14k vs 18k gold

14k is 14 parts gold in 24, which is 58.33% pure. 18k is 18 parts in 24, which is 75%. Divide one by the other and 18k carries 28.6% more fine gold per gram. That is the entire difference in metal value, and it does not change with the weight of the piece or the price of gold.

So a 10 gram 18k chain holds 7.5 grams of fine gold where a 10 gram 14k chain holds 5.83. At any spot price, the 18k chain is worth just under a third more. The karat table above prices both against the same live figure, so you can read the gap rather than calculate it.

Retail is a different question. Shops commonly price 18k at 25 to 30% above 14k, which tracks the metal difference closely, but a finished piece also carries labour and margin that have nothing to do with purity. Our retail versus melt page covers where that money goes.

Almost every page on this subject says 14k is harder because it contains less gold. The direction is right and the reasoning is not quite. Hardness comes from the specific alloy, not from the purity figure on its own: an 18k alloy with a well chosen hardening metal can outperform a poorly alloyed 14k, and 18k is generally less brittle than lower karats even where it is softer.

What is reliably true is that a typical 18k piece scratches and deforms more readily than a typical 14k one in the same design, so prongs wear faster and a band thins sooner. For a ring worn every day that matters. For earrings, a pendant or anything that does not take knocks, it barely registers.

The International Gem Society covers the gemological side of this comparison in more depth than is useful here.

At 75% gold there is simply less room for other metal to shift the hue, so 18k yellow reads deeper and warmer while 14k is lighter and slightly brighter. Side by side the difference is obvious. On its own, most people cannot name which they are looking at.

The same logic runs through the other colours. 18k rose is softer and less coppery because there is less copper available to redden it, and 18k white is harder to make convincingly white for exactly the same reason, which is why it leans on rhodium plating more heavily. Our white gold page covers the plating and the alloy question in detail.

18k is often called more hypoallergenic, and in practice it usually is, but the mechanism is worth understanding because it is not the gold. Gold itself almost never causes a reaction. Nickel does, and nickel is the most common contact allergen there is.

An 18k piece has 25% alloy against 14k's 41.7%, so there is less of everything else including nickel, which is why reactions are less common. But a nickel free 14k alloy will not react at all, and a nickel bearing 18k piece still can. The karat number is a proxy for the risk, not the cause of it.

European white gold is predominantly palladium based because the EU limits how much nickel jewellery may release against skin. American white gold is far more often nickel based, at either karat.

Per gram, 18k, by that same 28.6%. This is the part the buying guides skip, and it is the question most people actually arrive with.

A gold buyer pays on weight and purity and nothing else. Design, brand, condition and what you originally paid are all irrelevant to a scrap quote — see our scrap page for what each tier of buyer realistically offers. Sort your pieces by karat before you go: a shop quoting one blended rate for a bag holding both is quoting you the 14k rate on your 18k.

There is one large exception, and it falls disproportionately on 18k. Branded fine jewellery is overwhelmingly 18k, and a signed piece from a recognised house routinely sells second hand for several times its melt value. Scrapping one is the most expensive mistake available at a gold counter. Check inside the band and on the back of the clasp for a maker's mark before you weigh anything in.

For a ring worn every day, especially one holding a stone, 14k. The durability difference is real where there is daily contact, and the colour gap is small enough that most people never notice it.

For earrings, pendants, occasional pieces, or anything where colour is the point, 18k. It is worth more per gram, it looks richer, and the wear argument barely applies to jewellery that does not get knocked.

Regionally the convention already reflects this. 14k dominates the US market and 18k is the European and luxury standard, which is why an inherited piece from one market often is not the karat you would assume from the other. Our karat comparison page sets all six common purities side by side, and there are dedicated pages for 10k, 18k and 24k.

Both figures on this page derive from one number: the fine gold spot price, multiplied by 0.5833 for 14k or 0.75 for 18k, then divided into grams. There is no separate market in either karat.

Spot itself is set in the wholesale market and benchmarked twice daily in London by the LBMA, whose auction price is the reference most of the trade settles against. The World Gold Council publishes the longer market history behind it. We record one close a day ourselves and plot exactly that on the price history page.