Chart of the Week · No. 2
The gold-silver ratio since 1970
Two metals, one exchange rate, fifty-seven years. It has wandered from twenty to ninety and back without once asking anyone’s permission.
By Joel Perkes · · 3 min read
On October 24, 2026, one ounce of gold bought about 73.9 ounces of silver. Measured by annual averages since 1970, the ratio has ranged from 20.3 in 1970 to 89.6 in 1991, with a median of 62.0. Today’s figure is higher than 41 of the other 56 years and lower than 15.
Hover or tap the chart for any year.
What the ratio is
The gold price divided by the silver price. It is an exchange rate between two metals, and it has one useful property: it does not care what currency you use. Dollars, pounds or yen cancel out, so the ratio is the same everywhere on earth at the same moment.
Why it started near 20
For most of the nineteenth century governments fixed it by law at about 15 or 16 to 1. Those fixed rates were long gone by 1970, but the market had not wandered far yet. Through the 1970s the ratio mostly sat in the 20s and 30s. In the 1980s it climbed, and it has spent most of the years since above 50.
What it does not tell you
The bear case, said first. A high ratio is often read as “silver is cheap”, and it is, compared with gold. It says nothing about whether either metal is cheap in dollars, and nothing obliges it to come back to its median: it spent most of the 1990s and the late 2010s well above it. Silver is also half an industrial metal, so a recession can push the ratio up just when the argument for silver sounds best.
| Decade | Average ratio |
|---|---|
| 1970s | 31.4 |
| 1980s | 52.1 |
| 1990s | 73.6 |
| 2000s | 61.1 |
| 2010s | 67.2 |
| 2020 to now | 81.1 |
Averages of the annual figures in the chart.
Where you stand
The ratio of a market is one number; the ratio of your own holdings is another. The gold-silver ratio tool takes your ounces of each and shows how your split compares, and what your silver alone would be worth at the low, the median and the high.
Questions people actually ask
What is the gold-silver ratio today?
On October 24, 2026 gold was $3,996.90 an ounce and silver $54.05, so one ounce of gold bought about 73.9 ounces of silver.
What is a normal gold-silver ratio?
Using annual averages since 1970, the median is 62.0. The lowest year was 1970 at 20.3 and the highest 1991 at 89.6. Daily prices have gone well outside that range: annual averages smooth out the spikes.
Does a high ratio mean silver is cheap?
Only relative to gold, and only if the ratio returns toward its past range, which nothing guarantees. The ratio has spent long stretches far from its median. It is a comparison, not a forecast.
Sources
- Gold and silver: annual average prices from metalcharts.org, 1970–2025; 2026 is the spot price stored on October 24, 2026. The same series powers every tool on this site.
