Fidelity Precious Metals IRA Review: The Un-Dealer Option
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. Figures below come from Fidelity’s published precious metals page as of July 2026 and can change. Verify at the linked source and consult a licensed professional before moving retirement money.
Search reviews of Fidelity’s precious metals IRA and you will mostly find gold IRA affiliate sites ranking it last, often below dealers with a fraction of its documentation. There is a reason for that, and it is not analysis: Fidelity runs no affiliate program for this, so a review industry funded by referral commissions has no incentive to rank it fairly. This site earns those commissions too, so read the disclosure below and hold us to the sources. Rated 4.0/5: the most transparent pricing in this entire category, inside a platform most readers already use, limited by a narrow catalog, no service layer, and Fidelity’s own warning that direct metal ownership is not for most investors.
The facts, from Fidelity’s own page, then the honest comparison.
What Fidelity actually offers
Fidelity brokerage and IRA customers can buy physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium through an order desk, with the metal handled and vaulted by FideliTrade, an independent Delaware custody firm. The structure in brief:
| Term | Fidelity’s published detail |
|---|---|
| Minimum initial investment | $2,500 |
| Order hours | 8:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. ET, by phone |
| IRA-eligible metals | Gold American Eagle (1, ½, ¼, 1/10 oz) · Gold American Buffalo (1 oz) · Silver American Eagle (1 oz) · Platinum American Eagle (1 oz) · bullion-quality bars |
| Custody | FideliTrade, separate account under the Fidelity name |
| Vault insurance | $1B Lloyd’s of London all-risk + $300M contingent |
| SIPC coverage | Not applicable to the metals |
Note what the eligible list is: current-issue American bullion coins and standard bars — no “exclusive,” no “semi-numismatic,” no collector premiums. The narrow shelf that affiliate reviews list as a weakness is the same property that makes regulator-documented markup schemes structurally impossible here. Nobody at an order desk earning a published percentage is steering you into a coin at double melt value.
The fee schedule: published, percentage-based, and honest about scale
Fidelity publishes the whole schedule, the only participant in this category besides the flat-fee specialist dealers to publish anything, and the only one anywhere to publish the transaction cost, which is the number dealers keep on the phone:
| Order size | Fee | |
|---|---|---|
| Buying | Under $10,000 | 2.90% |
| $10,000–$49,999 | 2.50% | |
| $50,000–$99,999 | 1.98% | |
| $100,000+ | 0.99% | |
| Selling | Under $50,000 | 2.00% |
| $50,000–$249,999 | 1.00% | |
| $250,000+ | 0.75% |
Run the round trip and you get the comparison that matters. A $60,000 purchase costs 1.98% in and 1.00% out, under 3% for the full cycle, known in advance, in writing, before you call. At a specialist dealer, the equivalent number is the spread on the specific coins you are quoted by phone, which we push readers to extract in writing at every dealer precisely because it is not published, and which routinely exceeds that figure on premium coins. At $100,000+, Fidelity’s 0.99% entry is, bluntly, a price most dealers’ bullion desks would struggle to match and their premium-coin desks do not attempt.
What the percentage structure penalizes is small orders: 2.90% on a $5,000 buy is real money, and there are no flat fees to amortize away. The flat-$225-a-year model inverts this (expensive for small accounts as a percentage, cheap for large ones), so the two structures cross over depending on balance and trading frequency. Neither is a trick; they are just different machines.
What you give up: the service layer
The specialist dealers exist because rollovers frighten people, and their genuine product is guidance: a named agent, education sessions, paperwork shepherding across custodian and depository, and the written buyback commitments that soften the exit. Fidelity’s metals desk offers none of that. It is an order line, open 8 to 3 Eastern, inside a platform that will not walk a nervous first-timer through a 401(k) rollover into coins, and whose own page states plainly that the metals market is extremely volatile and that direct physical ownership “may not be appropriate for most investors.” Credit where due: that sentence, on a sales page, is more risk honesty than this industry’s marketing typically permits.
So the fit sorts cleanly. Already at Fidelity, comfortable placing an order, wanting a metal allocation inside the IRA you have: this is the cheapest documented path in the category, and a gold ETF in the same account is the even simpler alternative below about $10,000. Rolling over a lifetime 401(k) and wanting a human to own the process end to end: that service is real, it costs the spread, and our four-company comparison maps who does it best by balance.
Affiliate disclosure: this site earns commissions from some companies we review; Fidelity is not one of them, which is part of why we wrote this page. If you request information from a reviewed dealer through our links, we may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Frequently asked questions
Does Fidelity offer a precious metals IRA?
Yes: physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium inside existing Fidelity IRAs, purchased through its order desk with custody at FideliTrade, from a $2,500 minimum. It is a platform capability, not a standalone product with metals specialists.
What are the fees?
Published percentages by order size: buys from 2.90% (under $10,000) down to 0.99% ($100,000+); sells from 2.00% down to 0.75% ($250,000+). No phone-only pricing; the schedule is on Fidelity’s site.
Which metals qualify in a Fidelity IRA?
Gold American Eagles in all four sizes, the 1 oz Gold Buffalo, 1 oz Silver Eagle, 1 oz Platinum Eagle, and bullion-quality bars, per Fidelity’s published list. Standard bullion only, with no premium or collectible coins, which is a feature.
Is it better than Augusta or Goldco?
Different products: Fidelity sells cheap, transparent execution inside an account you already have; the specialists sell a guided rollover with a human attached. At $100,000+ Fidelity’s 0.99% buy fee is the price to beat; below $25,000, an ETF inside your existing IRA usually beats everyone.
Is the gold insured?
FideliTrade’s vaults carry $1 billion in Lloyd’s of London all-risk coverage plus $300 million contingent, with Fidelity customers’ holdings in a separate account. SIPC does not cover physical metals anywhere: not at Fidelity, not at any dealer.
