Gold IRA Fees: What Each Company Charges, Line by Line

The short answer

A gold IRA usually costs about $50 to open and $235 to $285 a year to run. The yearly cost has two parts: about $125 for the custodian that holds the account, and $110 to $160 for the vault that stores the metal. These fees go to the custodian and depository, not the dealer.

Those fees are flat. They don’t grow with your balance, so they weigh most on small accounts: $235 a year is 0.94% of $25,000 but 0.235% of $100,000.

The cost most people miss is the dealer’s markup, the gap between what you pay for a coin and what the metal is worth. It is built into the price, it is usually not on any fee page, and on some coins it is far larger than ten years of storage fees.

Want your own numbers? Use the gold IRA fee calculator.

Fee table by company

Figures are from each company’s published pages and, where noted, its custodian’s published schedule, checked October 29, 2026. “Not published” means we looked and found no figure. An asterisk means sources disagree; see the notes.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Notes

• Goldco: its cost page (last modified February 2025) lists $50 setup, $125 admin, and $100 commingled or $150 segregated storage. Goldco’s own site names Equity Trust as one of its custodians, and Equity Trust’s current schedule is $110 and $160, so we show those. An older Goldco FAQ says “around $80” for admin; Goldco’s newer page and Equity Trust both say $125. With a different custodian, fees will differ.
• Noble Gold: we use the newer support FAQ (September 2026): $80 setup and $150 segregated storage, $275 a year in total. The older Gold IRA page (July 2026) says $50 setup plus $30 wire, and $160 storage.
• Patriot Gold: “no set up fees” appears in the Texas Depository section, so it may cover the depository only.
• Birch Gold: Birch’s prices page (updated September 30, 2026) gives these as an example for Equity Trust and Delaware Depository and says they are “not Birch Gold prices or fees”. Birch also works with GoldStar Trust, which has its own fees.

The standard custodian schedule most dealers use

Augusta, American Hartford Gold, Lear and Priority name Equity Trust Company as their custodian; Goldco and Birch name it as one of theirs, and Noble uses Equity Institutional, part of Equity Trust. That is why so many of the numbers above match. These are the Equity Trust precious metals fees as published by Equity Trust and quoted by the dealers that use it:

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Watch the bottom of that list. Choosing e-statements saves $60 a year. Closing the account costs $250, which matters if you ever move to a cheaper custodian.

What you’ll actually pay: worked examples

Because the fees are flat, the dollar cost is the same at $25,000 and $100,000. What changes is the share of your money it eats. These examples use each company’s published standard fees, assume the fees don’t change for ten years, and leave out waivers and markups.

Year one and ten-year fees

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How we got these numbers: year one is setup plus admin plus storage. Each later year is admin plus storage. Ten years is the setup fee plus ten years of admin and storage.

Two companies publish their own totals, and they differ from ours. Goldco’s page says about $225 a year, or $275 to $325 in the first year, based on the older storage rates. Lear says $315 or $365 in the first year, which includes about $80 more than its itemized fees; Lear does not break that down.

We left out American Hartford Gold and Patriot because they don’t publish enough figures to add up.

The same fees as a share of your account

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*Augusta’s minimum is $50,000, so the $25,000 column doesn’t apply to Augusta.

Put simply: on a $25,000 account, the metal has to gain roughly 10% to 12% in value over ten years just to cover the account fees, before any markup. On $100,000, it is under 3%.

Flat fees vs. percentage fees

Every company we checked that publishes fees charges a flat dollar amount, not a percentage of your balance. Goldco puts it this way: the fee is the same “whether you have $30,000 or $3 million”. Noble says the same.

Flat fees weigh less on larger accounts and more on small ones.

If you are thinking of putting in less than $25,000, run the numbers in our calculator first. The fees may outweigh the reason you wanted gold.

Commingled vs. segregated storage

Commingled (also called non-segregated) storage keeps your metal with other customers’ metal of the same type. You own a set amount, but you may not get back the exact coins you bought.

Segregated storage keeps your coins and bars apart, labeled as yours. You get back the same items.

Segregated storage costs about $50 a year more at the companies that publish both: $160 vs. $110 at Equity Trust, the rates that apply at Priority, Lear and American Hartford Gold and, with Equity Trust as custodian, Goldco. Over ten years that is $500.

Is it worth it? For plain bullion coins, the metal is the same either way, so many people pick commingled. For coins with collector value, segregated storage means you get back the exact coins. Noble Gold only offers segregated storage.

Markups, spreads and buyback prices

This is where the real money is made.

When you buy, the dealer sells the metal to you above the market price. When you sell, the dealer buys it back below the market price. The gap is the spread. You lose it the moment you buy.

Only American Hartford Gold publishes its ranges, in its Shipping and Transaction Agreement:

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The agreement defines the spread as the difference between the retail price you’re quoted and the price American Hartford Gold pays its wholesaler. It doesn’t say what the percentage is measured against. As a rough guide on a $50,000 purchase, if the percentage is a share of the price you pay, a 1% spread is $500, a 19.99% spread is about $10,000 and a 59.99% spread is about $30,000. If it’s a markup on the dealer’s cost, the dollar amounts are lower (about $8,300 at 19.99% and $18,700 at 59.99%), but still large. These are the bounds of the published range, not the price you would get.

The others don’t publish percentages:

• Augusta says its margin is built into the metal price and that it reviews the spread on each order.
• Priority Gold discloses the spread in its transaction agreement before you buy, but not as a public percentage.
• Lear Capital doesn’t publish one. The New York Attorney General alleged in 2022 that Lear had charged undisclosed commissions and markups of up to 33%; Lear paid $6 million under a consent order.

Buyback. When you sell, you usually get the dealer’s bid price. Goldco advertises its buyback “at the highest price” with no liquidation fee but doesn’t state conditions on its About page. Augusta says there’s no separate liquidation fee when it buys back, though Equity Trust charges a $30 processing fee. American Hartford Gold advertises zero liquidation fees, but its agreement says applicable law prevents it from guaranteeing it will buy back. Priority lists three ways to sell, including consignment.

Other fees to ask about

• Wire fees: $30 at Equity Trust and Noble.
• In-kind distribution: $75 at Noble, if you take coins out of the IRA instead of cash.
• Account closure: $250 at Equity Trust and Noble.
• Paper statements: $60 a year at Equity Trust.
• Card payments: American Hartford Gold charges 3% on card payments.
• Shipping: American Hartford Gold says shipping to the depository is free and insured. Priority offers free insured shipping to qualifying new clients.

Free silver and fee waivers: read the terms

Several companies offer bonus metal or pay your fees for a time:

• Goldco: up to 5% back in free silver on $50,000 to $99,999 of its premium coins, 10% on $100,000 or more. Premium coins only.
• American Hartford Gold: “up to $15,000 in free silver”; terms not on its homepage.
• Birch Gold: up to $10,000 in free metals on qualified purchases; first year’s fees covered over $50,000.
• Priority Gold: up to $15,000 in free silver for new IRA clients; one year of free storage per $50,000 invested, up to five years.
• Lear Capital: fees waived for one to three years depending on purchase size; up to $15,000 in bonus coins, with the $100 promo-coin offer listed as ending November 12, 2026.
• Augusta: says it offers no free silver or bonus metal, but may pay up to ten years of fees on qualifying accounts.
• Patriot Gold: “No Fees for Life” on qualifying IRAs.

Free metal is never free. It comes out of the markup. Ask what the markup is on the coins that qualify for the bonus, compared with plain bullion.

How to keep your gold IRA fees down

1. Buy bullion, not collector coins. It has the smallest markup in every range we’ve seen.
2. Ask for the markup in writing, as a percentage over the spot price, for the exact product.
3. Pick commingled storage for bullion if you don’t need your exact coins back.
4. Choose e-statements to avoid a $60 yearly paper fee at Equity Trust.
5. Know the fee share for your balance. Flat fees are a bigger share of a small account. Gold funds held in a regular brokerage IRA are a different product with different costs and risks; they aren’t covered here.
6. Use waivers if they are written down. Get the qualifying amount and the years covered in the paperwork.
7. Don’t trade often. Every buy and sell pays the spread again.