22K Gold Calculator: Value of 22 Karat Gold per Gram

22K = 91.67% Pure: The "Crown Gold" Standard

Twenty-two karat means 22 parts gold out of 24 — 91.67% pure, marked 916 in the millesimal fineness system you'll find stamped inside bangles and on clasp tongues. The remaining 8.33% is typically copper, sometimes with silver or zinc, added for one reason: pure gold is too soft for daily wear, and that small alloy fraction roughly doubles the metal's hardness while barely denting its value.

The blend has serious history. English mints settled on this exact ratio for coinage in the 1520s, which is why metallurgists still call 22K "crown gold" — and why, five centuries later, the British Sovereign, the South African Krugerrand, and the American Gold Eagle are all struck at .9167 fine. A formula good enough to survive five hundred years of circulating coinage is good enough for a bangle.

In jewelry, 22K dominates where gold is treated as wealth you wear: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Gulf states, and much of Southeast Asia. The Western preference for 14K and 18K optimizes for durability, gem-setting strength, and lower price points; the 22K tradition optimizes for gold content, because the jewelry doubles as the family's savings. Neither is wrong — they're solving different problems. But they produce very different resale math, which is where this page earns its keep. For the full ladder from 9K to 24K, see the gold purity chart.

The Per-Gram Math, Worked by Hand

The 22K gold calculator above does this live, but the formula deserves to be seen once in daylight, because every 22K transaction you'll ever make reduces to it.

Step 1 — price per gram of pure gold. Take the spot price per troy ounce and divide by 31.103. Assume gold at $4,400/oz for clean numbers (recent prices have run near $4,300–$4,500): $4,400 ÷ 31.103 = $141.46 per gram pure.

Step 2 — apply 22K purity. $141.46 × 0.9167 = $129.68 per gram of 22K.

Step 3 — multiply by weight. A 22K bangle weighing 12.5 grams: 12.5 × $129.68 = $1,621 of gold content.

That's the entire calculation. Notice how little the alloy costs you: 22K retains 91.67 cents of every dollar of pure-gold value, so a gram of 22K trails a gram of pure gold by only about $11.78 at our assumed price. Compare that with 14K, which keeps just 58.33% — the gap between wearing 22K and wearing 14K is the gap between a savings account and a fashion accessory that happens to contain some gold.

One unit warning before the tables: gold trades in troy ounces (31.103 g), not the 28.35-gram ounce your kitchen scale labels "oz." Mixing them up misprices everything by about 10%, always in the direction that costs you.

22K Value at Common Weights

The per-gram figure scaled to the weights 22K jewelry actually comes in, at our assumed $4,400/oz ($129.68 per 22K gram):

Two honest notes on reading this table. First, these are *gold content* values — what the metal itself is worth, which is the number that matters when selling. What you *paid* included making charges (covered below), which don't come back at resale. Second, weights on real jewelry are net of stones: if a necklace carries kundan, polki, or any set stones, the gold weight is the total weight minus the stones, and a proper buyer weighs accordingly. A 60-gram necklace with 8 grams of stones is a 52-gram gold transaction, and you should know that before the buyer mentions it.

Tola Math: Pricing Gold the South Asian Way

Across India, Pakistan, and the Gulf's gold souks, jewelry is still quoted per tola — a Mughal-era unit standardized at 11.664 grams (exactly 3/8 of a troy ounce, which is not a coincidence; the British fixed it that way).

The conversion both directions:

• Tola price from gram price: multiply by 11.664. At our assumed $129.68 per 22K gram: 11.664 × $129.68 = $1,513 per tola of 22K.
• Gram price from a tola quote: divide by 11.664. A dealer quoting $1,560 per tola is asking $133.75 per gram — which you can instantly compare against the live per-gram figure from the gold calculator.

Worked example, the way the transaction actually happens: your family holds a 22K chain weighing 3.5 tolas. In grams: 3.5 × 11.664 = 40.82 g. Value: 40.82 × $129.68 ≈ $5,294. A buyer in the community quoting "per tola" should be offering close to 3.5 × the day's tola rate; one quoting per gram should be close to 40.82 × the gram rate. Same number, two dialects — and converting fluently between them is the cheapest protection you can carry into a gold souk.

Note that Pakistan's official tola matches the 11.664 g standard, while a few Gulf markets historically used slightly different local tolas — when real money is involved, confirm whether the quote is per tola or per gram and weigh in grams. Grams are the Esperanto of gold.

22K vs. 24K vs. 18K: What Each Karat Step Costs

Same $4,400/oz assumption, side by side:

The step from 24K down to 22K costs about 8% of value and buys real wearability — which is why 22K is where most of the world's *wearable wealth* settles. The step from 22K down to 18K costs a further 18%, and from 18K to 14K another 22%. Each move down the ladder trades gold content for hardness and (at purchase) a lower price.

For what it's worth, the World Gold Council's research on gold demand consistently shows India and China — both 22K-and-up markets — at the top of global jewelry consumption: a reminder that most of the world treats jewelry karat as a savings decision, not just a style one.

If you're comparing endpoints, the 24K gold calculator handles pure gold and the 18K gold calculator covers the Western fine-jewelry standard. The honest buying advice falls out of the table: buy 22K when the gold *is* the point, 18K when stones and daily durability are, and let nobody tell you the karat difference is cosmetic — it's 18 points of purity and $236 per 10 grams.

Why 22K Sells Back Better Than Western 14K

Here's something the purity tables don't show: 22K jewelry doesn't just contain more gold than 14K — it typically sells back at a higher percentage of its melt value, too. Several structural reasons stack up.

The market prices it daily. Jewelers serving South Asian and Middle Eastern communities post buy and sell rates for 22K every morning, pegged to spot. Where 14K scrap gets a discretionary lowball at a pawn counter, 22K trades in a liquid two-way market with visible prices — and visible prices compress spreads.

Making charges are billed separately. In the 22K tradition, you pay the day's gold rate plus a stated making charge for workmanship. Everyone understands the making charge is consumed at purchase; the gold component is the recoverable part, and buy-back quotes track it closely. Many community jewelers also run exchange programs — old 22K traded against new at the gold rate, paying only the new piece's making charges.

Standardized purity, instant verification. A 916 hallmark on high-purity gold is quick to verify, so buyers carry less testing risk. India has pushed this furthest: BIS hallmarking — the Bureau of Indian Standards' 916 certification mark with a unique HUID code on each piece — has been mandatory for gold jewelry sold there since 2021, making purity disputes rare.

For context, our standard scrap bands run 40–60% of melt at pawn shops and 50–75% at jewelry stores — while community 22K buyers routinely quote in the territory of the best online refiners (70–90%) and sometimes better. If you hold 22K, sell it where 22K is understood. A full venue comparison is at where to sell gold.

Inherited 22K Sets and 22-Karat Bullion Coins

Two situations bring most Americans to a 22K calculation, and they deserve direct answers.

The inherited bridal set. A typical South Asian wedding set — necklace, earrings, bangles — runs anywhere from 40 to well over 100 grams of 22K. Take a 46-gram set: 46 × $129.68 ≈ $5,965 of gold content at our assumed price. Before selling, three checks. Weigh it yourself, net of any stones, and run the weight through the 22K gold calculator above so you hold the melt number before anyone quotes you. Get a quote from a jeweler who serves the 22K market, not just the nearest cash-for-gold counter — the payout gap can run to thousands on a set this size. And consider whether the set has value *as jewelry*: handmade older pieces can be worth more intact to a buyer in the community than melted. On taxes: inherited gold generally receives a stepped-up basis at the date of death, and gains beyond it are taxed at the collectibles rate when sold — see IRS Topic 409, and talk to a tax professional, because this isn't tax advice and estates have edge cases.

The 22K coins. The American Gold Eagle and the Krugerrand are both .9167 fine — each contains a full troy ounce of gold inside a heavier alloyed coin. The British Sovereign, the classic small unit, weighs 7.988 g at 22K for 7.32 grams of fine gold — about $1,036 at our assumed $4,400/oz. Don't sell any of these as scrap: recognized bullion trades at or near full spot, a far better deal than any jewelry-scrap channel offers.

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