Gold IRA Fees Compared: What the Top Companies Charge

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. Fee figures below come from each company’s published disclosures and the 2026 third-party reviews cited inline, verified July 2026; they can change, and waiver terms vary by account size. Confirm every number on your own call, in writing, before funding an account.

Here is every published fee schedule from the major gold IRA companies, without the wind-up: $175 to $235 a year, all in, across the big four. Augusta Precious Metals charges about $235 ($50 setup, $125 custodian, $110 storage) since the August 2026 storage increase; Goldco still runs about $225 ($50 setup, $125 custodian, $100 storage). Birch Gold runs about $235 plus a $30 wire fee. American Hartford Gold charges no setup fee and $175 a year on accounts under $100,000. Roughly fifty dollars separates the cheapest published schedule from the most expensive.

If that were the whole cost of owning gold in an IRA, this would be a very short page. It is not the whole cost. The largest expense of physical gold ownership at any dealer never appears on a fee schedule. So this page does both jobs: every published schedule line by line, and the honest arithmetic around what the schedules leave out.

The fee comparison table

The direct answer, sourced: the figures below come from each company’s published schedule or the 2026 reviews we verified for our best gold IRA companies comparison. Custodian and storage fees move year to year, so verify the current schedule before signing anything.

A fifth name worth a sentence: Noble Gold Investments, often cited for segregated storage (per Yahoo Finance 2026), publishes no fee schedule on its site as of August 2026; every number is quoted by phone. That is not disqualifying, but it means Noble cannot appear in a table built from published figures, which is itself useful information about how the company prefers to sell.

What each fee line actually pays for

Three parties touch a gold IRA, and each fee line goes to a different one. The setup and annual admin fees go to the custodian, a separate company (Equity Trust, in Augusta’s and American Hartford’s case) that administers the IRA under IRC §408, which requires IRA assets to be held by a qualified trustee. The storage fee goes to the depository; the Delaware Depository, used by Augusta and Goldco, carries $1 billion in all-risk insurance through Lloyd’s of London underwriters per its published terms. The dealer you actually talk to earns from neither line.

That last sentence is the key to this entire category. The dealer earns from the metal it sells you, which is why the next section matters more than any table on this page.

The fee that is not on any schedule: the spread

Every physical-metals dealer earns most of its revenue from the spread, the difference between what you pay per coin and what that coin is worth at market. Buy a coin at 8 percent over spot price and the account is down 8 percent before the vault door closes. No annual fee compounds like that.

None of the four majors publishes its premiums. They are quoted on the phone, coin by coin, at Augusta, Goldco, Birch, and American Hartford alike. That is common practice in this industry and it is also the single biggest gap in any fee discussion, including this one. The published $175 to $235 is knowable in advance. The spread is knowable only if you ask, so ask precisely, on the order call, before committing:

1. “What is the premium over spot on this exact coin, today?”
2. “What would your buyback bid be on this same coin, today?”

The distance between those two answers is your true round-trip cost. Standard bullion coins carry the narrowest spreads; “premium,” “exclusive,” or “semi-numismatic” coins carry the widest, a distinction regulators have repeatedly flagged in enforcement actions across this industry, including the CFTC’s $30 million Fisher Capital case. Buyback structure softens the exit side: Augusta charges no commission on repurchases and Goldco markets a highest-buyback guarantee (both per Money 2026); neither eliminates the entry premium.

Fee math at different balances

The direct answer: flat fees mean the percentage cost depends entirely on your balance, which is why each company’s minimum matters as much as its schedule. Using a $225 ongoing total:

This table explains the minimums better than any marketing copy. Below about $25,000, a flat $225 starts to behave like an expensive expense ratio, and the arithmetic favors either a low-minimum dealer, a gold fund inside your existing IRA, or Fidelity’s percentage-fee metals desk if you already bank there. At $50,000 and above, flat fees become cheap relative to percentage-based alternatives, and they get cheaper every year the balance grows. Augusta’s $50,000 floor is not gatekeeping for its own sake; it is the point where a flat-fee structure clearly favors the account holder.

Fees over a 15-year horizon

Projected carrying cost on a hypothetical $100,000 rollover, using the published figures cited above (the same projection our company comparison runs):

The spread across the four is roughly $700 to $900 over fifteen years: real money, but smaller than the typical difference in bullion premium between two dealers on the same coin. Which is the quiet conclusion of this whole page: published fees do not differentiate gold IRA companies. Minimums decide who will take your account, spreads decide what the metal actually costs you, and buyback terms decide what you get back out. A dealer’s willingness to disclose fees before a transaction is a useful character test, and all four names in the table pass it.

The waivers, read before you lean on them

The direct answer: three of the four majors advertise fee waivers, and every one of them has conditions you learn on the phone, so treat waivers as negotiation items rather than givens, and get the terms in writing.

Augusta advertises up to ten years of account fees waived for qualifying account sizes, the strongest fee concession we have seen from any major dealer; taken at face value it turns $2,250 of decade-long carrying cost into zero. The qualifying thresholds are not published online. Pin down three things on the call: which balance qualifies, which fee lines the waiver covers, and what happens if your balance later drops below the threshold. Our full Augusta review covers the rest of the package.

Birch Gold waives first-year fees on transfers or rollovers of $50,000 or more, and waives first-year fees for active-duty and former US military service members regardless of purchase amount (per Money 2026), worth roughly $235 to $295 in year one.

American Hartford Gold runs promotions that frequently waive storage for two to three years on new accounts (per Money 2026), on top of the lowest published base schedule in the group.

A waiver you cannot document is a waiver you do not have. That rule holds at all four companies.

Affiliate disclosure: if you use a link on this page to request information from a company we review, this site may earn a commission at no cost to you. Every fee figure above is drawn from published schedules or the cited 2026 reviews regardless.

Frequently asked questions

What are typical gold IRA fees?

At the four majors: $0 to $50 setup, $75 to $125 annual custodian fee, and $100 to $110 annual storage, totaling roughly $175 to $235 a year per the published 2026 schedules cited above. American Hartford Gold has the lowest published total. Birch Gold and Augusta share the highest at $235, Birch plus a $30 wire fee.

Which company has the lowest fees?

American Hartford Gold on paper: $0 setup and about $175 a year under $100,000. But the whole published range spans only about $50 a year. The costs that actually separate dealers, coin premiums and buyback bids, are quoted by phone at every one of them, so the “cheapest” schedule settles very little.

What percentage of my account do the fees represent?

At $225 a year: roughly 0.90% on a $25,000 account, 0.45% at $50,000, 0.23% at $100,000, and 0.09% at $250,000. Flat fees fall as a percentage while the balance grows, which is the arithmetic behind the higher minimums at Augusta and Goldco.

What is the dealer spread, and why is it not in the fee schedule?

The spread is the gap between a coin’s price and its market value. It is the real cost of physical ownership at every dealer, and typically far larger over time than account fees. None of the majors publishes premiums. Ask for the premium over spot and the same-day buyback bid on the exact coin; the difference is your round-trip cost.

Do gold IRA companies waive fees?

Augusta advertises up to ten years for qualifying account sizes, Birch waives year one at $50,000-plus and for military service members, and American Hartford frequently waives storage for two to three years. Every waiver’s thresholds live on the phone, not the website. Confirm the terms in writing before funding.

Is my gold insured while stored?

Yes. IRS-approved depositories carry vault insurance; the Delaware Depository, used by Augusta and Goldco, holds $1 billion in all-risk coverage through Lloyd’s of London underwriters per its published terms, covering theft, loss, and physical damage. Market-price movements are not insured, at any depository. For the Augusta-specific fee stack in detail, see our full Augusta review; for the Goldco head-to-head, the Augusta vs Goldco breakdown settles it by account size.