The gold-to-silver ratio, explained

What the ratio is

The gold-to-silver ratio tells you how many ounces of silver equal one ounce of gold at a given moment. If the ratio is 70, one ounce of gold is worth about the same as 70 ounces of silver.

People have been comparing the two metals this way for thousands of years. It's been called "the world's oldest exchange rate," and the history behind it is a good way to understand how gold and silver have been valued over time.

How to calculate it

You only need two numbers: the price of one ounce of gold and the price of one ounce of silver, in the same currency. Divide the gold price by the silver price. That's it.

Here's a real example. On the morning of October 2, 2026, gold traded at about US$4,218 an ounce and silver at about US$61.51.

• Gold: US$4,218
• Silver: US$61.51
• Ratio: 4,218 ÷ 61.51 = about 68.6, or roughly 69

So in early October 2026, one ounce of gold was worth about as much as 69 ounces of silver. The currency cancels out, so you get the same answer in Canadian dollars, as long as both prices are in Canadian dollars.

A high number means silver is cheap compared with gold. A low number means silver is relatively pricey. The ratio says nothing about whether either metal is cheap or expensive on its own. Both prices can climb while the ratio barely moves.

The ratio in the ancient world

In 2026, The Silver Institute published a report called Is the Gold-Silver Ratio Relevant Today? It traces the ratio back about 5,000 years, and most of the history on this page comes from it.

In ancient Egypt, around 3000 BCE, the ratio was about 2.5 to 1, and it held at that level for many centuries. In other words, silver was worth far more, compared with gold, than it is today.

Rome set a formal ratio of 10 to 1 in 333 BCE. In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar set it at around 12 to 1. In medieval Europe, ratios were usually somewhere between 12 and 14 to 1.

When governments fixed it by law

For a long stretch, the ratio was set by lawmakers as much as by markets. After huge silver finds in the Americas, Europe's ratio settled at around 15 to 1 in the first half of the 1600s and stayed there until the early 1800s. Laws in Britain (1717) and France (1726 and 1785) helped hold it in place.

The United States followed in 1792. Its Coinage Act said the value of gold to silver in all its coins "shall be as fifteen to one." Through to 1850, France held a strict ratio of 15.5 to 1.

Using both metals as money at a fixed ratio is called bimetallism. It didn't survive the 1800s. In 1871, the newly formed German Empire switched from a silver standard to a gold one. Between 1871 and 1897, formal bimetallic and silver standards came to an end, and growing South African gold output in the 1890s pushed the remaining countries onto the gold standard. By 1900, every major economy except China was on gold, and the ratio had climbed to around 35 to 1, higher than ever before.

A century of big swings

Here's the ratio at 25-year steps, using each year's average prices. It's a simple way to see how much the relationship has shifted.

We worked out these ratios ourselves from annual average prices published by the USGS. Gold in 1900, 1925 and 1950 is the official US price ($20.67 under the Gold Act of 1900, then $35 from 1934). For 2025, gold is the World Gold Council's annual average and silver is a USGS estimate.

The swings in between were even bigger. The ratio jumped from 38 in 1929 to a peak of 100 in 1940 and 1941. It fell to a low of 18 in 1968. On January 18, 1980, it dropped to 16.7, its lowest point since March 1968. For more on what happened to prices in those years, see our gold and silver price history.

Silver didn't stay there. By February 1991, it had fallen below US$4 an ounce, and the monthly average ratio spiked to 97.3.

Recent years

For much of 2018 to 2025, the ratio traded in a range of around 80 to 90. Then came March 2020. In about three weeks, it shot from a little below 90 to an all-time peak of 125.7 on March 18, 2020. By that day, gold had dropped 11% from its February 24 peak, while silver had dropped 37%.

Late 2025 and early 2026 went the other way, as silver gained on gold. The ratio ended 2025 a little below 60 and reached a low of 45.6 on January 27, 2026. By the end of May 2026 it was back at 59.7, and in early October 2026 it was about 69.

Over the long run, the Silver Institute's analysis puts the ratio's equilibrium at about 60 (59.65, to be exact). The median monthly ratio from January 1971 to May 2026 was 62.9.

Why the ratio moves

Lots of things get blamed for the ratio's moves. The Silver Institute tested several of them against decades of data. Here's what it found:

• Investment demand matters most. The ratio tends to rise when investors buy more gold and fall when they buy more silver. From 1980 to 2000, silver buying and selling explained nearly all of the movement. From 2001 to 2025, gold investment was the much stronger force.
• Central banks buy gold, not silver. Central banks swung from selling gold to buying it from 2010, and bought even more from 2022. The report says this had a particularly strong effect on the gold price, and so on the ratio. Official activity in silver over the last 15 years has been trivial.
• Silver's market is smaller. It's smaller and less liquid than gold's, so money flowing in or out generally moves its price much more in the short term.
• Industry plays a smaller part than you'd think. Industrial uses made up 41% of silver fabrication (not counting coins) in 1990 and at least 63% in 2025. Even so, the report found factory activity explains only a small share of the ratio's moves.
• Supply has only a weak link. Over all of history, about 8.3 ounces of silver have been mined for every ounce of gold. Far more silver gets lost over time, so above-ground stocks at the end of 2025 stood at just 2.87 to 1. The report found only a weak relationship between these numbers and the ratio.

What about the US dollar, interest rates and inflation? The report found little or no consistent link. The dollar showed a weak connection from 2006 on, explaining about 12% of the ratio's monthly moves. Interest rates showed a very weak one, and inflation showed no statistically significant link at all.

What the ratio can and can't tell you

The Silver Institute concludes that the ratio is still relevant today. Its reasoning is that gold and silver are still important monetary assets, and the ratio between them tells us something about how the market values each one.

We're not going to tell you what to do with that. The ratio describes how gold and silver are priced against each other on a given day. It isn't a forecast, and nothing on this page is investment advice. What matters for your own pieces is how much gold or silver they contain and the market price on the day you sell.

Questions people ask