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, re-checked November 2, 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 4.1/5: the most transparent pricing in this entire category, inside a platform most readers already use, limited by a narrow catalog, percentage storage that grows with your balance, no service layer, and Fidelity’s own warning that direct metal ownership is not for most investors.

Does Fidelity have a gold IRA?

Yes, in practice, though Fidelity does not sell a product called a “gold IRA.” A standard Fidelity IRA can buy physical gold, silver, and platinum through Fidelity’s metals order desk, and the metal is vaulted at FideliTrade. Fidelity’s page sets the minimum purchase at $1,000 inside an IRA and $2,500 in a regular brokerage account. You pay a published buy fee of 0.99% to 2.90% by order size, plus storage of 0.125% of the metal’s value each quarter. You place orders by phone, and there is no separate custodian to open and no dealer sales call.

What Fidelity actually offers

Fidelity brokerage and IRA customers can buy physical precious metals through an order desk, with the metal handled and vaulted by FideliTrade, an independent Delaware custody firm. Brokerage accounts can trade gold, silver, platinum, and palladium; IRAs are limited to the list below. The structure in brief, all from Fidelity’s published terms:

Fidelity ties that list to federal law: IRA metal purchases are restricted under IRC §408(m) and IRS Publication 590-A, and any metal outside the permitted list counts as a collectible, which the IRS treats as a taxable distribution. Note what the eligible list is: current-issue American bullion coins and standard bars, with no “exclusive,” no “semi-numismatic,” and 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. From Fidelity’s fee table:

Run the round trip and you get the comparison that matters. A $60,000 purchase costs 1.98% in and 1.00% out per Fidelity’s schedule, 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 a price most dealers’ bullion desks would struggle to match, and their premium-coin desks do not attempt it.

The cost that keeps running is storage. Fidelity bills 0.125% of the metal’s market value every quarter, about 0.50% a year, so $60,000 of gold costs roughly $300 a year to hold and $100,000 costs roughly $500. The specialist dealers’ custodians charge a flat $175 to $235 a year all in, and that flat total includes setup and custodian fees as well as storage. Fidelity’s storage alone passes that flat total at about $45,000. Below that balance Fidelity is cheaper to hold; above it the flat-fee model wins on holding cost while Fidelity still wins on the trade itself.

Small orders pay the most: 2.90% on a $5,000 buy is $145, and the $44 transaction minimum bites hardest on a $1,000 IRA purchase, where it works out to 4.4%. The two fee structures cross over depending on balance, holding period, and how often you trade. Neither is a trick; they are 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 to buy 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, and platinum inside existing Fidelity IRAs, purchased through its order desk with custody at FideliTrade, from a $1,000 minimum purchase in an IRA. It is a platform capability, not a standalone product with metals specialists.

What are Fidelity’s precious metals 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+), with a $44 minimum per trade. Storage is 0.125% of value per quarter, about 0.50% a year. The schedule is on Fidelity’s site, with no phone-only pricing.

Which metals can a Fidelity IRA actually hold?

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 Fidelity better than a gold IRA company like 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, though its percentage storage costs more than flat-fee custody above about $45,000. Below $25,000, an ETF inside your existing IRA usually beats everyone.

Is gold held at Fidelity 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.