Gold IRA fees

Gold IRA fees come in five kinds that appear on a schedule and one that never does. Across the 12 custodians in our database the five run to an annual load of $125 to $495, and they are predictable and straightforward to compare, while the sixth is usually larger than all of them combined and gets settled in a phone call.

The five charges that appear on a schedule

• Account setup. One off, charged by the custodian when the account opens.
• Annual administration. Charged by the custodian for filing and recordkeeping, sometimes scaling with the balance.
• Storage. Charged by the depository, either commingled or segregated, with segregated costing more because your specific coins are kept apart.
• Wire and transaction fees. Charged per movement of money or metal.
• Termination. Charged when the account closes or the metal is shipped out of the depository.

The charge that is not called a fee

The dealer's markup over the spot price is the cost of the metal above what the metal is worth. It is paid once on the way in and again as a spread on the way out, and it appears on no fee schedule. The CFTC's advisory on physical metals says some fraudulent dealers have charged spreads of more than 300 percent while other dealers may charge less than 20 percent, and it tells buyers to get every fee, commission and the agreed price in writing before signing. On a $50,000 purchase, each percentage point of markup is $500.

The markup usually outweighs every fee comparison on this page, which is the reason the premium calculator exists and the reason a sales call that moves quickly to which coins you would like is worth slowing down.

What the ranges actually are

Across the 12 custodians in our database, checked on April 17, 2026.

On the dealer side, 12 of the 12 companies we track publish a setup fee at all, and the rest give the figure on a call. A rollover into a new account usually triggers the setup charge and the first year of administration together, so the opening cost is higher than the annual one. See the company comparison for which companies publish what.

Why the account size changes what a fee weighs

Most of these charges are flat, so the same schedule weighs very differently depending on the balance it sits against. An annual load of $300 is 0.12% on $250,000 and 1.2% on $25,000, and at the smaller size it is competing with the expense ratio of a gold ETF that does not charge setup, storage or a markup at all.

The fee calculator totals a real schedule against a real transfer amount, which is the only comparison that answers the question you are actually asking.