a unit equal to roughly 31.1 grams that has been the precious-metals standard since the 16th century. Quoted continuously while major markets are open, the spot price is what wholesale traders, refiners, mints, and bullion banks are actively transacting at right now, before any dealer markup, fabrication cost, or shipping is added. Nothing you can physically buy will be priced exactly at spot — that is the point of the number, not a deficiency.
Gold trades 23 hours a day across overlapping sessions in London (the LBMA over-the-counter market), New York (COMEX gold futures), Zurich, and Hong Kong. There is no single "official" price the way an exchange-listed stock has a tape. Instead, the headline spot quote is derived from the most active futures contract on COMEX, with the LBMA Gold Price (set twice daily at 10:30 and 15:00 London time via an electronic auction) acting as the world's wholesale settlement reference. Most live spot feeds — including the live ticker at the top of every page on this site — aggregate from these futures and OTC venues and refresh every few seconds during market hours. When you see different gold prices on different finance sites, the differences are usually a few cents arising from feed timing rather than any genuine disagreement about the rate.
Gold reacts to a recurring set of macro inputs. The biggest is real interest rates: when 10-year U.S. Treasury yields fall (or inflation outpaces them), gold typically rises because the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset shrinks. The U.S. dollar is next — gold is priced in dollars globally, so a weaker dollar makes gold cheaper for foreign buyers and pushes prices up. Central-bank reserve buying (China, Poland, Turkey, India have all been net accumulators in recent years) sets a long-term floor. On shorter timeframes, geopolitical stress, equity-market volatility, ETF flows (GLD, IAU), and futures-market positioning at COMEX all contribute. Mine supply, by contrast, barely moves — global production grows roughly 1% a year — so the price is dominated by demand and monetary factors, not the physical pipeline.
Spot is wholesale; what you pay at a retail dealer is spot plus a premium. The premium covers refining, minting, distribution, dealer overhead, and a profit margin. A 1 oz American Gold Eagle typically retails 4–8% over spot; a 10 oz cast bar might sit at 1–3% over spot. Smaller pieces always carry a higher percentage premium because the per-unit fabrication cost is spread over less metal. Premiums also widen during supply crunches and tighten when demand cools — watching the gap between dealer price and spot is a useful proxy for market stress. The price comparison tool on this site shows the live premium for every product across every dealer we track, so you can see exactly how far above spot each option is at any given moment.
The People's Bank of China's annually-redesigned gold bullion, now struck in 30-gram denominations.
The troy ounce is the standard unit for precious metals worldwide and has been since the 16th century. It equals 31.1034768 grams — about 10% heavier than the avoirdupois (kitchen) ounce, which is 28.35 grams. Every dealer, refiner, mint, and futures contract quotes gold in troy ounces, so prices are directly comparable across the industry.
Bid is the highest price a buyer is willing to pay; ask is the lowest price a seller will accept. The gap between them is the spread, and on liquid gold futures it is usually just a few cents per ounce. Most public spot tickers show the midpoint or last trade rather than separate bid/ask quotes.
The underlying USD-per-ounce quote is global — gold trades 23 hours a day across London, New York, Zurich, and Hong Kong, and arbitrage keeps the venues within a few cents of each other. Local retail prices differ because of currency conversion, VAT or sales tax, and import duties. The headline number you see in financial media is virtually always the COMEX-derived USD spot.
The gap above spot — called the premium — covers refining, minting, distribution, dealer overhead, and a profit margin. A 1 oz American Gold Eagle typically retails 4–8% over spot; a 10 oz cast bar might sit at 1–3%. Smaller pieces always carry a higher premium because the per-unit fabrication cost is spread over less metal.
Gold trades essentially 23 hours a day during the trading week, with a brief weekday close around 5:00 PM Eastern. Live feeds refresh every few seconds while markets are open. The live ticker at the top of every page on this site reflects our most recent fetch from a wholesale data provider.
The LBMA Gold Price is an electronic auction held twice daily — 10:30 and 15:00 London time — that sets a benchmark wholesale price for gold. Major refiners, central banks, and bullion banks settle large transactions against the fix because it represents a moment of confirmed equilibrium between buyers and sellers, rather than a continuously moving spot quote.
No — spot is the wholesale benchmark, not a retail price. The lowest-premium products on the market (large cast bars, generic rounds) trade 1–3% over spot. If a dealer offers you gold at or below spot, treat it as a red flag: counterfeit gold is real and the spread covers the supply chain that legitimate dealers depend on.
The chart on the page above sources from two feeds. The most recent week is real wholesale spot data updated every 10 minutes. Anything older is derived from weekly closes of the GLD ETF (SPDR Gold Shares), scaled per metal to approximate spot per ounce. The chart shape mirrors true spot closely; absolute values match today exactly and drift up to ~10% at the start of the series due to ETF expense-ratio decay over time.