Gold Calculator – What Your Gold Is Worth by Weight & Karat
Weigh it, pick the karat, enter today’s spot price — and get the melt value of your gold in seconds, with per-gram prices for every karat and units from grams to tola.
Your gold and today’s price
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Your gold’s melt value
See the purity — and every karat priced
Karat is a fraction out of 24. The marker shows where your gold sits on the purity scale, and the table prices your exact weight at every common karat using your spot price.
Only the pure-gold share is priced by this calculator. The alloy share gives jewellery its hardness and colour — a ring in pure 24k would bend in daily wear — but refiners pay for the gold content.
| Karat | Fineness | Price per gram | Value of 10 g |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24k | 999 | $130.21 | $1,302.11 |
| 22k | 916 | $119.36 | $1,193.60 |
| 21k | 875 | $113.93 | $1,139.34 |
| 18k | 750 | $97.66 | $976.58 |
| 14k | 583 | $75.96 | $759.56 |
| 10k | 417 | $54.25 | $542.54 |
Table uses your current weight (10 g) and spot price ($4,050.00) — change either one and every row updates live.
- Weigh the piece, read the karat from the hallmark stamp, and type in today’s spot price — no stale built-in rate.
- The melt value comes with the pure-gold grams inside the piece and a per-gram price.
- The same weight is priced at every other karat, in units from grams to tola.
- Gold is money — run the numbers around it
- How it works
- The formula, with the default worked all the way through
- Selling gold? Read this before you accept an offer
- Karat, fineness, and what a hallmark actually promises
- Weight units without tears
- What melt value is not
- Checking a dealer’s maths, step by step
Gold is money — run the numbers around it
Once you know the melt value, these tools help you decide what to do with it.
How it works
Three inputs, one honest melt value.
Weigh the piece
Kitchen and jewellery scales read grams; this calculator also accepts troy ounces, everyday ounces, kilograms, pennyweights and tola.
Set karat and spot
Read the karat from the hallmark stamp (22, 18, 14…) and type in today’s spot price per troy ounce — no stale built-in rate.
Read the melt value
You get the value, the pure-gold grams inside your piece, a per-gram price, and the same weight priced at every other karat.
The formula, with the default worked all the way through
Step 1 — price of one pure gram. Gold’s spot price is quoted per troy ounce, and one troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams. At the example spot of $4,050, one gram of pure (24k) gold is $4,050 ÷ 31.1034768 = $130.21.
Step 2 — adjust for karat. A 22k piece is 22 ÷ 24 = 91.67% gold, so its per-gram price is $130.21 × 0.9167 = $119.36. The rest of the weight is copper, silver or other alloy metals.
Step 3 — scale by weight. 10 g × $119.36 = $1,193.60. Inside those 10 grams sit 10 × 22/24 = 9.17 g of pure gold — that pure content is what every buyer is really paying for.
Weight units, in grams
| Unit | Grams | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|
| Gram (g) | 1 | Jewellery scales, hallmarks |
| Troy ounce (ozt) | 31.1034768 | Spot prices, coins and bars |
| Ounce (oz, avoirdupois) | 28.3495231 | Kitchen scales, everyday weight |
| Kilogram (kg) | 1,000 | Large bars, institutional gold |
| Pennyweight (dwt) | 1.5551738 | US jewellers and scrap buyers |
| Tola | 11.6638038 | South Asian and Middle East markets |
Karat and fineness
| Karat | Gold share | Typical fineness stamp |
|---|---|---|
| 24k | 100% | 999 |
| 22k | 91.7% | 916 |
| 21k | 87.5% | 875 |
| 18k | 75.0% | 750 |
| 14k | 58.3% | 583 (585 is also common) |
| 10k | 41.7% | 417 |
Selling gold? Read this before you accept an offer
Melt value is the ceiling. What you are actually offered depends on who is buying and why.
No buyer can profitably pay more than melt value for scrap gold, and almost every buyer pays less. Refining costs money, prices can move while the metal is in transit, and the buyer still needs a margin. That is why offers for broken chains and old jewellery often land noticeably below the melt figure this calculator shows.
How far below melt varies a lot. Competitive refiners and high-street buyers who publish their rates often pay a high share of melt for clean, hallmarked gold, while pawn-style and mail-in offers often come in much lower. The practical move is simple: know your melt value first, then collect two or three offers and compare them against it. A buyer who will not tell you the weight, karat and per-gram rate they used is a buyer to walk away from.
The karat comes from the hallmark: 916 means 22k, 750 means 18k, 585 or 583 means 14k, 417 means 10k. If a piece has no stamp, a buyer will test it — often with acid or an XRF gun — and may assume the lower karat when a test is unclear, so unmarked gold often fetches less per gram.
Two weight traps matter. First, gemstones are weighed with the piece but contain no gold, so a stone-heavy ring’s gold content is less than its scale weight suggests; honest buyers deduct an estimate for stones, clasps and watch springs. Second, hollow and gold-filled items carry far less gold than solid pieces of the same size. This calculator assumes the whole weight you enter is gold alloy at the karat you choose — adjust the weight down if a large share is stone or filling.
Coins and bars of known fineness trade closest to spot, because they are easy to verify and resell. Popular bullion coins often sell for a small premium over melt when you buy, and dealers often buy them back close to melt — sometimes a little below, sometimes at melt for fast-moving products.
Jewellery is different. The price you paid included making charges, design and brand margin, and none of that comes back at resale: a buyer prices the piece as metal. That is why a ring bought last year for $2,000 can have a melt value of a few hundred dollars. If a piece has genuine antique, brand or gemstone value beyond its metal, a specialist jeweller or auction route — not a scrap buyer — is where that extra value lives.
Karat, fineness, and what a hallmark actually promises
Gold purity is a fraction, and every system for stating it is the same fraction in different clothes.
Karat states purity out of 24. A 24-karat piece is pure gold, 22-karat is 22 parts gold out of 24, or 91.7 percent, and 18-karat is 18 out of 24, or 75 percent. The rest is alloy: metals added for strength, colour, and durability, because pure gold is soft enough to bend and scratch in everyday wear. The alloy has no melt value on this page, and that is correct, because a refiner pays for the gold content only. A 10-gram piece of 22-karat gold therefore contains 9.17 grams of pure gold and 0.83 grams of alloy, and only the 9.17 grams are priced, which is exactly what the calculator shows for its default.
Fineness states the same fraction out of 1,000 instead of 24, and it is the form you will see stamped on bars and on jewellery from many countries. The conversion is a single multiplication: fineness equals karat divided by 24, times 1,000. So 24 karat is 999 or 1,000 fine, 22 karat is 917 fine, 18 karat is 750 fine, 14 karat is 583 fine, and 10 karat is 417 fine. A stamp reading 750 and a stamp reading 18k are the same promise, and a stamp reading 375 is 9 karat, a fineness that appears on some lower-purity jewellery. If a piece carries no stamp at all, its purity is unknown, and no calculator can fix that: an unmarked piece needs testing, by acid test, electronic test, or assay, before its melt value can be stated with confidence.
| Karat | Pure gold share | Fineness | Pure gold in a 10 g piece |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24k | 100.0% | 1000 | 10.00 g |
| 22k | 91.7% | 917 | 9.17 g |
| 18k | 75.0% | 750 | 7.50 g |
| 14k | 58.3% | 583 | 5.83 g |
| 10k | 41.7% | 417 | 4.17 g |
Hallmarks deserve a careful reading, because a stamp can mislead in both directions. A genuine hallmark states the purity the maker claims, and reputable makers stamp honestly, because assay offices in many countries test and certify the mark. But stamps can be forged, worn away, or simply absent on older pieces, and a stamp on a clasp does not guarantee the whole piece: chains, clasps, and settings are sometimes made at a different purity from the main body, and springs and pins inside clasps are often base metal. The practical rule is to trust a clear hallmark from a known maker, to test an unclear or missing mark, and to weigh and price the piece at the lowest purity you can confirm, not the highest you hope for. A melt value computed at 22 karat for a piece that is really 18 karat overstates the value by nearly a fifth, and that gap is where disappointing offers come from.
Plated and filled gold need a separate warning, because they look like solid gold and are priced like almost nothing. Gold-plated jewellery carries a microscopically thin layer of gold over a base-metal core, and gold-filled jewellery carries a thicker but still thin bonded layer. In both cases the gold content is a tiny fraction of the total weight, often well under one percent, and the melt value is correspondingly tiny. The calculator on this page assumes solid gold at the karat entered, so entering a plated piece at 18 karat will produce a melt value that has no relation to what the piece is worth as metal. If a piece is marked GP, GF, RGP, or HGE, or if it is unusually light for its size, treat it as plated until testing proves otherwise, and do not use a solid-gold calculation for it.
Weight units without tears
Gold is weighed in at least five units, and confusing two of them is a five-to-ten percent error before any maths begins.
The unit that matters most is the troy ounce, because spot prices are quoted per troy ounce. One troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams, and the calculator divides the spot price by that number to get the price of one pure gram. At the example spot of $4,050 per troy ounce, one pure gram is $130.21. The everyday ounce, the avoirdupois ounce used for groceries and parcels, is smaller, at 28.3495 grams, and confusing the two overstates a weight by about 9.7 percent if a troy weight is entered as everyday ounces, or understates it by the same share in the other direction. If a scale reads in ounces and does not say which ounce, check: jewellery scales usually read grams or troy ounces, kitchen scales usually read everyday ounces or grams, and the difference is large enough to matter on every piece.
Two smaller traditional units appear constantly in gold markets. The pennyweight, abbreviated dwt, is one twentieth of a troy ounce, or 1.55517 grams, and it is still used by some dealers and pawnbrokers. The tola, used across South Asia and the Middle East, is 11.6638 grams. Both convert cleanly through grams, which is why the calculator accepts them and converts first: a tola of 22-karat gold at the example spot is worth 11.6638 times 22 over 24 times $130.21, which is $1,392.19. A five-gram piece of 18-karat gold at the same spot is worth 5 times 18 over 24 times $130.21, which is $488.29. Working through grams first, as the calculator does, removes the unit from the argument entirely: every unit becomes grams, every gram becomes pure grams by the karat fraction, and pure grams become dollars by the per-gram price.
Weighing technique matters as much as unit choice. Weigh the piece alone, without a chain it did not come with, without stones, and without a display stand. Gemstones add weight but no gold value, and a stone-heavy ring weighed whole will overstate its melt value by the stone’s weight times the per-gram price, which on a large stone is a large error. Springs, pins, and non-gold clasps should be removed or their weight estimated and subtracted where possible. If removal is not possible, say so to the buyer, and expect the buyer to discount for it: a buyer who cannot verify the gold weight will price the uncertainty, and that discount is fair, because the uncertainty is real.
Finally, weigh on a scale that can resolve the weight you are pricing. A kitchen scale that reads to the nearest gram is fine for a 50-gram bracelet and poor for a 2-gram ring, where a one-gram rounding error is half the piece. Jewellery scales read to a hundredth of a gram, and for small pieces that precision is worth borrowing or buying. Record the weight in grams, with the unit stated, and keep the record with the calculation: a melt value without a stated weight and karat cannot be checked, and a value that cannot be checked cannot be negotiated.
What melt value is not
Melt value is a ceiling, a starting point, and a negotiating tool. It is not a price anyone is obliged to pay.
A dealer who buys scrap gold must refine it, and refining costs money: melting, assaying, removing alloy, and casting the result into a form a refiner will accept. The dealer must also carry the price risk between buying your piece and selling the refined metal, because the spot price moves every day, and a fall in between comes out of the dealer’s margin. On top of that are the costs of the shop itself, staff, security, and insurance for holding valuable metal. All of those costs come out of the gap between melt value and the offer, which is why offers below melt value are normal, not a sign of dishonesty. An offer at 85 or 90 percent of melt value for ordinary scrap is a common shape of deal; an offer at 50 percent deserves a second opinion, and an offer above melt value for scrap deserves suspicion, because no buyer can profitably pay more than the metal is worth.
Jewellery adds a second layer. The price you paid for a finished piece included making charges, design, brand, retail margin, and tax, and none of those are repaid when the piece is sold as scrap. A ring that cost $1,000 new may contain $400 of gold at melt value, and the remaining $600 was craftsmanship and retail, spent at purchase and gone at resale. That is not a loss created by the dealer. It is the difference between buying a finished object and selling a raw material. The exceptions are pieces with value beyond their metal: signed pieces, antique pieces, and some coins, where a collector or a specialist dealer may pay more than melt. Those pieces should not be sold as scrap at all. They should be appraised as objects first, and only melted if the appraisal says the metal is worth more than the object.
Coins sit between scrap and jewellery. Bullion coins trade near melt value plus a small premium that reflects minting and distribution, and that premium varies with the coin, the market, and the dealer. Numismatic coins, old or rare issues, can trade far above melt, and their value depends on condition, rarity, and demand among collectors, none of which a melt calculator measures. If you hold coins, price them as coins first, through a coin dealer or a price guide, and use melt value only as a floor: a coin should never sell for less than its metal content, and a coin sold at melt value may be a coin sold too cheaply.
Taxes, fees, and payment method can also change the realised figure. Some buyers charge an assay or handling fee, some pay by bank transfer and some in cash, and tax treatment varies by jurisdiction and by seller. None of those details are in a melt calculation, and all of them belong in a comparison between offers. Compare offers on the net amount you receive, for the same piece, on the same day, at the same spot price, and the comparison will be honest. Compare gross offers on different days, and the spot price movement alone can swamp the difference in dealer margins.
Checking a dealer’s maths, step by step
Five minutes with this calculator turns an offer from a take-it-or-leave-it figure into a number you can argue about.
Start before you leave home. Weigh the piece yourself, in grams, without stones or non-gold parts where you can remove them, and note the karat from the hallmark. Enter those numbers and a current spot price into the calculator, and write down the melt value. That figure is your anchor. It is not a promise of what you will receive, but it is the ceiling, and any offer can be expressed as a percentage of it. An offer of $1,000 on a melt value of $1,193.60, the calculator’s default, is 83.8 percent of melt. Stating the percentage makes offers comparable across pieces, dealers, and days, in a way raw dollar offers never are.
At the shop, watch the weighing. A reputable buyer weighs in front of you, on a scale you can see, and states the weight and the karat used. If the weighing happens out of sight, or the karat is asserted without a test you can see, ask for both to be shown. Testing takes a minute: an acid test on a discreet spot, an electronic test, or an X-ray fluorescence reading, depending on the shop. A buyer who refuses to show the weight or the test is a buyer to walk away from, because the two inputs to the price are being kept from the seller, and that asymmetry only ever works one way.
Compare at least two offers, on the same day, and keep the spot price constant between them. Gold moves daily, and an offer that looks better on Tuesday than Monday may simply reflect a higher spot price, not a better dealer. If two dealers differ by more than a few percentage points of melt for the same piece on the same day, ask the lower one to explain the gap: refining charges, assay fees, and payment method are legitimate explanations, and a dealer who can explain them is usually a dealer worth trusting. A dealer who cannot explain them, or who changes the weight or karat between the quote and the payment, is not.
Finally, keep the paperwork. A receipt stating the weight, karat, spot price used, and amount paid protects both sides, and it is essential if the piece has any sentimental or legal significance, such as an estate item. Photograph the piece before sale, keep the receipt with the calculation you did at home, and note the percentage of melt achieved. Over several sales, that record becomes your own market knowledge: which dealers pay close to melt, which discount heavily, and what a fair percentage looks like for your kind of piece. That knowledge is worth more than any single offer, because it compounds across every future sale.
From melt value to a loan figure: the percentage-of-value method
A lender never lends the full melt value. The loan is a percentage of it, and the percentage, not the melt value, is the figure to compare between lenders.
Lenders against gold, pawnbrokers, banks, and specialist gold-loan firms, lend a percentage of the appraised value of the gold, commonly called the loan-to-value ratio, and the percentage varies by lender, loan size, and jurisdiction. On this page melt value, the example is 10 grams of 22-karat gold at a $4,050 spot price, worth $1,193.60: at 70% of melt value the loan would be $835.52, and at 80% it would be $954.88, with the difference, $119.36, being the lender margin against a price fall between valuation and any sale. The percentages here are illustrations of the method, not offers: no lender terms are quoted on this page, and the rate, tenure, fees, and redemption terms in the actual loan agreement decide the cost, not the percentage alone. The companion guide works the full gold-loan calculation for India, in rupees, under the Reserve Bank of India slabs, where the percentage is set by regulation by loan size; this section states the general method for the dollar context of this page, where the percentage is a commercial term to be compared.
Compare loan offers on three figures together: the percentage of melt value lent, the interest rate and fees over the actual tenure, and the redemption and sale terms if the loan is not repaid. A higher percentage with a higher rate can cost more than a lower percentage at a lower rate, because the interest is charged on the larger sum for the whole tenure, and a loan that cannot be redeemed in time loses the gold at the lender sale terms, whatever the percentage was. Get the valuation in writing, with the weight, purity, spot price used, and per-gram rate stated, keep the receipt, and confirm the return and sale terms before pledging, because the melt value on this page is an estimate from a price you enter, and the lender valuation, from the lender valuer, is the figure the loan is actually based on.
Gold questions, answered
The ideas behind the number, in plain language.
How is the value of gold calculated?
By its melt value: weight in grams × (karat ÷ 24) × the pure-gold price per gram. The pure-gold price per gram is the spot price divided by 31.1034768, the number of grams in a troy ounce. At a $4,050 spot, one pure gram is $130.21, so 10 g of 22k is worth 10 × 22/24 × $130.21 = $1,193.60.
What is the difference between karat and fineness?
They measure the same thing on different scales. Karat counts parts out of 24, so 18k is 18/24 = 75% gold. Fineness counts parts out of 1,000, so the same gold is stamped 750. A 916 stamp means 91.6% gold — 22k. Pure gold is 24k, or 999 fine.
Is a troy ounce the same as a regular ounce?
No — and the mix-up is expensive. A troy ounce is 31.1035 g; a regular (avoirdupois) ounce is 28.3495 g, about 9% lighter. Gold prices are always quoted per troy ounce. Weigh a coin on a kitchen scale in regular ounces and convert with the wrong ounce, and you will undervalue it.
How many grams are in a tola?
One tola is 11.6638038 grams. It is a traditional unit still used daily in South Asia and the Middle East for gold bars and jewellery. At a $4,050 spot price, one tola of 22k gold has a melt value of about $1,392.19.
How much will a dealer pay for scrap gold?
Usually less than melt value — the dealer has refining costs and needs a margin. How much less depends on competition, the karat, whether the piece is hallmarked, and how much you are selling. Competitive buyers often pay a high share of melt for clean hallmarked gold; low-ball mail-in and pawn offers can be far lower. Get several quotes and compare each against your melt value.
Where can I see today’s spot price?
The spot price comes from the major exchanges — COMEX in New York and the London bullion market — and is quoted by financial news sites, bullion dealers and most market apps in dollars per troy ounce. This calculator deliberately does not bake in a rate: gold moves every day, so type in the current figure and the math stays honest.
Is the spot price on this page live?
No. The $4,050 figure built into this calculator is an example, not a live market rate, and this page does not fetch market prices. Gold trades continuously, and the spot price moves through the day, so any live figure shown here would be stale within minutes. Enter a current spot price from a market source at the moment you calculate, and the melt value will reflect that price. If you compare offers on different days, re-enter the spot price each time, because a moving spot price alone can change the melt value by more than the difference between dealers.
Why is my jewellery worth less than I paid for it?
Because you bought a finished object and are selling a raw material. The retail price included making charges, design, brand, shop margin, and tax, and none of those are repaid when a piece is sold as scrap. Only the pure gold content has melt value, and the alloy, the stones, and the craftsmanship do not. A piece that cost $1,000 new may contain $400 of gold at melt value, and that gap is not a dealer discount. It is the difference between the two markets. Pieces with collector or antique value are the exception, and they should be appraised as objects before anyone considers melting them.
What does gold-plated mean for melt value?
Almost nothing, in melt terms. Gold-plated jewellery carries a microscopically thin layer of gold over a base-metal core, and gold-filled jewellery carries a thicker but still thin bonded layer. In both cases the gold is a tiny fraction of the total weight, often well under one percent, so the melt value is correspondingly tiny. This calculator assumes solid gold at the karat entered, so entering a plated piece at 18 karat will produce a figure with no relation to its metal value. Marks to watch for include GP, GF, RGP, and HGE. If a piece carries one of those marks, or feels unusually light for its size, treat it as plated until testing proves otherwise.
Should I remove stones before selling gold?
Yes, where you safely can, because stones add weight but no gold value, and a piece weighed whole will overstate its melt value by the stone’s weight times the per-gram price. Keep the stones, because they may have their own value, especially larger diamonds and coloured stones, which deserve a separate appraisal. If stones cannot be removed without damage, tell the buyer, and expect a discount for the uncertainty: a buyer who cannot verify the gold weight will price it, and that discount is fair. Never let a buyer keep stones without agreeing their treatment first, in writing, on the receipt.
How is a gold loan calculated from melt value?
The lender appraises the gold, values the pure gold content at a per-gram rate to give the melt value, and lends a percentage of that value, the loan-to-value ratio. On this page example, 10 grams of 22-karat gold at a $4,050 spot is worth $1,193.60 melt value, so a loan at 70% would be $835.52 and at 80% would be $954.88. The rate, fees, and tenure in the loan agreement decide the total cost.
What percentage of melt value will a lender lend?
It varies by lender, loan size, and jurisdiction, and no single percentage applies everywhere. Commercial lenders commonly lend a substantial fraction of melt value, keeping a margin against price falls, while regulated gold-loan frameworks, such as the RBI slabs in India, set the percentage by loan size. Compare the percentage together with the rate, fees, and redemption terms, and take the percentage from the written offer, not from advertising.
What happens to my gold while a loan is outstanding?
It stays with the lender as security until the loan is repaid in full, when it must be returned under the terms of the agreement. If the loan is not repaid by maturity, the lender may sell the gold under the sale terms in the agreement, after any notice the agreement or the applicable law requires, and any surplus above the amount owed is normally due to the borrower. Keep the valuation receipt and the agreement, and confirm the return and sale terms before pledging.
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