Gold Bar Sizes: Weights, Prices and Which Size to Buy

Most people picture a gold bar as the heavy brick from bank vault movies. The bars that private buyers actually own are much smaller, and the smallest weighs about as much as a paper clip.

In this guide to gold bar sizes, we list every common weight, convert it to grams, troy ounces and pounds, and show what each size really cost at five US dealers on October 26, 2026. The prices come from our gold bar price comparison, so you can see where small bars get expensive and which sizes give you the most gold for your money.

Gold Bar Sizes at a Glance

A gold bar is a piece of refined gold with its weight and purity stamped on it. Bars for private buyers are made by refiners such as PAMP, Valcambi, Argor-Heraeus and Heraeus, and nearly all of them are .9999 fine, which means 99.99% pure gold.

Gold is weighed in troy ounces, not the ounces on your kitchen scale. One troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams, while a regular (avoirdupois) ounce is 28.35 grams. That is why “how many grams in an ounce of gold” has a different answer from your cooking recipes.

Want the gold value of any other weight? Our gold melt value calculator does the math for you, and the gold price per gram chart shows the current rate.

How Much Does a Gold Bar Weigh?

It depends on which bar you mean. When people ask how much a gold bar weighs, they usually mean one of three bars:

• the 1 oz bar, the most common bar in US retail, which weighs 31.10 grams,
• the kilo bar, which weighs 1,000 grams, or 2.2 pounds,
• the 400 oz “standard” bar that central banks and the London market use, which weighs about 12.4 kilograms, or 27.4 pounds.

How much does a standard gold bar weigh?

The standard gold bar is the London Good Delivery bar. Its rules are set by the LBMA, the trade body of the London bullion market. A Good Delivery bar must contain between 350 and 430 fine troy ounces of gold, roughly 10.9 to 13.4 kilograms, and be at least 995.0 parts per thousand fine.

In practice, most of these bars are close to 400 troy ounces. That gives the familiar figure of about 12.4 kilograms, or 27.4 pounds. Each bar is weighed and stamped with its own exact weight, so no two are quite the same. More on how these bars are approved is in our glossary entry on LBMA Good Delivery.

How big is a standard gold bar?

The LBMA gives a permitted range for the shape, not one fixed size:

So a bar that weighs as much as a small child fits in a shoebox. Gold is that dense. A bar this size is not a retail product, though. At the spot price of $4,014.90 on October 26, 2026, a 400 oz bar held about $1.6 million worth of gold.

How much does a 1 oz gold bar weigh?

A 1 oz gold bar weighs one troy ounce of fine gold, or 31.10 grams. On a kitchen scale it would show about 1.1 ounces, because the troy ounce is heavier than the everyday ounce. The bar itself is small: most 1 oz bars are roughly the size of a large postage stamp, though the exact shape depends on the refiner.

Read also: Troy Ounce: Definition, History, and Conversion Table

Retail Gold Bar Sizes Explained

Retail bars come in two families. Metric bars are measured in grams and kilos, which is common with Swiss and German refiners. Imperial bars are measured in troy ounces, which is what most US buyers know from the price on the news.

Small gold bars: 1 g to 20 g

These are the entry sizes. A 1 gram bar is about the size of a fingernail and usually comes sealed in a credit card sized assay card that shows the refiner, weight, purity and serial number.

Who buys them? Mostly people who want to start small, give gold as a gift or add to their holdings a little at a time. The catch is price per gram, as you will see in the next section.

Mid-size gold bars: 1 oz, 50 g and 100 g

This is where most investors land. The 1 oz gold bar is the US favorite because it matches the spot price quote one to one. The 50 g and 100 g gold bars are common in Europe and Asia and are widely available from US dealers too.

Large gold bars: 250 g, 10 oz, 500 g and 1 kg

Large bars suit buyers who put a lot of money into gold at once. The 1 kilo gold bar is the largest size most dealers stock for private clients. It is also the bar used for physical trading in several Asian markets.

Above 1 kilo, you are in wholesale territory. Private buyers rarely own a 400 oz bar outright, and when they do, it usually sits in a professional vault.

Cast vs minted bars

Bars are made in one of two ways:

• Cast bars: molten gold is poured into a mold. The surface is a bit rough and each bar looks slightly different. Cast bars are often a little cheaper to make.
• Minted bars: a gold strip is cut to an exact weight and struck with a design, like a coin. They look polished and usually come in an assay card.

Our data shows both types at similar prices in larger sizes. In the 100 g size, a cast Valcambi bar cost 1.9% over spot at SD Bullion, while minted 100 g bars from Heraeus and PAMP started at 1.7% and 1.8%.

What Each Gold Bar Size Really Costs

No dealer sells gold at the spot price. Every bar costs a little more than the gold inside it, and that extra is the premium over spot. It covers refining, minting, packaging, shipping and the dealer’s margin.

Here is how we calculate it:

• Gold value = spot price × troy ounces of fine gold
• Premium in % = (price you pay − gold value) ÷ gold value × 100

Example: a 1 oz Valcambi bar cost $4,083.27 at Hero Bullion on October 26, 2026. Spot was $4,014.90. The premium was $68.37, or 1.7%.

Gold bar prices by size

So what did each size cost at the US dealers we track? Here is the full picture from one check, all prices taken at the same time:

The pattern is clear at the small end. A 1 g bar cost at least 16.9% over spot, a 5 g bar 6.3%, and a 10 g bar 2.2%. From 20 g up, every size started below 2.1%, so the premium stops falling fast once you pass about 20 grams.

Why do small gold bars cost more per gram?

Making a 1 g bar costs almost as much as making a 100 g bar. The refiner still has to strike it, test it, number it and seal it in an assay card. That fixed cost is spread over just one gram of gold.

Think of it like buying coffee. A single cup at a café costs far more per ounce than a big bag of beans, even though the coffee is the same. Small bars are the café cup of the gold world.

Is a bigger bar always cheaper?

No. Our data broke the “bigger is always cheaper” rule in three places on October 26, 2026:

• the cheapest 20 g and 50 g bars (1.1% over spot) beat the cheapest 1 oz bar (1.7%),
• the cheapest 10 oz bar (2.0%) cost more per ounce than the cheapest 1 oz bar,
• a 100 g bar started at 1.6%, so two 50 g bars came out cheaper than one 100 g bar.

Premiums move with dealer stock, brand demand and promotions. A size that is cheap today can be average next month. That is why we check prices instead of relying on rules of thumb. Read also: Gold Premium Over Spot: What You Really Pay and Why

Buying 100 Grams of Gold: Small Bars vs One Bar

Let’s make the size question concrete. Say you want 100 grams of gold. You can buy it as one bar or as several smaller ones. Here is what each route cost at the cheapest dealer in our data:

Buying 100 one-gram bars cost $15,093.00. That is $1,975.23 more than one 100 g bar and $2,184.80 above the gold value. Meanwhile, ten 10 g bars cost only $69.93 more than a single 100 g bar, and two 50 g bars were $68.59 cheaper.

What does this mean for you? Splitting your gold into a few mid-size bars costs very little. Splitting it into 1 g bars costs a lot. If you want flexibility to sell part of your gold later, 10 g, 20 g or 50 g bars give you that without the heavy price of tiny bars.

Which Gold Bar Size Should You Buy?

The best gold bar size depends on your budget and on how you plan to sell. Here is a simple guide:

Choose small bars if:

• your budget is under $1,500 per purchase,
• you want to give gold as a present,
• you accept a higher price per gram in exchange for a low entry point.

Choose 1 oz to 100 g bars if:

• you buy gold every few months,
• you want low premiums and the option to sell in parts,
• you want bars every US dealer knows.

Choose 250 g to 1 kg bars if:

• you put a large sum into gold at once,
• you plan to hold for many years,
• you are fine with selling the whole bar at once.

Brand matters too. Bars from refiners on the LBMA Good Delivery list, such as PAMP, Valcambi and Argor-Heraeus, are the easiest to resell. Our guide on gold purity and fineness explains what the stamps on a bar mean.

Selling, Storing and Taxing Gold Bars

The size you buy affects what happens later. Three things are worth checking before you choose.

Reselling different bar sizes

Dealers buy back gold bars below their selling price. The gap between the buy and sell price is the bid-ask spread. Known brands in sealed assay cards are the easiest to sell. A bar in a damaged card, or one from an unknown maker, may need testing first, which takes time and can lower the offer.

Large bars have one more catch. If you need $5,000, you cannot sell part of a kilo bar. You sell the whole bar or nothing.

Storing gold bars

Gold is compact, so even a kilo bar fits in a pocket. Small bars are easy to keep at home in a safe. Larger holdings are often kept in a bank safe deposit box or a private vault. Our gold and silver storage guide and the article on the proper way to store gold compare the options.

Tax on gold bars in the US

The IRS treats physical gold as a collectible. Long-term gains on collectibles are taxed at a maximum federal rate of 28%, as explained in IRS Tax Topic 409. The bar size does not change this rule. Sales tax at purchase depends on your state, and our glossary entry on precious metals sales tax covers the basics.

How the Gold Price Moved in the Last 12 Months

Bar sizes stay the same. Their value does not. A 1 oz bar that held $3,870.82 worth of gold on October 1, 2025, held $5,283.67 on March 1, 2026, and $4,183.60 on October 1, 2026.

On October 26, 2026, the spot price was $4,014.90 at the time of our dealer check. You can follow the live price on our gold price chart or see it per kilo on the gold price per kilogram page.

Summary: Gold Bar Sizes

Compare Gold Bar Prices Before You Buy

The spot price is the same for everyone, but the premium is not. On the same morning, a 1 g bar cost $150.93 at one dealer and $181.18 at another. For a 100 g bar, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive offer was $505.84.

Metals Radar compares prices from US bullion dealers and does not sell metal. Start with our gold bar prices, check the 10 gram gold bars or 1 gram gold bars, or browse our list of bullion dealers.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment or tax advice.