Silver Price Per Ounce Today
Byline: Reviewed by the Silver Value Chart Editorial Team · Updated September 19, 2026
$66.38 per troy ounce
Silver spot $66.38/oz · updated
Quick answer
Silver is $66.38 per troy ounce as of September 19, 2026. That is the spot price — the price for immediate delivery of one troy ounce of .999 fine silver in wholesale quantities. It is not what you would pay a dealer for a coin, and not what a buyer would hand you for one. Both of those numbers sit on either side of it.
| Unit | Equivalent | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Troy ounce | 31.1034768 g | $66.38 |
| Gram | 1 g | $2.13 |
| Kilogram | 1,000 g | $2,134 |
| Pound (avoirdupois) | 453.59 g · 14.5833 oz t | $968.04 |
| Pound (troy) | 373.24 g · 12 oz t | $796.56 |
| Tola | 11.6638 g | $24.89 |
| Sterling (925), per gram | 1 g × 0.925 | $1.97 |
A troy ounce is not the ounce in your kitchen
This trips up more people than any other part of pricing silver, and it is worth getting straight before you do any math.
The ounce used for precious metals is the troy ounce, which is 31.1034768 grams. The ounce used for food, mail and body weight is the avoirdupois ounce, which is about 28.35 grams. A troy ounce is roughly 10% heavier.
So when a scale in a kitchen says "1 oz of silver," it is reporting about 0.911 troy ounces, and valuing it at the full spot price overstates it by nearly a tenth. At $66.38 per troy ounce, that is a real difference on a single coin and a significant one across a collection.
The troy system is a survivor from the medieval Troyes fairs in France, and it stayed in use for precious metals long after everyday commerce moved on. There is no deeper logic to it. It persists because contracts, vaults and centuries of records are denominated in it, and changing units would invalidate all of them.
One more wrinkle, because it catches people who think they have already understood the first one: the troy system also has its own pound, and a troy pound is 12 troy ounces, not 16. We cover that on our silver price per pound page, because it produces two different correct answers to a single question.
How the spot price is actually set
Spot silver is not published by a single authority the way a central bank publishes an interest rate. It emerges from trading, and two venues do most of the work.
COMEX futures. The benchmark contract is the CME Group's SI contract, which covers 5,000 troy ounces of silver at a minimum fineness of .999, deliverable through COMEX-approved vaults. Because that contract is deep and trades nearly around the clock, the front-month futures price is what most quote feeds track. The chart on our homepage is built from that contract's daily closes.
The London market. The LBMA administers the daily silver price benchmark and the Good Delivery standard that defines what counts as institutional-grade metal. An LBMA Good Delivery silver bar is nominally 1,000 troy ounces at a minimum fineness of 999. These are the bars that sit in vaults behind most large silver positions, and they are far too large for a retail buyer to take home.
Spot, then, is best understood as the wholesale price for metal that meets those standards, in those quantities. Every retail price you will ever see is derived from it by adding or subtracting something.
What an ounce of silver actually costs to buy
A one-ounce silver coin does not cost spot. It costs spot plus a premium — the margin that covers refining the metal, striking the coin, distributing it, and the dealer's own profit.
Premiums vary by product, and the pattern is consistent:
- Generic one-ounce rounds carry the lowest premium. They are privately minted and carry no legal-tender status, so you are paying for metal and very little else.
- Government-minted coins — American Silver Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs — carry a higher premium. You are paying for the mint's guarantee of weight and purity, and for the liquidity that recognition brings when you sell.
- Small bars sit between the two.
- Fractional pieces under one ounce carry the worst premium per ounce of metal. Minting a tenth-ounce piece costs nearly as much as minting a full ounce.
Premiums also move with demand. When retail buying surges, premiums widen even if spot does not move at all — which is why "silver is cheap right now" and "silver coins are cheap right now" are not the same statement.
What an ounce of silver actually sells for
Going the other direction, you receive less than spot. The gap between what a dealer pays and what a dealer charges is the spread, and it is how the dealer stays in business.
For recognized one-ounce bullion coins, a dealer's buy price is typically close to spot, sometimes slightly above it when demand is strong and supply is tight. For unmarked bars, damaged pieces or anything requiring assay, expect materially less.
The practical rule: spot is a reference, not an offer. If you are selling, call more than one buyer. The spread between the best and worst offer on the same material is routinely wider than a month of price movement.
Worked examples at today's price
At $66.38 per troy ounce:
- One American Silver Eagle contains one troy ounce of .999 silver, so its melt value is $66.38. You would pay several dollars more than that to buy one. See American Silver Eagle value.
- A 10 oz bar holds 10 troy ounces, a melt value of $663.80.
- A 100 oz bar holds 100 troy ounces, a melt value of $6,638.00. This is a common size for larger holdings and usually carries a lower premium per ounce than coins.
- A monster box of 500 Silver Eagles holds 500 troy ounces, $33,190.00 of metal.
Selling or buying?
If you are selling, the figures above are a ceiling, not an offer. Refiners and major buyers typically pay 90–95% of melt; local coin shops 70–90%; pawn shops less again. Knowing the melt value is what stops you accepting the low end of that range by accident.
If you are buying, you will pay above spot, and the premium matters as much as the metal price. See what a realistic premium over spot looks like →
Related pages
Per gram · Per kilo · Per pound · Sterling silver · Purity chart · Melt value calculator
FAQ
Is the silver price per ounce the same everywhere? Close, but not identical. Quotes differ by a few cents depending on the feed, the timestamp, and whether the source is showing bid, ask or mid. Differences of more than a percent usually mean you are comparing spot against a retail price.
Why does the price change at the weekend? It mostly does not. Futures markets close for part of the weekend, so quotes go stale until trading reopens. A price stamped Friday evening is still Friday's price on Sunday afternoon.
Is silver priced in ounces everywhere in the world? No. The troy ounce is the international wholesale convention, but retail markets in South Asia commonly quote per tola (11.6638 g), and much of Europe quotes per kilogram. The metal is the same; only the unit differs.
What fineness does the spot price assume? Wholesale silver at .999 or better. Anything less pure is worth proportionally less — see our purity chart.
Data sources: Spot price via api.gold-api.com · COMEX futures (SI=F) via Yahoo Finance. Prices are for informational purposes only and may be delayed. Figures on this page were generated . Silver is quoted in US dollars per troy ounce.