Gold, platinum, palladium — who is the expensive one right now?
Price ratios within the platinum group: one ounce of gold costs around 2.5 ounces of platinum today, while on average since 1990 both metals were about equally expensive — and palladium was at times even dearer than gold.
Gold, platinum, palladium — who is the expensive one right now?
Platinum was long regarded as the more valuable metal. Both semicircles show how many ounces of the second metal one ounce of the first costs — the dot sits on today’s value, the line on the mean of the whole series.
One ounce of gold costs 2.67 ounces of platinum today — across the series since 1990 the average was 0.94, so for a long time the two metals were about equally expensive. And palladium was at times even dearer than gold — most recently on 27/12/2022, and at its peak (01/2001) it cost 4.14 times as much. Today it is 0.25.
Own calculation on daily closing prices in USD; gold per platinum 9,339 common trading days from 02/04/1990, platinum per palladium 9,536 from 02/04/1990. The series for platinum and palladium starts in 1990 — older quotes are not available in comparable quality, so this comparison reaches back less far than the gold-silver series. A high ratio does not mean that the cheaper metal has to “catch up”: platinum and palladium depend largely on industrial demand (catalytic converters), gold largely on investment and central bank demand. The three metals therefore have different drivers, and a ratio can stay in a new range for years without returning to its old average.
Where the numbers come from
This chart is calculated from our own price recordings. It is recalculated twice a day — after the daily close and after the London reference price at 16:30.
- our own measurement Our own daily closing prices for the metals — new values every trading day
The Chart view shows the most recently calculated state. The Image version — including the one for sharing and downloading — is a still image generated nightly at 02:30. Last generated on 09/11/2026 at 03:06.
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