Gold spot price vs futures price
Spot is the price of gold now. A future is a price agreed today for gold delivered on a set date months ahead. The gap between them is not a forecast — it is the cost of holding metal until that date. This page explains where the gap comes from, what to call it, and the handful of occasions when it stops behaving.
Gold $4,604.82 per troy oz · +1.66% on the session · last close
Spot source: Swissquote Bank · FX: Frankfurter (European Central Bank) (2026-08-21) · last close · how this is derived
The market is closed. This is the last close of the session that ended, not a live price.
What "spot" actually means
Spot gold is a wholesale price for metal delivered essentially immediately. It trades over the counter — banks and dealers dealing directly with each other rather than on an exchange — centred on London, and settles loco London two business days after the trade. The unit is one troy ounce of fine gold and the ticker is XAU/USD; the deliverable at the wholesale end is a London Good Delivery bar of roughly 400 ounces, at least 995 parts gold per thousand.
Two things follow from there being no exchange. There is no single official spot price, so two price sources can differ slightly at the same instant and both be honest. And there is no published volume — nobody can tell you how much spot gold traded yesterday, only estimates.
What a gold future is
A futures contract is a standardised, exchange-traded agreement to deliver a fixed quantity of gold on a fixed date. The reference contract is COMEX GC, listed by CME Group: 100 troy ounces of at least 995 fine gold, quoted in dollars per troy ounce, with the actively traded delivery months being February, April, June, August, October and December. A micro contract of 10 ounces exists for smaller positions.
Three features make it a different animal from spot:
- It is standardised and cleared. Every contract is identical and the exchange's clearing house stands between buyer and seller, so neither needs to assess the other's credit.
- It is margined. You post a fraction of the contract value rather than the whole of it, so gains and losses are magnified relative to the cash committed — and are settled daily, in cash, every day the position is open.
- It expires. Each contract has a delivery month, and most positions are closed or rolled into a later month before then. Only a minority end in metal changing hands.
Side by side
| Spot (XAU/USD) | Futures (COMEX GC) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it trades | Over the counter, dealer to dealer, centred on London | On an exchange, centrally cleared |
| What you are pricing | Metal now | Metal on a specific future date |
| Contract size | Negotiated; wholesale bars are ~400 oz | 100 troy oz (micro: 10 oz) |
| Quote unit | US dollars per troy ounce | US dollars per troy ounce |
| Settlement | Two business days, loco London | Delivery month, or closed out before it |
| Expiry | None — it is a continuous price | Every contract expires |
| Leverage | Funded in full at the wholesale level | Margined; a fraction of contract value |
| Published volume | No — estimates only | Yes, plus open interest, daily |
| Who uses it | Refiners, dealers, central banks, ETFs, benchmark users | Miners and fabricators hedging, funds, speculators |
Why futures cost more: the cost of carry
Imagine selling someone a contract to deliver an ounce of gold in six months. You could simply buy the ounce today, borrow the money to pay for it, and put it in a vault until delivery day. That costs you six months of interest on the borrowed money plus six months of storage and insurance, offset a little by any income from lending the metal out in the meantime.
So the six-month price has to be about the spot price plus those costs. If it were higher, anyone could buy metal, sell the future and pocket the difference risk-free; if it were lower, the trade would run the other way. That arbitrage is what ties the two prices together, and the arithmetic is the whole explanation for the gap:
futures ≈ spot × (1 + (interest + storage − lease) × years)
// illustrative figures — not a quote, and not today's rates
spot = 4,000.00 // $ per troy oz
interest = 4.00% // annual, roughly the dollar funding rate
storage = 0.15% // annual, vaulting and insurance
lease = 0.05% // annual, income from lending the metal
years = 0.5
futures ≈ 4,000 × (1 + 0.0410 × 0.5) = 4,082.00
basis ≈ 82.00 // ~2% of spot, for six months of carry
The single largest term is the interest rate, which is why the spread between gold futures and spot widens when dollar rates rise and narrows when they fall — with no change in anyone's view of gold at all. Storage is small; the lease rate is usually small but is the term that moves when physical metal becomes hard to borrow.
This is the most common misreading of a futures board. When the December contract trades above spot, that is not the market predicting a higher gold price in December. It is the market pricing the cost of financing an ounce of gold until December. For a storable asset with plentiful above-ground stock, arbitrage sets the futures price against spot, and expectations about the future price are already in spot itself.
Contango, backwardation and convergence
Contango is the normal state: futures above spot, with each further-out month a little dearer than the one before. Gold is almost always in contango, because it is the textbook carry asset — enormous above-ground stock, nothing consumed, so there is no scarcity premium for holding the physical metal rather than a claim on it.
Backwardation is the reverse — futures below spot — and in gold it is rare and informative. It says the market is paying up for metal now rather than later, which normally means deliverable bars have become hard to get hold of. It does not last, because the same arbitrage that enforces contango runs the other way.
Convergence is what happens at the end. As a contract approaches its delivery month the remaining carry shrinks, so the basis shrinks with it, and at expiry a future is simply metal: the two prices meet. Any lasting gap at that point would be an arbitrage nobody took.
Why a futures chart is not a price history
Because contracts expire, a continuous futures chart is really a chain of different contracts stitched together. When the front month is rolled into the next one, the price jumps by the basis between them — a jump that is an artefact of the roll, not a move in gold. Providers handle this by back-adjusting the older data, which makes the chart continuous at the cost of making the historical levels no longer the prices anyone actually paid.
Spot has no such seam, which is one reason a long-run gold record is usually built from spot or from a fixing rather than from futures. The gold price history on this site uses monthly average spot and London fixing data from the World Bank for exactly that reason, and it says so, including where the source's own definition changes.
When the two come apart
The link between spot and futures is arbitrage, and arbitrage needs metal to be movable. In March 2020 it briefly was not. Passenger flights — which carry most gold between vaults — were grounded, and Swiss refineries closed. London's deliverable bar is around 400 ounces while COMEX's is 100 ounces, so satisfying a New York delivery from London stock means physically recasting the metal, and for a few weeks nobody could.
The result was a futures premium over spot of tens of dollars an ounce instead of the usual few — a spread that ordinarily gets arbitraged away in minutes and instead persisted for days. CME responded by listing a new contract that accepted 400-ounce bars for delivery alongside the standard sizes, which restored the link. It is the clearest illustration available that the basis is a logistics price as much as a financing one.
Smaller versions of the same thing happen at the retail end regularly. In a rush for physical metal, coin and small-bar premiums can widen sharply while spot itself barely moves — the metal got harder to obtain, not more valuable. That is worth remembering before reading a dealer's price as evidence about the gold price.
"Gold hit a record" — which gold?
Both numbers get called "the gold price", usually without saying which. US financial media typically quote the settlement price of the most active COMEX contract; European and Asian outlets, physical dealers and price boards like this one typically quote spot. On a quiet day the two are close; when rates are high or the front month is far out, they can differ by tens of dollars an ounce.
So when two gold sites appear to disagree, the explanation is usually one of three things, and all three are boring: one is quoting futures and the other spot; one is quoting a bid and the other a mid; or one has added duty and tax and the other has not. The Indian retail rate is the third case in its purest form — it is international spot with 6% import duty and a 0.5% trade premium on top, and it is supposed to be a long way above XAU/USD.
What each price is for
| If you are… | The price that matters | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Buying a coin, a bar or jewellery | Spot | Retail pricing is quoted as a premium over spot. Futures are irrelevant to the counter. |
| Valuing a holding or a contract | Spot, or an LBMA benchmark price | Benchmarks exist to give a single defensible number at a stated time. |
| A miner or fabricator hedging output | Futures or forwards | They fix a price for metal you will have on a date you already know. |
| Taking a leveraged position | Futures | Margin, deep liquidity and a clearing house — with losses that scale the same way as gains. |
| Reading the news | Check which one is quoted | Headline records are often futures settlements; spot records are set at a different level. |
India: MCX futures and the retail rate
India has both prices too, and they are further apart than elsewhere. Gold futures on the MCX trade in a one-kilogram unit quoted per 10 grams, and because they are for delivery inside India they carry import duty and the rupee exchange rate inside the price. So an MCX quote sits well above a straight conversion of XAU/USD — not because Indian gold is different metal, but because it is landed metal.
The retail rate on the gold rate today in India pages is built the same way and for the same reason: converted spot, plus 6% duty, plus a 0.5% trade premium, ex-GST. It is derived from spot rather than from futures, and the full derivation is published line by line.
Which price this site publishes
Spot, everywhere, and nothing else. Every figure on XAU Ticker — the dollar board, the rupee rates, the euro and pound conversions, the silver page, the ten-day tables and the alerts — starts from international XAU/USD and XAG/USD spot quotes and a published currency reference rate. No futures price is carried anywhere on this site, which is why nothing here will ever match a COMEX settlement figure quoted in a headline.
That choice is not neutral, so it is stated rather than assumed: spot is the price physical dealing is quoted from, it has no expiry and no roll seam, and it is the benchmark the rest of the trade converts from. The methodology page names every source and constant, with the date each was last checked — currently 2026-08-15.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between spot and futures gold?
Spot is the wholesale price for gold delivered now, over the counter, settling in two business days. A future is an exchange-traded contract for delivery on a set date, and it prices spot plus the cost of carrying metal until then.
Why are gold futures higher than the spot price?
Because holding metal to the delivery date costs money — financing, storage and insurance, less any lending income. If the future were not worth roughly spot plus those costs, buying metal and selling the future would be risk-free profit.
What is the basis, and what is contango?
The basis is futures minus spot. A positive basis is contango, the normal state for gold; a negative one is backwardation, which is rare and usually means deliverable metal is hard to get. The basis shrinks to zero at expiry.
Do futures predict where gold will be?
No. For a storable asset the futures price is pinned to spot by arbitrage plus carry. A December contract above spot is telling you what financing gold until December costs, not what anyone expects gold to be worth then.
Which price do the headlines use?
Often the most active COMEX futures settlement in US media, and spot most other places — rarely stated either way. It is the usual reason two gold sites seem to disagree on the same day.
Which one does this site show?
Spot. No futures price appears anywhere on XAU Ticker. See the methodology for every source and constant behind it.
Can I take delivery from a futures contract?
In principle yes — that is what makes the contract work — but it is designed for the trade, in 100-ounce lots with exchange-approved vaults and procedures. Most positions are closed or rolled before the delivery month.
General information, not investment advice, and not an offer to buy or sell. Futures and leveraged products carry a risk of loss beyond the amount committed. Read the methodology and the risk disclaimer.