How we calculate our rates
Every number on this site is derived from a published wholesale price by a formula we set out in full below. Nothing is hand-entered, and nothing is smoothed. If you can follow this page, you can reproduce our figures yourself.
Where the prices come from
We do not operate a trading venue and we do not receive a proprietary feed. We poll public sources and republish what they say. These are the ones in use right now — this table is generated from the server's own configuration, so it cannot fall out of date.
| Source | Used for | Update cadence | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swissquote Bank | XAU/USD and XAG/USD bid/ask | polled every 60 s while the market is open | primary |
| fawazahmed0/currency-api | recent daily XAU and XAG reference closes | once per day | fallback |
| World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet) | monthly gold and silver averages from 1960 | updated monthly | historical |
| Frankfurter (European Central Bank) | USD to INR, EUR, GBP and MXN reference rates | ECB publishes once per working day around 16:00 CET | primary |
| ExchangeRate-API (open access) | USD to AED, and fallback for every other currency | daily | fallback |
Spot metal prices are quoted in US dollars per troy ounce, which is how the international market trades them — the ticker is XAU/USD for gold and XAG/USD for silver, and what XAU/USD means unpacks the code and the unit. These are spot quotes throughout; we carry no futures prices, and the difference between the two is set out on its own page. Everything else on this site — rupees per 10 grams, euros per ounce, dirhams per gram — is calculated from that one number and a currency rate.
Live, closed, delayed, or unavailable
The precious metals market is not open around the clock. It closes on Friday evening and reopens on Sunday evening, and our feed keeps returning the last traded price throughout. Rather than pass a stale figure off as a live one, the site labels its own state:
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| LIVE | An intraday quote received in the last 15 minutes. |
| CLOSED | The market is shut — Friday evening to Sunday evening — and the figure shown is the last close of the session that just ended. This is the ordinary weekend state, not a fault. |
| DELAYED | The market is open but our intraday source is not answering, so the figure is the most recent daily close rather than a live quote. |
| NO DATA | Every source failed. Figures shown are a placeholder and are not prices. Do not use them. |
Markets
Gold trades globally in US dollars per troy ounce, but almost nobody buys it in those units. Each market has its own currency, its own unit, its own purities and its own tax rules, so the site quotes each one the way its trade actually quotes it. Choosing a market is separate from choosing a language — English is spoken in India, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Emirates, and those are four different markets.
| Market | Currency | Gold quoted | Purities | Import duty | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | INR | per 10 g | 24K, 22K, 18K | 15% | landed retail |
| United States | USD | per troy oz | 24K, 22K, 18K | — | wholesale spot |
| United Kingdom | GBP | per troy oz | 24K, 22K, 18K | — | wholesale spot |
| Euro area | EUR | per troy oz | 24K, 22K, 18K | — | wholesale spot |
| Mexico | MXN | per gram | 24K, 22K, 18K | — | wholesale spot |
| United Arab Emirates | AED | per gram | 24K, 22K, 21K, 18K | — | wholesale spot |
Landed retail means world spot plus statutory import duty and a trade premium — the shape of figure an Indian rate board publishes, and roughly comparable to a jeweller's metal rate.
Wholesale spot is a straight currency conversion of the world price — and spot rather than futures. It is not a price any dealer will sell to you at: retail bullion carries a premium over spot that varies by product and dealer. No headline figure on this site includes it. The calculator can apply one, as a number you set — see dealer spread below.
Dealer spread — the one figure here that is a rule of thumb
Everything else on this site is derived from a published source. The dealer spread is not. A dealer asks above the published rate when you buy and pays below it when you sell, and how far depends on the product, the quantity, the dealer and the day. Nobody publishes a reference for it that we could cite.
So the calculator treats it as your input, and the figures below are only the value the field starts on in each market. They never touch a headline rate, a chart or an alert — they exist so that a calculator total starts nearer to a real counter price than spot does. Change them to the dealer you are actually dealing with.
| Market | Buying, over the rate | Selling, under the rate | Rate basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | 0% | −3% | landed retail |
| United States | +4% | −1% | wholesale spot |
| United Kingdom | +4% | −1% | wholesale spot |
| Euro area | +4% | −1% | wholesale spot |
| Mexico | +5% | −2% | wholesale spot |
| United Arab Emirates | +1% | −1% | wholesale spot |
India starts at zero on the buying side on purpose: its headline figure is already a landed retail rate carrying the trade's own margin, so a jeweller's mark-up shows up as making charges rather than as a second premium on the metal.
Why only India has city rates
City-level gold rates are an Indian and wider subcontinental convention: local bullion associations publish their own daily rates, so Chennai genuinely differs from Mumbai. In the United States, the United Kingdom and the euro area gold is quoted nationally — there is no "New York rate" as against a "Chicago rate". Rather than invent regional differentials where the market has none, markets outside India simply show a national figure.
Tax by market
No headline figure on this site includes tax. What you would actually pay depends on the market, the form of the metal and often on who is selling it. This is general information, not tax advice.
| Market | Applied | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| India | GST 3% | GST of 3% applies to the metal value plus making charges at purchase. |
| United States | — | Sales tax on bullion is set by each state and many exempt investment-grade metal entirely, so no tax is applied here. Dealers also charge a premium over spot that varies by product. |
| United Kingdom | — | Investment gold is exempt from UK VAT (HMRC Notice 701/21). Silver is standard-rated at 20%. Dealer premiums over spot are not included. |
| Euro area | — | Investment gold is VAT-exempt across the EU (Directive 2006/112/EC, arts. 344–346). Silver is standard-rated — 21% IVA in Spain. Dealer premiums are not included. |
| Mexico | — | IVA treatment depends on the form and purity of the metal and on who is selling it, so no tax is applied here. |
| United Arab Emirates | — | Investment-grade precious metals of 99% purity or higher are zero-rated for UAE VAT; jewellery is standard-rated at 5%. Dubai’s published trade rates carry a small premium over spot that is not included here. |
The rupee retail rate, step by step
This is the part most people want to check against their jeweller. An Indian retail gold rate is an imported price: the metal is bought abroad in dollars, landed in India with duty on it, and then carries a trade margin before it reaches a shop window.
landed_inr = usd_per_gram × usd_inr_rate × (1 + 15%) // 10% basic customs duty + 5% AIDC
inr_per_gram = landed_inr × (1 + market_premium) // gold 0.5%, silver 1%
rate_10g_24K = inr_per_gram × 10 // 999 fine
rate_10g_22K = rate_10g_24K × 22 / 24 // 916 fine
rate_10g_18K = rate_10g_24K × 18 / 24 // 750 fine
city_rate = rate_10g_24K × (1 + city_premium)
What each term is
- spot_usd_per_ounce — the mid-point between the bid and ask on our spot feed.
- usd_inr_rate — the European Central Bank daily reference rate. The ECB publishes it once per working day at around 16:00 CET, so this input changes daily, not continuously.
- import duty of 15% — 10% basic customs duty + 5% AIDC, applied to the landed value. This is a statutory rate and it changes with the Union Budget; the date this was last checked is at the top of the page.
- market premium — a flat allowance of 0.5% on gold and 1% on silver covering refining, transport, financing and dealer margin between a landed bar and a retail 999 quote.
- purity factors — 22K is 22 parts gold in 24 (916 fine) and 18K is 18 in 24 (750 fine). These are exact ratios, not estimates.
Our headline rupee rates are ex-GST, which is the convention Indian rate boards and bullion associations follow. In a real purchase you will also pay 3% GST on the metal value plus making charges, and making charges themselves are set by the jeweller and are not part of any published rate.
The on-site calculator adds both, so it gets much closer to a shop total than the headline rate does. Other markets have their own rules — see tax by market.
Spot markets, step by step
For every market other than India the derivation is a plain conversion, with no duty and no premium — because those figures are wholesale, not retail:
per_gram = per_ounce / 31.1034768
per_purity = per_unit × karat / 24 // where the market deals in purities
Every market lists 24K, 22K and 18K, because retail buyers think in karats even where the wholesale trade quotes 999 bars. The Gulf additionally deals in 21K, which is why the Emirates market lists a purity no other market here shows. Purity factors are exact ratios — 22K is 22/24 of the 24K price, never an approximation.
Charts, ranges and statistics
The intraday chart is built from quotes this server has actually observed. One-week and one-month views use recent daily reference closes from the CC0 currency-api dataset. Longer ranges use the World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), one monthly average for gold and silver from January 1960.
The indexable gold price history turns the World Bank monthly record into a crawlable annual table and one substantial page per year. The source dataset is published under CC BY 4.0 and can be reused with attribution.
Annual averages are the arithmetic mean of the available monthly averages. The lowest and highest annual figures are the lowest and highest monthly averages, not daily or intraday extremes. Annual return compares December with the previous December; the current year compares the latest reported month with the previous December. No missing month is filled.
The World Bank defines gold as the spot average of daily rates from June 2025; earlier values are averages of the London afternoon fixing. Separately, the live figure at the chart's right-hand edge is a point-in-time spot quote, not a monthly average. Expect a seam at both methodology changes and do not treat the final chart segment as a monthly return.
Long ranges are downsampled to about 400 points before they are sent to your browser, while the indexable history pages retain every monthly value in their tables and CSV download.
Because our historical source publishes a single daily price rather than a full session, the daily table's high and low are bounded by the open and close for days we did not observe intraday. Those rows are marked as estimated. A day range is only shown once at least two genuinely different quotes have been seen — a single quote is not a range.
The ten-day table
The ten-day board shows each session's closing price converted into the selected market's currency, unit and purities. Historical prices are converted at today's exchange rate, not the rate on the day — so the table isolates the movement in the metal rather than mixing in currency movement. That is a deliberate choice and it is why a rupee column will not exactly match a historical Indian rate board.
What this cannot tell you
These are real limitations, and we would rather state them than have you discover them.
- Indian city figures are modelled, not surveyed. We apply a fixed regional differential to the national derived rate. We do not collect quotes from local bullion associations, so our Chennai figure is not the Chennai association's figure. Other markets show a national figure only, because they have no city convention to model.
- Our live figure is not a monthly average or a fixing. The historical series is a World Bank monthly average, the live price at the right-hand edge is intraday spot, and the derived retail figures are ours. Where a contract calls for a specific benchmark, take it from its official source rather than from us.
- Your jeweller will quote differently. Shop rates carry making charges, wastage, hallmarking fees, local demand and the jeweller's own margin. A gap of several percent against our rate is normal and does not mean either figure is wrong.
- FX moves daily, not continuously. Because the ECB reference rate updates once per working day, every non-dollar figure tracks the dollar spot price intraday but holds its currency rate fixed until the next publication. The dirham is pegged to the dollar, so in practice only its source differs.
- Duty and tax rates change. We update the constants above when the law changes, but there can be a lag between a budget announcement and this page.
For every wholesale spot market above, the figure shown is the underlying metal price and nothing else. Real purchases carry a dealer premium — often several percent on coins and small bars, and considerably more on jewellery. We do not model it, because it varies by product and by dealer and we have no feed for it.
Corrections
If you believe a figure or a step on this page is wrong, tell us and we will check it: contact us. Say what you saw, when, and what you expected — that is usually enough for us to reproduce it.
See also the risk disclaimer for the limits on how these figures may be used, and about this site for who publishes them. For the terms themselves: what XAU/USD means and gold spot price versus futures price.