Gold IRA fee calculator

Reviewed by Thomas Rockford, financial analyst, on September 26, 2026

A gold IRA has more costs than most retirement accounts: the dealer’s markup when you buy, a setup fee, yearly custodian and storage fees, and a lower price when you sell. Put in the figures from your quotes to see what the account would cost over the years you hold it, and how much gold would have to rise to cover those costs.

How the calculator works

• Premium: the part of your purchase price above the metal’s spot value. At a 5% premium, $50,000 buys about $47,619 of gold at the spot price, so about $2,381 goes to the markup.
• Custodian and storage fees: added up for each year you hold the account, and assumed to be paid separately rather than from the metal. If storage is charged as a percentage, the calculator applies it to the metal’s value at the start of each year.
• Selling below spot: what you give up when a dealer buys the metal back for less than its spot value.
• Break-even: how much the price of gold would have to rise over the whole period for the sale at the end to cover what you spent on metal plus the fees you paid separately, before taxes. It’s a nominal figure, so it leaves out inflation and what the money used for fees could have earned elsewhere.
• ETF comparison: a fund’s yearly expense ratio applied to the same amount. It leaves out brokerage costs, which are usually small.

What it leaves out

The calculator is for comparing costs. It doesn’t include:

• Taxes. Withdrawals from a traditional IRA are taxed as income, and withdrawals before age 59½ usually carry a 10% additional tax. Our guide to taking money or metal out of a gold IRA explains the rules.
• Fee tiers and extra charges. Many custodians raise the annual fee as an account grows, and charge for selling, shipping metal to you or closing the account.
• Fees paid from the account. If the custodian sells metal to pay its fees, you end up with less gold. Many custodians let you pay by card or bank transfer instead.

Which cost is biggest

That depends on the premium, the size of the account and how long you hold it. A high premium can outweigh everything else. Proof coins and “limited edition” coins often carry much larger premiums than common bullion coins, and at a 30% premium, the markup on $50,000 of coins is about $11,500, more than 30 years of the annual fees in our gold IRA fee comparison. On common bullion held for many years, though, custodian and storage fees can cost more than the premium, especially in a small account. Ask for the premium on each product in writing before you buy, and compare it with what other dealers charge.

Frequently asked questions