Gold Price Today
XAU / USD
What this price actually is
The number above is the spot price of one troy ounce of gold in US dollars — the price at which gold trades for immediate settlement. It is the figure every payout you are ever offered is derived from, and it is the one you should be checking before you sell anything.
It is worth knowing what it is not. Many articles that rank for “gold price today” quote the futures contract instead. Futures trade at a different price from spot — the gap routinely runs to tens of dollars an ounce — and almost none of those articles tell the reader which one they are looking at. If you are selling a chain or a ring, futures is not your number.
How often it updates
The price is fetched from a live market feed and refreshed continuously through the trading day, and a snapshot is recorded every 15 minutes so the chart and the daily change are measured against our own record rather than estimated. The timestamp on the card above is the real time of the last reading, not the time you loaded the page.
Gold trades nearly around the clock on weekdays and is closed over the weekend, so a Saturday reading is Friday’s close. We label a stale feed as delayed rather than showing an old number as though it were live.
What your own gold is worth
Spot is the price of pure gold. Almost nothing you own is pure. A 14K chain is 58.3% gold by weight, so its metal is worth 58.3% of the spot price per gram — before anyone has offered you anything.
That figure is the melt value, and it is the ceiling, not the offer. Every buyer has refining costs, overheads and a margin, so the cheque is always some percentage of melt. Anyone showing you a melt figure and implying it is what you will be handed is misleading you.
- What 14K gold is worth per gram — the most common hallmark in US jewellery
- Scrap gold calculator — enter weight and karat, get the melt value
- Gold buyers by city — with the percentage of spot each one actually pays
Where the number comes from
We read from more than one price source and compare them against each other. When they disagree by more than a set threshold the site raises an alarm rather than quietly publishing whichever arrived first. The full method — sources, refresh cadence, how karat values are calculated, and how payout percentages are measured and dated — is written out on our methodology page.
Prices here are indicative spot quotes published for information. They are not an offer to buy or sell, dealer quotes will differ, and nothing on this page is investment advice.