Gold Price History
$4,291.00 per troy ounce, spot
Gold spot $4,291.00/oz · updated
Gold price, 2000 to today
Longer ranges use weekly and month-end closes, which smooth over spikes inside a single week or month.
Data sources: Spot price via api.gold-api.com · COMEX futures (GC=F) via Yahoo Finance. Prices are for informational purposes only and may be delayed. Figures on this page were generated . Gold is quoted in US dollars per troy ounce.
Quick answer: Gold began our chart in 2000 at under $300 an ounce. It passed $1,000 in the late 2000s, peaked just above $1,900 in 2011, spent four years falling back toward $1,050, and then climbed to a record close of $5,318.40 on January 29, 2026. Today it's $4,291.00. The table below gives every year's open, close, high and low.
| Year | Open | Close | High | Low | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $274 | $272 | $274 | $270 | -0.6% |
| 2001 | $266 | $279 | $292 | $258 | +4.9% |
| 2002 | $282 | $317 | $326 | $282 | +12.3% |
| 2003 | $368 | $416 | $416 | $336 | +12.9% |
| 2004 | $402 | $438 | $451 | $387 | +8.8% |
| 2005 | $422 | $517 | $517 | $422 | +22.6% |
| 2006 | $562 | $635 | $652 | $562 | +13.1% |
| 2007 | $652 | $835 | $835 | $648 | +28.1% |
| 2008 | $923 | $884 | $972 | $717 | -4.2% |
| 2009 | $927 | $1,095 | $1,095 | $891 | +18.1% |
| 2010 | $1,083 | $1,421 | $1,421 | $1,083 | +31.2% |
| 2011 | $1,334 | $1,566 | $1,828 | $1,334 | +17.4% |
| 2012 | $1,710 | $1,675 | $1,771 | $1,563 | -2.1% |
| 2013 | $1,661 | $1,251 | $1,661 | $1,224 | -24.7% |
| 2014 | $1,240 | $1,184 | $1,321 | $1,171 | -4.5% |
| 2015 | $1,278 | $1,060 | $1,278 | $1,060 | -17.1% |
| 2016 | $1,116 | $1,150 | $1,349 | $1,116 | +3.0% |
| 2017 | $1,253 | $1,306 | $1,316 | $1,241 | +4.3% |
| 2018 | $1,339 | $1,278 | $1,339 | $1,192 | -4.5% |
| 2019 | $1,320 | $1,466 | $1,519 | $1,283 | +11.1% |
| 2020 | $1,583 | $1,895 | $1,979 | $1,564 | +19.7% |
| 2021 | $1,847 | $1,829 | $1,902 | $1,714 | -1.0% |
| 2022 | $1,795 | $1,826 | $1,985 | $1,641 | +1.7% |
| 2023 | $1,870 | $2,072 | $2,090 | $1,817 | +10.8% |
| 2024 | $2,050 | $2,655 | $2,755 | $2,017 | +29.5% |
| 2025 | $2,812 | $4,341 | $4,553 | $2,715 | +54.4% |
| 2026 | $4,745 | $4,320 | $5,318 | $3,992 | -9.0% |
Before our chart begins: 1971 and the end of fixed gold
For most of the 20th century, the US dollar was tied to gold at an official price: $20.67 an ounce until 1934, then $35 until 1971. Under the post-war Bretton Woods system, foreign governments could exchange dollars for gold at that rate. In practice that meant the market price of gold barely moved for decades.
On August 15, 1971, President Nixon suspended the dollar's convertibility into gold, the "closing of the gold window". Within a few years the price was set by the market. US citizens, who had been largely barred from holding gold bullion since 1933, regained the right to own it at the start of 1975. Every gold price chart that shows real movement starts, in effect, in the 1970s.
1980: the first great peak
Through the 1970s, inflation in the US ran high and rising, the dollar weakened, oil prices spiked, and political shocks piled up, including the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Gold climbed from $35 to a then-record of about $850 an ounce in January 1980.
What followed is the reason many people are cautious about gold. Once the Federal Reserve raised interest rates sharply to break inflation, gold fell hard and stayed down for about two decades. By 1999 it was trading around $250, less than a third of its 1980 peak in nominal terms and a small fraction of it after inflation. That long slump included several European central banks selling large parts of their gold reserves near the bottom.
2001–2011: the long climb
Our chart opens near that low point, below $300 in 2000–2001. The decade that followed was gold's strongest in a generation:
- The dot-com bust and a weakening dollar revived interest in hard assets from 2001 onward.
- Gold ETFs, launched in the mid-2000s, let ordinary brokerage accounts buy exposure to gold for the first time. That opened a large new source of demand.
- The 2008 financial crisis pushed gold through $1,000 for the first time, and near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing afterwards removed much of the cost of holding a metal that pays no interest.
The run peaked in September 2011, just above $1,900 an ounce intraday, during the eurozone debt crisis and a US credit-rating downgrade.
2012–2019: the long correction
Gold's retreat was almost as dramatic as its rise. In April 2013 it suffered one of its sharpest two-day falls in decades, down more than 13%, as markets began expecting the Federal Reserve to wind down its stimulus. Gold kept sliding until late 2015, when it bottomed near $1,050, roughly 45% below the 2011 peak.
For the rest of the decade it traded mostly between $1,150 and $1,350. It was a quiet market, and many people who had bought near the 2011 top waited years to break even. That's a useful reminder that gold can go sideways for a long time.
2019–present: record after record
The next leg began in 2019 as interest rates fell again, then accelerated in 2020:
- 2020: the pandemic, emergency rate cuts and huge fiscal stimulus took gold to a new record above $2,000 in August 2020, beating the 2011 high for the first time.
- 2022–2023: despite the fastest US rate increases in decades, which would normally weigh on gold, central banks bought gold at the fastest pace in modern records, led by emerging-market banks diversifying away from the dollar after Western sanctions froze Russia's reserves.
- 2024: gold broke decisively above $2,000 and kept setting records through the year.
- 2025: a historic year. Gold passed $3,000 in March and $4,000 in the autumn, its strongest calendar gain since the late 1970s.
- 2026: the run peaked with a record close of $5,318.40 on January 29, 2026, with an intraday high of $5,586.20. Since that high, the price has traded as low as $3,992.10 (July 16, 2026), and its latest close stands 18.8% below the record.
The drivers of this era are different from 1980's. Inflation mattered, but so did central-bank reserve buying, geopolitical fragmentation, government debt levels, and a broad search for assets outside the banking system. See gold price all-time high for how the record compares to 1980 and 2011 after inflation.
What gold's history does and doesn't tell you
It does show that gold has kept its purchasing power over very long periods, that it often behaves differently from stocks during crises, and that major bull markets have tended to coincide with falling real interest rates, a weak dollar, or loss of confidence in financial institutions.
It also shows that gold can lose half its value and take a decade or more to recover, as after 1980 and after 2011. Timing a purchase near a peak can mean a very long wait.
It doesn't predict next month's or next year's price. Anyone who tells you history proves where gold is headed is extrapolating a chart, not reading one.
A calmer way to use history is to understand the range of outcomes, then decide how much of your savings you'd be comfortable holding through a bad decade as well as a good one.
About this data
The chart and the year-by-year table are built from COMEX gold futures (GC=F) closing prices via Yahoo Finance: daily for the past year, weekly for the past five years, and month-end back to 2000. The longer ranges therefore smooth over spikes that began and ended within a single week or month. Futures closes differ slightly from spot and from the LBMA benchmark. See "Why Gold Quotes Disagree" on our homepage. Figures before 2000 in the text (1971, 1980, 1999) are widely recorded historical prices, not from our dataset. Our chart shows real data points only. Missing days are left out, never filled in.
Related pages
Gold price all-time high · Gold to silver ratio · Gold price per ounce · Gold bullion price chart
FAQ
What was the price of gold in 2000?
Under $300 an ounce. It opened our series at about $274 and bottomed near $260 in 2001.
When did gold first reach $1,000?
It first traded above $1,000 in March 2008 and settled above that level for good in late 2009.
What was gold's highest price before the current era?
About $850 in January 1980, and just over $1,900 in September 2011.
Why did gold fall after 2011?
Expectations of rising interest rates and a stronger dollar, together with the end of crisis-era stimulus, reduced demand for a non-yielding asset. The price fell about 45% into 2015.
How much has gold gone up in 25 years?
From under $300 in 2000 to $4,291.00 today, more than 15× in nominal terms.
Data sources: Spot price via api.gold-api.com · COMEX futures (GC=F) via Yahoo Finance. Prices are for informational purposes only and may be delayed. Figures on this page were generated . Gold is quoted in US dollars per troy ounce.