The gold-to-silver ratio today

What the ratio actually measures

The gold-to-silver ratio is the least complicated number in precious metals: one price divided by another. Its appeal is that it strips the dollar out of the picture. When you price gold in dollars you are measuring two things at once — what gold is doing and what the currency is doing — and you cannot tell which is moving. Price gold in silver and the dollar cancels. What is left is a question about the two metals themselves.

For most of monetary history the answer was fixed by law rather than discovered by trade. The Coinage Act of 1792 set the United States ratio at 15 to 1; the 1834 revision moved it to roughly 16 to 1. Those numbers are often quoted as evidence that silver is now absurdly cheap, which misreads them. They were not market observations. They were legislation, and the legislation kept breaking, because whenever the statutory ratio drifted from the metals' actual relative supply, the undervalued coin quietly left circulation and the overvalued one stayed. That is Gresham's law, and it is the reason a fixed ratio is a policy that expires rather than a fact of nature.

Why it moves

The two metals answer to different masters. Gold is bought overwhelmingly to be held — by central banks, by funds, by people who want an asset nobody can print. Silver is bought mostly to be used up: in solar panels, electrical contacts, brazing alloys and electronics, where it is consumed rather than stored. So gold tracks monetary anxiety and silver tracks industrial demand, with a monetary bid on top of it.

That mixed identity is why the ratio widens in a slump and narrows in a boom. A recession frightens people into gold and simultaneously shuts the factories that buy silver, so the two prices move apart. A recovery does the reverse. The ratio is therefore less a statement about silver being cheap than a rough gauge of how much the market currently wants insurance versus how much it wants industrial metal.

What the number is saying today

Here is where most writing on this subject picks a comparison and stops. Against the full range since 1970, today's ratio is on the high side — the 72nd percentile, higher than 41 of those years and lower than 16. Against the last decade, which averaged 80.7, it is low. A page that wanted you to buy silver would quote the first figure. A page that wanted to talk you out of it would quote the second. Both are arithmetic, and the difference between them is entirely the choice of starting line.

This is worth naming plainly, because the ratio is unusually easy to abuse. Pick 1970 as your base and silver looks catastrophically overpriced. Pick 2011 and it looks like a bargain. Pick 1792 and you are quoting a statute. The number is real; the story attached to it is a choice about which window to use, and anyone showing you the ratio without showing you the range is making that choice on your behalf.

What it does not tell you

The ratio is a relationship, not a direction. A ratio of 74 tells you nothing about whether either metal is going up. It can close because silver rises, because gold falls, or because both fall and silver falls less — and a stacker who owned silver through the third of those would have been right about the ratio and poorer anyway. It also says nothing about timing. The ratio spent the whole of the 1990s above 70 and most of the 1970s below 40; neither episode resolved on anybody's schedule.

And the bear case for our own position, since the house rule is to say it out loud: the ratio's mean-reverting reputation rests on a 57-year sample in which the industrial uses of silver changed beyond recognition. Photography once consumed a quarter of annual silver demand and now consumes almost none; solar barely existed in 1990 and is now one of the largest single uses. A ratio built on that much structural change is a weaker anchor than the tidy chart suggests.

Worked examples

• One ounce of gold trades for about 73.9 ounces of silver: $3,996.90 ÷ $54.05.
• A 100-ounce silver bar is worth about $5,405 at spot, which is about 1.35 ounces of gold.
• In 1991 gold averaged $362 and silver $4.04, a ratio of 89.6, the highest annual average since 1970. The same ounce of gold bought 89.6 ounces of silver.
• In 2011 gold averaged $1,572 and silver $35.12, a ratio of 44.8. An ounce of gold bought about half the silver it did in 1991.

Today’s figures use the stored spot prices from October 24, 2026; the tool above uses the live price when it loads. Past years are annual averages from metalcharts.org.

Common questions

What is the gold-to-silver ratio right now?

About 74 to 1, using spot prices of $3,996.90 for gold and $54.05 for silver as of October 24, 2026. One ounce of gold buys roughly 74 ounces of silver.

Is silver undervalued compared to gold?

It depends entirely on the comparison period, and honest answers say so. Against every year since 1970 the current ratio is on the high side, at the 72nd percentile, which makes silver relatively cheap. Against the last ten years, which averaged 80.7, the ratio is low and silver is relatively expensive. Against the statutory 16-to-1 of the nineteenth century it looks extremely cheap, but that figure was a law rather than a market price.

What is a normal gold-to-silver ratio?

There is no normal level, only a range. Since 1970 the annual average has run from 20.3 at the low to 89.6 at the high, with a median of 62.0. Half of all years fall between roughly 45 and 74.

Why is the ratio so much higher than 16 to 1?

Because 16 to 1 was set by legislation, not discovered by trade. Once governments stopped fixing the price, the ratio moved to reflect the metals' actual supply and demand — including the fact that silver is largely consumed by industry while gold is largely hoarded.

Does a high ratio mean I should buy silver?

This page does not give investment advice and cannot tell you what to buy. What it can tell you is that the ratio is a relationship rather than a direction: it can narrow because silver rises or because gold falls, and it has stayed stretched for a decade at a time.

How is the gold-to-silver ratio calculated?

Divide the price of an ounce of gold by the price of an ounce of silver, both in the same currency. The answer is how many ounces of silver one ounce of gold buys. At spot on October 24, 2026, $3,996.90 divided by $54.05 gives 73.9.

What is the highest the gold-to-silver ratio has ever been?

About 126 to 1, in March 2020, when silver fell faster than gold in the first weeks of the pandemic, according to the CPM Group. Its modern low was about 16 to 1 in January 1980, at the height of the Hunt brothers' silver squeeze. The annual averages charted here smooth both extremes away.

Why does the gold-to-silver ratio change?

Because the two metals answer to different buyers. Gold is bought mostly as a store of value, by investors and central banks. More than half of silver goes into industry, from solar panels to electronics, so it tends to fall harder in a slump and rise harder in a boom. Silver's market is also much smaller, so the same money moves its price further.

Is the gold-to-silver ratio the same in every currency?

Yes. Both prices are quoted in the same currency, so the currency cancels out, and the ratio is the same in London, Toronto, Sydney or Zurich. It is the one number on this site that does not care what money you think in. Local premiums and taxes can still make the coins themselves cost different amounts.