goldprice.devA jewellery business needs four things from a gold price API: a price per gram for each karat, a price that is fresh enough for the counter, terms that allow showing it to customers, and a bill it can predict. goldprice.dev returns eight karat grades per gram with no key and adds dealer quotes from $19 a month. GoldAPI.io returns melt prices for 12 karat grades in every response and covers platinum and palladium. We make goldprice.dev. Every rival fact below comes from that service's own pages, checked on 2 November 2026.
- Best for karat prices without a key: goldprice.dev.
GET /v1/caratreturns 24K to 10K per gram, and the Free plan allows commercial use with a visible link. - Best for 12 karat grades plus platinum and palladium: GoldAPI.io, from $99 a month, with unlimited REST requests on Pro.
- Cheapest paid plan with a carat endpoint: MetalpriceAPI at $7 a month billed monthly, updating every 30 minutes.
- Best free live price with no key: Gold-API.com. It has no karat endpoint, so you apply purity yourself.
What a jeweller needs from the API
A shop prices an item by weight, purity and making charge. Four questions decide whether an API fits.
- Karat prices. Does it return a price per gram for 22K, 18K and 14K, or do you multiply the 24K price by purity yourself?
- Update speed. How old can the price on your board be?
- Dealer quotes. Does it show what dealers charge and pay for jewellery or bullion, or only the market price of the metal?
- Terms and cost. Is showing the price in a shop, on a website or in an app allowed on the plan you can afford?
The six services at a glance
| Service | Karat prices | Update speed | Cheapest paid plan | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| goldprice.dev | 8 grades per gram, no key | Live on paid plans, 15 minutes late on Free | $19 a month | 5,000 requests, commercial use with a visible link |
| GoldAPI.io | 12 grades per gram in every response | Pro and Business listed as real-time | $99 a month | 300 requests, quoted in the terms as indicative data |
| MetalpriceAPI | Carat endpoint, 13 grades, paid plans | 30 minutes on the cheapest plan | $7 a month, 1,000 requests | 100 requests, daily updates, non-commercial |
| Metals-API | Carat endpoint, per carat unit, from Bronze | 10 minutes on Bronze | $39.99 a month, 5,000 calls | Limits not published, personal and test use only |
| Gold-API.com | None found | 30 seconds on every plan | $10 a month | Unlimited live prices, commercial use allowed |
| Metals.dev | None; per gram with unit=g | 60 seconds on every plan | $1.79 a month, 2,000 requests | 100 requests |
goldprice.dev: best for karat prices and dealer quotes
GET /v1/carat?currency=USD needs no key and returns eight grades per gram: 24K, 22K, 21K, 20K, 18K, 16K, 14K and 10K. The endpoint takes 35 currencies. The Free plan is 15 minutes late and paid plans are live.
curl "https://api.goldprice.dev/v1/carat?currency=USD"{"currency":"USD","timestamp":"2026-11-02T11:14:02.007449Z","price_gram_24k":"125.38","price_gram_22k":"114.93","price_gram_21k":"109.70","price_gram_20k":"104.48","price_gram_18k":"94.03","price_gram_16k":"83.58","price_gram_14k":"73.14","price_gram_10k":"52.24"}The dealer side starts on Basic. GET /v1/physical/DE, with any country code in the path, returns the latest dealer quotes for one country with the premium over spot in basis points. Coverage depends on what dealers in each country publish. The index lists retail karat prices for the UAE, Egypt and Pakistan, gold bar and coin quotes for Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Britain, and bar and digital-gram prices for Indonesia. Each quote carries its source and fetch time.
Limits. Gold, silver and copper only, with no platinum or palladium and no LBMA series. Free-plan prices are 15 minutes late. Dealer quotes depend on the country.
GoldAPI.io: best for 12 karat grades and platinum
Every price response carries a melt price per gram for 12 grades from 24K down to 8K, plus bid, ask, spread and the session's open, high and low. It covers gold, silver, platinum and palladium, which matters to a shop that sells white gold or platinum rings. A separate endpoint returns LBMA benchmark prices by date.
Pro costs $99 a month with unlimited REST requests, and Business costs $169. Free is 300 requests a month, and there is no plan between Free and Pro. Burst limits apply on every plan at 5 requests per second per key. The terms allow commercial display inside your own application and refuse resale of the API itself. They also say the data is indicative and not an authoritative source for settlement, audit or tax reporting, and that the service has no SLA.
MetalpriceAPI: best low-cost paid plan with a carat endpoint
Essential costs $7 a month billed monthly, or $5 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 requests with 30-minute updates. The carat endpoint is a paid feature and returns 13 grades from 24K to 6K. Paid plans can also ask for prices in grams or kilograms. A board that refreshes every 30 minutes for 10 hours a day uses about 600 requests a month, so Essential covers it.
Faster updates cost more. Basic is $15 for 10-minute updates and Professional is $39 for 60-second updates with 100,000 requests. The free plan is 100 requests a month with daily updates, and the FAQ restricts it to non-commercial use with attribution. A shop that shows prices to customers needs a paid plan.
Metals-API: broad coverage, carat per unit
Bronze costs $39.99 a month for 5,000 calls with 10-minute updates and 60 requests a minute. It includes a carat endpoint, but the documentation says the values on that endpoint are per carat unit, and the FAQ shows the manual division to get grams. The Indian city gold rates (18K, 22K and 24K, in rupees) need Silver at $79.99.
The catalog is the widest of the six at 726 symbols, with platinum, palladium and industrial metals. The terms bar the free plan from commercial or public use, and commercial rights end when the subscription ends. Overage billing is on by default at $0.032435 per extra call, and you can switch it off in account settings.
Gold-API.com: best free live price
GET https://api.gold-api.com/price/XAU needs no key, updates every 30 seconds and has no stated rate limit beyond a ban on multiple requests per second. The terms say commercial use is always permitted, and attribution is optional. It covers gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, Bitcoin and Ethereum in 19 currencies. There is no karat endpoint, so a shop multiplies the gram price by purity.
History and OHLC need an account. The free plan allows 10 history requests an hour, and Premium at $10 a month removes that limit. The prices are spot prices, and the documentation says dealer prices for coins and bars are usually higher.
Metals.dev: cheapest paid entry
Every plan, Free included, updates within 60 seconds. Paid plans run from $1.79 a month for 2,000 requests to $99.99 for 500,000. Per-gram output comes from a unit=g parameter on the latest endpoint, and there is no karat endpoint. The terms let you publish rates for commercial purposes while you keep an active subscription. They do not say whether the free plan counts.
What the bills look like
Take a counter board that refreshes every five minutes through a 10-hour day. That is 120 requests a day and about 3,600 a month. About 3,600 requests a month fit inside goldprice.dev Free (5,000 requests), Metals-API Bronze (5,000 calls), Metals.dev Silver (10,000 requests) and GoldAPI.io Pro (unlimited REST). They do not fit MetalpriceAPI Essential (1,000 requests) or Metals.dev Copper (2,000).
An online store that reprices products should fetch the rate once on its server and cache it. The request count then follows your refresh schedule, and visitor numbers do not change it.
Which to pick
- One counter or a small site. goldprice.dev Free with a visible link to goldprice.dev near the prices, or Gold-API.com if you do not want a key.
- A shop that sells platinum or palladium. GoldAPI.io, because goldprice.dev does not carry those metals.
- A shop that wants dealer prices beside the market price. goldprice.dev $19 plan, where dealers publish them in your country.
- A budget under $10 a month. MetalpriceAPI Essential if 30-minute updates are fine, or Metals.dev Copper at $1.79 if you need 60-second updates and can work in grams.
Sources checked
Checked on 2 Nov 2026 against the pages below. Plans and prices change; open the page to confirm today's figure.