Gold price per gram in the UK, by carat

9ct is just over a third gold, 18ct is three quarters gold and 22ct is almost all gold. The number stamped on the piece tells you exactly how much: 375 means 375 parts of gold in every 1,000. Pure gold is too soft to wear, so jewellers mix it with silver, copper or zinc. The carat counts the gold in 24 parts; the hallmark counts it in 1,000 parts. In the UK those numbers are not rough guides: the hallmarking law lists the only numbers an official testing office (an assay office) may stamp on gold, and the piece must hold at least that much. That is why 9ct is exactly 375 here, and 14ct is 585: the law rounds 14ct up a little. The table in the calculator above gives the value of one gram of each carat at today’s price.

21ct is in the list because a lot of gold bought in the Gulf, India and Pakistan is 21ct. It is real gold, but 21 is not one of the British numbers, so a 21ct piece made abroad carries no British 21ct hallmark; a buyer will test it and pay for the gold it really holds. The value shown is a straight 21 parts in 24, as a guide. Pure gold is shown at 999, the higher of the two pure standards; 990 is also allowed.

Weight, times the share of gold, times today’s price of a gram of pure gold. That is all. You supply the weight in grams. The carat gives the share of gold. The price of a gram of pure gold is the price of one ounce divided by 31.1, because the ounce used for gold, the troy ounce, weighs 31.1 grams. A 10 g 9ct chain therefore holds 3.75 g of pure gold; at the price of 9 November 2026, 11:53 pm UK time that is £373.58.

The weight is the one number you have to find, and it is where most estimates go wrong. A ring set with stones weighs more than the gold in it. A hollow bangle weighs less than it looks. Steel springs in clasps, solder, enamel and glue all count on the scales and none of them is gold. Kitchen scales that read to 0.1 g are good enough for a rough figure; if yours only show whole grams, the figure can be out by up to half a gram. A buyer will weigh to a hundredth of a gram.

Have a coin or a bar sold by the ounce, or gold bought by the tola? The ounce page and the tola page convert those weights and value them.

A percentage tells you how much of your gold you are really being paid for. Buyers quote a price per gram of 9ct or a single sum for the lot, and neither says what share of the gold value you get. If a shop offers £260.00 for the 10 g chain above, that is 69.6% of the gold value at the price shown in the calculator above: the same example the offer checker opens with. The offer checker does this for any quote, and the page on where to sell compares high street shops, postal buyers, pawnbrokers and bullion dealers by what they do with your gold rather than by what they say about themselves.

Two habits help. Ask for the quote per gram and by carat, so you can check each line; and ask for the weight they recorded, so you can compare it with yours. A quote given before the item is weighed is not a quote.

The number in the hallmark is the one that matters: 375, 585, 750 or 916. A full British hallmark has three marks you must find: the maker’s initials in an outline, the number (375, 585, 750, 916, 990 or 999 for gold) and the symbol of the testing office that checked it: a leopard’s head for London, a castle for Edinburgh, an anchor for Birmingham, a rose for Sheffield. A letter for the year is optional. Pieces with under 1 g of gold do not need a hallmark, which is why very light earrings often carry nothing. The hallmark guide explains each mark and which weights need one.

A number on its own, such as “18K” or “750” without an office symbol, is not a UK hallmark. It may be honest, it may come from a country with different rules, or it may be wrong. Treat it as a claim to be tested, not as a fact.

A British gold coin holds a known amount of gold, so you can value it without scales. The law on coins fixes the sovereign at 7.98805 g, eleven twelfths gold, that is 7.322 g of pure gold, and the half sovereign at 3.99402 g. The Royal Mint publishes the gold in the Britannia (one ounce of almost pure gold), the quarter sovereign and the other coins it sells. The sovereign page, Britannia page and Krugerrand and Maple Leaf page value each one, and show how far above the gold a dealer’s price is if you type it.

The same law sets the numbers for the three other precious metals. Sterling silver is 925, Britannia silver 958.4, and 800 and 999 complete the list. At the prices we recorded on 9 November 2026, 11:53 pm UK time, an ounce of gold was worth 77 ounces of silver, so the scales matter more and a buyer’s fixed costs take a bigger share. The silver price page and the sterling silver page give the value per gram and per ounce; platinum and palladium have their own pages with their numbers: 850, 900, 950, 999 for platinum, 500, 950, 999 for palladium.

Most people selling a few pieces of jewellery owe no tax. A single piece, or a set sold together, sold for £6,000 or less is free of Capital Gains Tax, the tax on a profit when you sell something (the rule). Sovereigns and Britannias are British coins and are never taxed when you sell them (the rule). Krugerrands and other foreign coins can be. Profits above the tax-free £3,000 a year are taxed at 18% or 24%, depending on your income, for 2026 to 2027. The Capital Gains Tax page has the calculator.

Buying is the other way round. VAT, the sales tax added to most purchases, is not charged on investment gold: bars of at least 995 parts gold in 1,000, and gold coins of at least 900 made after 1800 that are or were legal money in their country (HMRC guidance; HMRC is the UK tax office). Jewellery and all silver carry VAT at 20%. The VAT page checks a coin or bar you are thinking of buying.

The gold price is supplied by gold-api.com, a free service whose terms allow use on a site like this one. It is the price traders use for an ounce of pure gold, not the price a shop or dealer will pay you or charge you. Like any free price service, it can now and then be a little out, which is why every figure shows the time of its price. This site asks for the price once per metal when you open a page and does not refresh it by itself. Every page shows the time of the price, so you can tell how fresh it is, and every value is worked out in your browser: nothing you type leaves your device.

The calculators read the live price when they can, and the price recorded when the page was built when they cannot; the line under the fields gives that price and its time. The tables and examples in the text of each page are worked out at the same price, so the calculator and the text always show the same figure for the same weight. The method page lists every formula, every source and what is left out.