How to Buy Gold in Singapore

8 min read · Updated 16 August 2026

Singapore is one of the easier places in the world to buy physical gold. Investment-grade bullion is exempt from GST, there is no capital gains tax, and dealers are licensed and supervised by the Ministry of Law. What follows is the practical sequence — deciding what to buy, understanding what you actually pay, and checking who you are buying from.

1. Decide between bars and coins

For most buyers whose goal is holding gold as a store of value, bars are the more efficient choice. A bar carries a lower premium over the spot gold price than a coin of the same weight, because coins carry minting costs and, in some cases, collector demand that has nothing to do with the metal.

Coins earn their premium in two situations: when you want government-mint backing and legal-tender status, or when you want small, highly liquid units that are easy to sell piecemeal. If neither matters to you, a bar gives you more gold for the same money.

2. Choose a bar size deliberately

Premium per gram falls as bar size rises. The refining, assay, packaging and handling cost of producing a bar is close to fixed, so spreading it across 100 g costs far less per gram than spreading it across 2 g. The trade-off is divisibility: a 1 kg bar has to be sold whole, while ten 100 g bars can be sold one at a time as you need cash.

A common approach is to hold the bulk of a position in larger bars for cost efficiency, plus a few smaller bars for flexibility.

3. Understand what you pay over spot

The spot price is the global benchmark for one troy ounce of gold, quoted continuously while markets are open. No dealer sells at spot. Your price is the spot value of the metal in the bar plus a premium covering the refiner's production cost, the dealer's cost of holding stock, and the dealer's margin.

What matters is that the premium is visible and consistent. A dealer quoting a single all-in number with no reference to live spot makes it impossible to tell whether the price moved because gold moved or because the margin moved. Every price on this site is calculated as live SGD spot multiplied by the bar's weight, plus a stated premium.

4. Check GST and IPM status

Most investment bars and coins qualify as Investment Precious Metals (IPM), which have been exempt from GST in Singapore since October 2012. To qualify, gold must be at least 99.5% pure, tradeable on the international market, and priced on the metal's spot value. Silver must be at least 99.9% and platinum 99%.

Jewellery, collectibles and numismatic pieces generally do not qualify, and GST applies to them. GST treatment depends on the specific product, so ask before you buy — a dealer should be able to tell you immediately whether an item is IPM-qualifying. Singapore also has no capital gains tax, so qualifying bullion can be bought and sold without GST or CGT.

5. Verify the dealer before you pay

Precious metals dealers in Singapore must register with the Ministry of Law under the regulated dealer regime, which brings anti-money-laundering obligations and customer due diligence requirements. A legitimate dealer publishes its licence number and UEN, and will ask you for identification on qualifying transactions — that is the regime working, not an imposition.

• A published Ministry of Law licence number and business UEN you can check.
• Prices quoted against a live, visible spot reference rather than a flat unexplained number.
• A stated buyback price, so you can see the spread you would face on exit before you buy.
• A physical address you can visit, not a mailbox.
• Willingness to let you inspect and test the metal at handover.

6. Verify the metal itself

Counterfeit bullion exists, and the better fakes are engineered specifically to defeat casual checks. Weight alone catches most of them: a tungsten-cored fake matched to gold's density will still usually read a few tenths of a gram off, because refiners deliberately over-pour to guarantee the stamped minimum. Ultrasound catches the harder cases, since sound travels through tungsten roughly 38% faster than through gold. XRF confirms surface composition.

You do not need to own this equipment — but the dealer should, and should be willing to demonstrate it. Read more about how we test every bar we sell.

7. Decide how you will take and store it

Collecting in person lets you inspect and test the metal before you accept it, and there is no delivery risk. Insured delivery is more convenient and, if the insurance is genuine and covers the full value door to door, carries little practical risk. Whichever you choose, keep the original packaging and assay card: an intact sealed bar is faster and easier to sell than a loose one.

Storage at home is free but concentrates risk in one place; a bank safe deposit box or a professional vault costs an annual fee but removes that. There is no universally correct answer — the point is to decide deliberately rather than by default.