Gold IRA Fees: What an Account Costs

How much are gold IRA fees?

About $50 to open and $235 to $285 each year covers the published account fees at most companies here. The custodian receives about $125 yearly. Vault storage adds $110 to $160. The dealer gets none of those charges.

$235 is 0.94% of a $25,000 account, compared with 0.235% of $100,000. The dealer’s markup comes on top. It sits inside the metal price and can exceed ten years of storage charges. The examples below explain the account costs. Try your own figures to include a quoted spread.

What each fee pays for

A gold IRA has account charges as well as the price of the metal. Separate them when reading a quote. A low account fee tells you little about the markup inside the purchase price.

Opening and maintaining the IRA

$50 is Equity Trust’s account setup charge. Its $125 annual maintenance charge pays for the account, while storage is a separate charge. Setup is a one-time cost. Maintenance continues each year you keep the account.

Several dealers use the same custodian, which explains the repeated figures in the company summary. Augusta, American Hartford Gold, Lear and Priority name Equity Trust Company. Goldco and Birch list it among their custodians. Noble uses Equity Institutional, part of Equity Trust. Confirm which custodian your own quote uses before relying on these examples.

Paying the vault

$110 a year buys non-segregated storage under Equity Trust’s published precious metals schedule. Its segregated option is $160. That charge pays for storing the metal rather than maintaining the IRA paperwork.

A dealer’s promotion may cover these bills for a while. The underlying schedule still matters once the offer ends. Ask which fees are covered and when you start paying them yourself.

What one year and ten years cost

$25,000 and $100,000 accounts pay the same dollar fees under a flat schedule. The smaller account gives up a larger share of its balance. These examples hold the published fees constant for ten years. They exclude promotional waivers and the dealer’s markup, so they show account costs rather than the full purchase cost.

Add setup once and annual charges each year

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Year one combines setup with the first admin and storage bills. Later years contain only admin and storage. For ten years, add setup once and the recurring charges ten times. The $285 first-year example therefore becomes $2,400 over ten years.

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.

Compare $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000

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

The $285 first-year charge is the same dollar amount at all three balances under this flat schedule. After setup, the $235 recurring bill is also unchanged. A larger opening amount reduces the percentage burden without reducing the bill itself.

On $25,000, those ten-year account fees consume roughly 10% to 12% of the amount put in. On $100,000, the share stays below 3%. These percentages leave out the markup and do not estimate future gold prices.

How account size changes the fee burden

The published schedules we checked use flat dollar charges. A percentage fee would vary with the balance used to calculate it. These schedules keep the dollar charge fixed instead. Goldco says its fee stays the same from $30,000 to $3 million. Noble also describes flat charges.

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.

What the storage choice changes

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.

Plain bullion contains the same metal under either arrangement, so many buyers choose commingled storage. Segregated storage preserves the exact coins, which can matter for coins with collector value. Noble Gold offers only segregated storage.

Why the metal price can matter more than account fees

$235 a year does not tell you what the purchase costs. The dealer earns its margin through the metal price. Ask about that price before treating a low yearly fee as a cheap overall offer.

The dealer’s selling price is above the market price, while its buyback price is below it. That gap creates a cost when you buy and sell. You start with that cost even if the market price has not moved.

American Hartford Gold is the only company here with published percentage ranges. Its Shipping and Transaction Agreement separates the product categories:

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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.

Costs that may appear later

• Wire fees: $30 at Equity Trust (outgoing) and Noble.
• Liquidation: $30 at Equity Trust.
• Late payments: $50 at Equity Trust.
• 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.

Choose e-statements to avoid the paper charge. Include termination costs if you plan to move to a cheaper custodian.

How promotional offers affect the bill

A temporary waiver changes when you pay account charges. Bonus metal changes the purchase offer. Check the underlying fees and markup with either offer. The published offers include:

• 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.

The markup funds bonus metal. Compare the quoted markup on qualifying coins with the price for plain bullion before valuing a promotion.

How to keep the total cost down

1. Compare plain bullion first. It has the smallest markup in every published 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.

A summary of the eight companies

Use this table to check the broad differences after reviewing the examples. It summarizes published charges and offers checked October 29, 2026. The linked company records provide more context. “Not published” means we found no figure. Asterisks flag conflicting sources explained below.

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Notes

The $235 total combines $125 admin and $110 storage. The $285 total uses $125 admin and $160 storage. Birch’s example uses $125 admin and $110 storage. Noble’s $275 total combines $125 admin and $150 storage. Augusta lists $125 admin and $110 storage without specifying the storage type; no segregated figure is published.

• 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. No markup percentage is published.
• 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. Birch does not publish a markup percentage.