Nobody decides today’s gold rate in one place, and that is the whole answer. The number on your board begins as an international quote in dollars, becomes a rupee figure through two conversions, and picks up what it costs to land metal in India. Your city’s bullion trade settles it into one figure that morning, and your own board steps that figure to the karat and the unit you sell in.
Four different numbers can reach you before ten in the morning, and none of them is wrong.
This guide belongs to the metal and the bench. No page here prints a live rate and no tool on it fetches or guesses one, because an old rate given as today’s does more damage than no rate at all.
Why do I get four different gold rates before ten in the morning?
Three things move between them — the unit they are quoted in, the fineness they are quoted for, and the city doing the quoting — so each of the four is answering a different question.
| Where it comes from | What it quotes | Fineness and unit | Can you bill on it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| The rates app on a customer’s phone | The international market, live | Fine gold, in dollars per troy ounce | No. No rupee, no duty, no city |
| A business channel or a futures screen | A domestic contract for a future month | Rupees per 10 grams, at the fineness that contract specifies | No. A contract price, not counter metal |
| Your city’s bullion association | Duty-paid metal, in this city, today | A stated fineness, per gram or per 10 grams | Yes. The trade around you settles on it |
| The board in your own shop | That association rate after your purity and unit step | Usually 22K, per gram | Yes, and you answer for it |
Almost every argument at the counter is the first row against the last one — the same metal, four steps apart.
What is spot gold, and how does it become a rupee figure per gram?
Take the dollar figure on the customer’s app: that is spot, the price of fine gold for immediate delivery, quoted in US dollars for one troy ounce. The troy ounce is a fixed unit, 31.1035 g, and it never moves; the ounce used in a kitchen is a different and lighter one.
Two conversions turn that quote into something an Indian counter can read: dollars into rupees at the day’s exchange rate, and an ounce into grams. Multiply the dollar quote by the rupee rate, divide by 31.1035 g, and the answer is a rupee-per-gram figure for fine metal, before India has touched it.
Both inputs move on their own. Gold can sit still in dollars while the rupee slips, and your rate rises anyway. That is the morning a customer tells you gold has not moved today, and he has read his screen correctly. Take the dollar quote and the rupee rate at the hour you are actually using them.
Why is the Indian gold rate different from the international price?
India buys most of the gold it sells, so the international price is only where the sum starts. Three things sit between that price and what the metal costs once it has landed here.
Customs duty comes first. Gold entering India carries duty at whatever rate applies on the day it clears, and that rate is a government notification: it moves when the government moves it. It has been changed more than once, both in a Budget and between Budgets, so nobody should quote it from memory. Today’s rate is in the customs notification the CBIC publishes, and whoever imports the metal your dealer sells you is pricing off that same one.
Second comes the local premium or discount. Duty-paid metal inside India trades above or below the landed price depending on demand that week: a premium through a wedding run, a discount when scrap is coming back in volume. Nobody is charging you a fee when that moves, and there is no fixed number to quote for it.
Third is the rupee, which is why two mornings with the same dollar price do not give you the same Indian rate.
Tax sits outside all three. A trade rate is normally quoted before GST, which lands on the bill at 3% on the metal and stones. Ask your dealer once whether his quote carries tax, and you never have to ask again.
The making charge is where sellers slip. It is taxed at 5% only where the making was a service supplied on its own, and what settles that is the supply itself — what you actually sold, however the line is typed on the bill. Either way it is a line on the bill, and the rate on your board is untouched by it.
Whose rate does my city bill on — the sarafa association or a website?
When you pay your dealer, he is working from the figure his association put out that morning. Most Indian cities have a sarafa association, and on each trading morning its members settle a rate for the city at a stated fineness — the rate the trade around you buys and sells on.
Cities differ for plain local reasons. Metal has to reach the city, the demand in front of the counters varies, and the dealers there may be holding stock or short of it. Two cities a few hours apart can carry different numbers on the same day.
Three questions settle it, and you only ask them once: which association’s rate, at what fineness, and per what unit. A dealer who cannot answer all three has not given you a rate you can use.
The honest gap: no association publishes to one national feed. That is why every rates app carries a slightly different figure, and why there is no single authority to point a customer at.
What sits between the bullion rate and the rate on my board?
Four steps, in this order, and a wrong turn at any one of them puts a wrong number on your board.
| The step | What changes | The question to ask | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fineness | A bullion rate is for fine metal; the piece you sell is not | Is this quote 24K or 22K? | The hallmark on the piece |
| Unit | Per gram, per 10 grams, per tola (11.6638 g), per pavan (8 g) | Per what? | Regional habit, yours and his |
| Tax | The rate is metal only; GST lands on the bill | Is this quote with GST or without? | The law sets the tax; your dealer sets how he quotes |
| Your own buying terms | What your dealer adds over the association rate for cash, credit or a small lot | What is my landed cost per gram? | Your dealer, and how you buy |
The unit step goes wrong most often: read a per-10-gram figure as a per-gram one and you are out by ten times. Converting between per gram, per tola and per pavan, the South-Indian sovereign, is done for you on the converter linked above.
Fineness goes wrong less often and costs more when it does. Bullion quotes are fine metal; the everyday Indian piece is 22K, and 18K is the usual choice for studded work. Working those two from the 24K figure is a fixed multiplication, and the decoder below keeps karat, fineness and tunch lined up while you do it.
Keep the fourth step off the card. What you pay over the association rate is your own cost of buying metal, and once that is folded into the figure on the board you can no longer see your own margin.
Can I hold one rate all day, or does it have to change?
The international market runs nearly around the clock and the rupee moves through the Indian trading day, so the rate is never actually still. A shop showing one figure from open to close has chosen to hold it there.
Most counters take the morning rate and hold it until closing, which on a fast day either costs them or pays them. Changing it again at noon is the other way of working, and both are honest as long as the customer is told which one you follow.
The moment worth naming is the fix: the point at which one day’s rate becomes this customer’s rate. On a booked piece with an advance taken against it, write that point on the order itself.
Beside the number on your board, write four things: whose rate, what karat, per what unit, and the hour it was fixed.
What do I say when a customer shows me a lower rate on his phone?
One sentence, three facts, said the same way every time: whose rate, what karat, what unit. “I bill on today’s sarafa rate for this city, at 22K, per gram.” Say it flat, and it contradicts nothing he has on his screen.
The second sentence closes the gap he is looking at. Read what his app is actually showing, the karat included, then say it back to him. “That figure is 24K, and it is metal only. Making and GST come on the bill, and I will show you both separately.”
Do not tell him his app is wrong, because it is not: it is a reference figure, usually for another karat, read at another hour.
Keep the old-gold conversation separate. A rate is only half of an exchange. What the piece tests at, and what comes off it for melting and refining, are further numbers, asked for one at a time.
And if you cannot name the association whose rate you bill on, a customer is right to keep asking. Find out the name of yours this week.
How do I turn today’s rate into the card I send?
Type the rate once, in one place, and let everything after it be a sum somebody can check. One 24K per-gram figure prices every karat and unit you quote all day.
The converter linked at the top takes that figure and prints a counter rate card. It gives 24K, 22K and 18K, per gram, and the units your own counter uses: tola, pavan, and the bhori of 11.664 g that eastern India works in. For the silver line, the Silver Price & Purity Calculator starts from the 999 rate and takes the purity step to sterling itself.
Both start from a number you type in: the one your dealer or your association gave you this morning, because that is the only number a customer of yours can honestly be billed on.
Tomorrow morning, before the shutter goes up: type in the figure, print the card, and send it out with the hour written on it.