Gold Price per Gram Sits Near $141, Plus How to Value Yours
The gold price per gram was about $140.70 for pure gold on August 16, 2026. Here is what a gram of gold is worth by karat, plus the simple weight math to value your jewelry before you sell.
Gold keeps setting records, and if you have an old chain or a few rings in a drawer, the first number to know is the gold price per gram. As of August 16, 2026, one gram of pure gold runs about $140.70, based on a spot price near $4,376 for a troy ounce.
That figure moves every day, so the price of a gram of gold today is really a snapshot, not a fixed rate. What does not change is the method: weigh the piece in grams, adjust for its karat, and you can estimate what the metal alone is worth before you ever walk into a shop.
What the gold price per gram is today
Markets quote gold by the troy ounce, then dealers divide that by 31.1035 to get a per gram figure. On August 16, 2026 the pure metal sat near $140.70 a gram, and each karat below 24 is worth a fixed fraction of that. The table below shows where the common purities landed that morning.
| Karat | Purity | Per gram |
|---|---|---|
| 24k | 99.9% | $140.70 |
| 22k | 91.6% | $128.90 |
| 18k | 75.0% | $105.53 |
| 14k | 58.5% | $82.08 |
| 10k | 41.7% | $58.63 |
Those numbers come from live trackers that refresh through the day. You can sanity check them against a public feed such as MeltValue or the per gram board at GoldRate24, which both update every few minutes.
One gram of pure gold is roughly the weight of a raisin, yet on August 16, 2026 it was worth about $140.
How karat changes the value per gram
Pure gold is soft, so jewelry mixes it with other metals for strength. Karat is just that ratio out of 24. A 14k piece is 14 parts gold and 10 parts alloy, which is why the 14k gold value per gram is only a little over half the pure rate.
So the 14k rate lands near $82 right now, while the 18k gold price per gram sits around $105. Put another way, 14k gold per gram reflects 58.5 percent pure metal, and the cost of 14k gold per gram rises and falls with the world spot price every single day.
That spread matters when a piece holds stones. A ring stamped 14k might weigh 6 grams total, but a diamond or setting adds weight that is not gold. If you want the stone side of the math, our carat to grams guide breaks down how gem weight works.
How to value your gold jewelry by weight
The melt value is the honest floor for any piece: weight times purity times the per gram rate for pure gold. Weigh the item in grams first, because grams give you the cleanest math and match how gold is quoted.
A quick example with a 14k chain
Say a 14k chain weighs 20 grams. Its pure content is 20 times 0.585, which is 11.7 grams of actual gold. At $140.70 a gram that metal is worth about $1,646. You can shortcut the same result by multiplying 20 grams by the 14k rate of $82.08, which gives $1,642. The small gap is just rounding.
Weight times purity times the per gram rate. That one line values any gold piece you own.
A phone scale gets you close in a pinch. For real money decisions, confirm the weight on a scale you trust to a tenth of a gram, since a single gram of pure gold swings the total by more than a hundred dollars.
What a gram of gold is worth when you sell
Here is the catch that surprises most people. The melt value is what the metal contains, not what a buyer hands you. Refiners and pawn shops pay a share of melt and keep the rest to cover assay, refining, and profit, so the scrap gold price per gram you actually receive is lower than the spot rate.
That is why weighing at home first pays off. If you know a gram of gold is near $140 pure, and your 14k piece is 58.5 percent of that, you can judge whether an offer is fair or lowball before you agree to anything. Coins are a special case, since collector value can beat melt; our coin weights reference lists common weights to start from.
Know the melt value before you sell. An offer only looks generous until you have run the per gram math yourself.
Grams, troy ounces, and pennyweights
Gold uses its own units, and mixing them up costs money. The troy ounce is heavier than the kitchen ounce on your food scale, so never assume the two are the same when a price is quoted per ounce.
| Unit | In grams | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gram | 1.00 g | The base metric unit |
| Pennyweight | 1.555 g | Old jeweler unit, dwt |
| Troy ounce | 31.10 g | How gold is quoted |
| Standard ounce | 28.35 g | Your kitchen scale ounce |
Because a troy ounce is about 31.1 grams and a standard ounce is 28.35 grams, quoting gold in the wrong ounce overstates weight by nearly ten percent. When in doubt, work in grams and convert only at the end. Our grams to ounces converter and ounces to grams converter keep the two straight.
Common questions about the gold price per gram
How much is a gram of gold?
On August 16, 2026 a gram of pure 24k gold was about $140.70, tracking a spot price near $4,376 per troy ounce. Karat gold is worth less by its purity, so a 14k gram was about $82 and an 18k gram about $105 the same day.
What is the 14k gold price per gram?
A 14k gram was near $82.08 on August 16, 2026, because 14k is 58.5 percent pure. Multiply the pure per gram rate by 0.585 on any given day to update that figure.
Why is the gold price per gram today different at every shop?
Spot gold updates by the second, and each shop adds its own margin, so the per gram price looks slightly different everywhere. Buyers also quote a payout below melt, while jewelers quote retail above it.
Does my scale need to be very accurate for gold?
Yes, because value scales straight with weight. A tenth of a gram of pure gold is worth about $14, so a scale that reads to 0.1 grams is worth using when real money is on the line.
Need to weigh a chain or a handful of coins before you sell? Scale for Grams gives you an AI powered weight estimate from a photo in seconds, so you can run the per gram math on the spot. Get the app here: iOS.
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