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22K vs 24K gold, and what 916 means

24K is 99.9% pure gold, hallmarked 999, and too soft to wear. 22K is 91.6% pure, hallmarked 916, hardened with about 8.4% of copper, silver and zinc — and it is what almost all Indian jewellery is made from. The gold in a 22K piece is worth exactly 22/24 of the 24K rate. Everything else on this page follows from those two sentences.

Gold ₹1,65,544 per 10 g · silver ₹2,45,875 per kg · gold +1.03% on the session · as of Mon, 24 Aug 2026, 19:47 UTC

Spot source: Swissquote Bank · FX: Frankfurter (European Central Bank) (2026-08-24) · as of Mon, 24 Aug 2026, 19:47 UTC · how this is derived

Every purity, against today's rate

A karat is a twenty-fourth. That is the whole definition, and it means the metal value of any purity is the 24K rate multiplied by karats over 24 — arithmetic, not a separate market. These are metal figures for India, ex-GST and before making charges.

Rupee figures are the national base rate and exclude 3% GST and making charges. For the rate in your city see gold rate today in India; for dirhams per gram see gold rate today in Dubai.

What a karat actually is

Karat measures how much of an alloy is gold, in twenty-fourths. 24 parts out of 24 is pure gold; 22 parts out of 24 is 22K. It is a ratio, not a weight, and it says nothing about how heavy a piece is — a light 22K chain and a heavy 22K bangle are the same purity and very different prices.

The hallmark numbers: 999, 916, 750

Fineness is the same fact expressed in parts per thousand, and it is the number stamped on the metal. 22 ÷ 24 = 0.91666…, so 22K gold is 916.67 parts per thousand — stamped 916, rounded down rather than up. That direction matters: a hallmark is a guaranteed minimum, so rounding to 917 would let a piece carry a claim its metal did not meet.

The same logic gives 18K its 750 and 14K its 585. Once you know the stamp is just karats over 24 written per thousand, you can read any of them without a chart.

What the other 8.4% is

In 22K gold, roughly 8.4% by weight is something else — usually copper, silver and a little zinc. That alloy does two jobs. It hardens the metal, which is the only reason jewellery holds its shape, and it sets the colour.

• Yellow gold — copper and silver in roughly equal measure, the traditional Indian mix.
• Rose gold — more copper, less silver. The pink is copper.
• White gold — alloyed with palladium or nickel and almost always plated with rhodium, which is what actually makes it white. The plating wears and is periodically redone; the gold underneath has not changed.

All three can be 22K or 18K. Colour and purity are independent, and a rose gold piece is not less gold than a yellow one of the same karat.

Why 24K is not made into jewellery

Pure gold is remarkably soft — soft enough to mark with a fingernail and to bend out of shape in ordinary wear. A 24K ring loses its roundness, a 24K clasp will not hold, and a 24K setting will not grip a stone. Hardness, not purity, is what a piece of jewellery needs to survive being worn, and alloying is the only way to get it.

India's hallmarking standard reflects this precisely. IS 1417:2016 permits six grades for jewellery — 14K (585), 18K (750), 20K (833), 22K (916), 23K (958) and 24KS (995), that last one being soft gold rather than the 999 of a bullion bar. So the honest answer to "is 24K jewellery hallmarked" is: a 995 soft-gold grade exists, but the 999 you see quoted on a rate board is the bullion figure, not a jewellery one.

How purity affects what you pay

The metal scales exactly. The bill does not, and that gap is where most confusion lives.

So a 22K piece does not cost 22/24 of what the same piece would cost in 24K. The metal in it does, and then labour and tax are added on top of a smaller metal base. The jewellery price calculator takes a weight, a purity and a making charge and shows the whole build-up, which is the only reliable way to compare two quotes at different purities.

Which one should you buy

It depends on what you want the gold to do, and the honest split is clean.

To hold metal value, 24K coins and bars are the efficient choice: you are paying for gold rather than for craftsmanship, and you recover more of what you paid when you sell, because there are no making charges to lose. To wear it, 22K in India, 21K in the Gulf, 18K where stones are involved — 18K's extra hardness is why diamond settings use it almost universally, and why it dominates in Europe.

The trap is buying jewellery as an investment and then discovering at resale that the making charges are gone. A piece bought to be worn has already paid for itself in wearing; a piece bought to store value should probably not have had labour charged on it in the first place. That is a statement about arithmetic, not advice — this site gives none.

Reading an Indian hallmark

Hallmarking gold jewellery became mandatory in India on 16 June 2021, and since 1 July 2021 the mark has had exactly three parts. All three must be present:

• The BIS logo — the triangular Bureau of Indian Standards mark.
• The purity, written as karat and fineness together: 22K916, 18K750.
• A six-digit alphanumeric HUID — a Hallmark Unique Identification code belonging to that one piece and no other.

The HUID is the part worth using. It can be checked in the BIS Care app, which will show the item registered against that number, its purity and the jeweller who registered it. A stamp reading just "916" with no BIS logo and no HUID is not a hallmark — it is a claim printed by whoever made the piece. The BIS hallmarking FAQs are the authority on what each mark means.

The same metal, different local standards

Which purity counts as normal is a regional convention rather than a fact about gold. India settled on 22K, the Gulf on 21K, Europe on 18K, the United States on 14K, Britain on 9K at the affordable end. A visitor comparing prices across two countries is frequently comparing two different alloys without realising it — which is the single most common reason a foreign gold price looks inexplicably cheap.

Dubai's rate board is the clearest illustration: it quotes 24K, 22K, 21K and 18K side by side, and the 21K line has no equivalent on any Indian board.

Selling or exchanging 916 gold

When you sell, the buyer is valuing metal content and nothing else. A 10 gram 22K chain contains 9.16 grams of gold, and that is what the offer is built from — less a buying margin, and in some shops less a deduction for melting loss. The making charges you paid are not part of the calculation and do not come back.

Two things are worth insisting on: that the piece is weighed in front of you, and that you are told the rate being applied and the deductions separately. A single net figure with no breakdown cannot be checked against anything. The calculator's sell side shows the shape a fair buy-back quote takes.

Frequently asked questions

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Purity figures are standards, not measurements of any particular piece. Rates are indicative and exclude GST and making charges. Read the methodology and the risk disclaimer.