Is a 100 g or a 1 kg gold bar cheaper per gram?

Big Bullion · Published 15 September 2026 · Updated 15 September 2026 · 5 min read

Reviewed by the Big Bullion team, 15 September 2026

The kilogram bar is cheaper per gram, and the table below shows by how much on the bars we hold today. What you give up for that saving is the ability to sell part of it, because a kilo bar is one thing and it is sold as one thing.

Why the big bar is cheaper per gram

Refining, assaying, stamping and packing cost a refiner about the same whether the bar holds 100 g or 1 kg. That fixed cost is then spread over ten times as much metal, so the share of it carried by each gram falls away. Nothing else about the gold is different. It is the same purity and the same refiners.

Read it off our own ladder rather than taking our word for it. The last column is the premium as a percentage, and it falls as you go down the table.

What the kilo costs you back

A kilo bar cannot be broken up. If you hold ten 100 g bars and you need some money, you sell two and keep eight. If you hold one kilo bar, you sell the whole kilo at the price on the day you need it, and you are back in the market for whatever you want to hold afterwards.

The other half of it is what you have to find on the day you buy. Ten times the metal is ten times the money at once, and there is no advantage in stretching for a kilo bar if it means buying later than you meant to.

There is a practical side too. One kilo bar is one thing to keep safe and one thing to verify when you sell it. Ten smaller bars are ten of each. Which of those you prefer is genuinely a matter of taste.

It is not a choice between two rungs

The ladder does not jump from 100 g straight to 1 kg. There are sizes in between, and they sit where you would expect on premium, so if the kilo is more than you want to commit at once you are not forced back down to 100 g. Whatever we are holding appears in the table above, because it is generated from our stock rather than written by hand.

Compare the round trip, not the purchase

The premium is only what you pay going in. What a bar really costs you is that premium plus the gap between what we sell it for and what we pay for it, and both of those are published.

So do this before you decide. Take the premium for each size from the table above. Take what we pay for that same size from our sell page, where every buy-back rate is published and live. Divide each by the grams in the bar, and you are comparing the two sizes on the thing that actually matters, which is what a gram costs you in and out.

Do the same sum on any other dealer's prices and you will usually find the answer is the same shape. Bigger is cheaper per gram and less flexible. The question is only ever how much flexibility is worth to you.

Which one suits you

If you are buying to hold for years, you are unlikely to want part of it back, and the money is there now, the kilo bar does what you want at the lowest cost per gram. If you would rather be able to take some of it out without touching the rest, or you are building a holding over time, smaller bars are what give you that, and the extra you pay per gram is the price of it.

We sell physical gold and silver. Nothing on this page is financial advice.