Live Gold Price Today

The live gold price (spot price) is the current market rate to buy or sell one troy ounce of pure gold for immediate delivery. It is quoted continuously as global markets trade, and it forms the baseline for the value of gold coins, bars and rounds — before any dealer premium.

Gold is priced per troy ounce (31.1035 grams). Because most bullion coins such as the American Gold Eagle, Canadian Maple Leaf and Krugerrand contain one troy ounce of gold, the spot price is the single most important number for any stacker to watch.

Spot prices for gold are quoted per troy ounce, which is not the ounce used to weigh anything else. One troy ounce equals exactly 31.1034768 grams, against roughly 28.35 grams for a standard avoirdupois ounce. Using the wrong figure introduces an error of about ten per cent, which is more than enough to turn a fair transaction into a poor one.

To get a per-gram figure, divide the spot price per troy ounce by 31.1034768. To get a per-kilo figure, multiply the per-gram price by one thousand. The card at the top of this page does both conversions for you and refreshes as the market moves, so you can check a dealer quote in whichever unit they happen to be using.

Purity is the step people forget. Spot assumes pure metal. If a piece is 91.67 per cent fine, its metal value is the gross weight multiplied by 0.9167 and then by the per-gram price. Bullion coins stamped 999 or 999.9 can be treated as pure for practical purposes, but older circulating coinage, jewellery-grade items and some historic bars are not, and valuing them at full spot will overstate what they are worth.

Spot is a wholesale reference for large bars settling between institutions. You are buying a small, fabricated, individually packaged product delivered to you in a quantity of one. The gap between the two is the premium, and it covers refining, minting, distribution, the cost of financing dealer inventory and the dealer's margin.

Premiums follow a predictable pattern. Large bars carry the lowest premium per unit of metal, one ounce sovereign coins sit in the middle, and fractional pieces are the most expensive per unit. Premiums also move independently of spot: in a retail buying rush, coin premiums can rise sharply while the spot price barely shifts, because mint capacity cannot expand in a matter of weeks.

When you sell, the same mechanism runs in reverse. A dealer will quote you a buy price below spot, and the spread between their buy and sell price is the real cost of a round trip. Tracking the premium you pay as a percentage on every purchase is the part of the process you can actually control, and over years of accumulation it matters more than trying to time the market.