Gold price per gram

$4,596.75 ÷ 31.1034768 = $147.79price per troy ounce ÷ grams per troy ounce

Gold is quoted internationally in US dollars per troy ounce, but almost nobody buys it that way. Jewellery, small bars and coins are priced by the gram, so the figure above — the spot price divided by the 31.1035 grams in a troy ounce — is the one that actually connects the world price to what is in front of you in a shop.

Everything on this page is metal value: what the gold itself is worth as raw material. It is a floor to reason from, not a price you can transact at. The gap between the two is explained further down.

Gold price per gram by karat

Karat measures purity in twenty-fourths: 24k is pure gold, 18k is eighteen parts gold to six parts other metal, and so on. The pure-gold content of one gram at each common standard is:

Hallmarks are sometimes given as parts per thousand instead — 999 or 995 for fine gold, 916 for 22k, 750 for 18k, 585 for 14k, 375 for 9k. They describe the same thing.

The same gold in other units

At the current price, one gram of pure gold is worth $147.79. The other units gold is commonly weighed in work out as:

Why a jeweller charges more than the metal value

The number at the top of this page is a wholesale benchmark for metal traded between institutions in London and New York. A retail price is built up from it, and every step adds something:

• Fabrication and making charges. Turning bullion into a chain or a ring costs labour and machinery, and it is charged either as a percentage of the metal value or as a flat rate per gram. On intricate work it can be a substantial fraction of the total.
• Dealer premium and margin. Bars and coins carry a premium over spot that varies with the size of the item and how tight supply is; smaller units carry proportionally more, because minting a one-gram bar costs nearly as much as minting a ten-gram one.
• Duty and tax. Many markets levy import duty on gold and sales tax on the finished item. In India, for example, both apply, which is a large part of why local rates sit well above the international price converted at the exchange rate.
• Transport, insurance and storage between refinery, wholesaler and shop.

The gap runs the other way when you sell: dealers buy below spot and sell above it, and that spread is widest on jewellery, where they are buying an item they will most likely scrap for its metal. XAUTicker publishes how local retail rates are derived from the international price in full, including what is added for duty, tax and premium.

Troy ounces, grams and the ounce that is not an ounce

One confusion is worth naming, because it produces a consistent 9% error. The troy ounce used for precious metals is about 31.1035 grams. The avoirdupois ounce used for everything else — food, post, body weight — is about 28.3495 grams. They are different units that share a name, and dividing a gold price by 28.35 instead of 31.1 will overstate the per-gram figure by roughly nine per cent every time.

A troy pound, for the same reason, is twelve troy ounces rather than sixteen. Gold has been weighed this way since the medieval Champagne fairs, and the market has never had a reason to change.

Where these numbers come from

The spot price behind every figure on this page is read live from XAUTicker; the karat and unit values are straightforward arithmetic on it, shown so you can check the working. We never estimate a price when the feed is unavailable — the page says so instead. For the current headline figure and chart see gold price today, and for what is moving it, our twice-daily digest.