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Live gold-to-silver ratio with 1D, 1W, 1M, 6M, 1Y, 5Y, 10Y, and full historical charts back to 1900. Computed from real $/oz spot prices, not a third-party widget.
The gold-silver ratio is the number of ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold at current spot prices. At a ratio of 87, one ounce of gold costs the same as 87 ounces of silver. It is the most-watched cross-metal metric in the precious-metals world — stackers use it to time gold↔silver swaps, and traders watch it for momentum signals when the two metals move out of step with their long-run relationship.
We compute the ratio directly from real $/oz spot prices: gold cents-per-troy-ounce divided by silver cents-per-troy-ounce. Live values update every 10 minutes from the same wholesale spot feed that powers the ticker at the top of every page on this site. Historical values are computed from daily Stooq closes (XAU/USD ÷ XAG/USD) going back to 1900 — no third-party widget, no embedded ETF approximation.
There is no single 'right' ratio. Over the last century the ratio has spent most of its time between roughly 30 and 100, with a long-run average near 65. A ratio above ~80 historically meant silver was cheap relative to gold (its peak above 100 in 2020 marked one of those moments); a ratio below ~50 meant the inverse, with silver running expensive vs gold. Stackers commonly swap gold for silver at high ratios and the reverse at low ones, but past extremes don't guarantee future reversion — silver and gold respond to different macro drivers (industrial demand on silver, monetary stress on gold) and the ratio can stay outside its long-run band for years at a time.
This page is data-first by design: the chart and the high/low/avg values you see are computed from the actual price series our worker writes to disk, not pulled from a third-party widget. Live cells update every 10 minutes; historical ranges are bucketed for a clean line at each zoom level (10-minute buckets at 1D, hourly at 1W, daily at 1M-1Y, weekly at 5Y/10Y, monthly at MAX). FAQ entries below answer common interpretation questions, and the JSON-LD payload on this page makes those answers eligible for FAQ rich results in Google search.
The gold-silver ratio is the price of one troy ounce of gold divided by the price of one troy ounce of silver, both quoted in the same currency. If gold is $3,300/oz and silver is $33/oz, the ratio is 100 — meaning one ounce of gold buys 100 ounces of silver at spot. The metric tracks how the two metals are valued relative to each other regardless of inflation or currency moves.
Divide the gold spot price (USD per troy ounce) by the silver spot price (USD per troy ounce). The ratio is unit-less — no dollars, no ounces — because both inputs cancel down to a pure ratio. On this site we compute it directly from the same wholesale spot feeds that power the live ticker, with no rounding step, so the value matches what you would get from any honest data source down to two decimals.
Historically the ratio has averaged around 65 over the last century, spending most of its time between roughly 30 and 100. Above ~80 silver is generally considered cheap relative to gold; below ~50, silver is considered expensive relative to gold. The 2020 COVID-era spike above 120 and the 2011 trough near 32 are useful reference points for the band the ratio actually trades in. Past extremes are descriptive, not predictive.
The 1980 Hunt-brothers silver corner pushed the ratio briefly to 17:1. In April 2011, with silver near $50, the ratio bottomed around 32:1. In March 2020, with COVID volatility hitting silver harder than gold, the ratio peaked above 125:1 — its highest level in modern history. Across the full daily series back to 1900 on this page, the long-run average sits in the mid-60s. The chart on this page lets you zoom in on any of those windows.
Many silver and gold stackers use the ratio to time conversions between the two metals. The mechanic: when the ratio is high (silver cheap relative to gold), trade some gold for silver at favorable terms; when the ratio is low (silver expensive), trade silver back to gold. Done across multiple cycles, this can compound the metal weight of a stack without adding new fiat capital. Critically: the strategy assumes the ratio mean-reverts, which it has historically tended to do but is not guaranteed to keep doing.
We do not give buy/sell advice. The ratio is a metric, not a signal. Several things to know if you are considering ratio-based swaps: dealer spreads on both sides of the trade can absorb a meaningful chunk of the ratio move, especially on smaller premium products; tax treatment of metal-for-metal swaps varies by jurisdiction (consult an accountant); and the ratio can stay above or below its long-run average for years at a time, so a single threshold cross is not a complete decision framework.
The current-ratio cell on this page recomputes every 10 minutes from the live spot feeds. Historical chart data updates daily as new Stooq closes land. The chart reflects 10-minute granularity at 1D, hourly at 1W, daily at 1M-1Y, weekly at 5Y/10Y, and monthly at MAX. There is no manual refresh — the page caches at the API layer for 1 hour, so you may see a value up to 10 minutes stale on a cache hit; reload to bypass.
Most ratio widgets on the web embed a third-party JavaScript chart that pulls data from one of a few common providers (Trading Economics, BullionStar's feed, etc.). Our chart is computed server-side from the daily Stooq XAU/USD and XAG/USD closes plus our 10-minute spot feed for the recent overlay. No third-party iframes, no off-site data, no widget delay. The values may differ from another site by small amounts because their underlying spot reference is different (LBMA vs interbank vs ETF-derived), not because either is wrong.