Live gold price (XAU/USD)

What the spot number is and how it is set

The spot XAU/USD price is the current market price for one troy ounce of gold quoted in US dollars. It is set by continuous electronic trading across global over-the-counter markets, with the main hubs in London, New York and Zurich. The price you see here updates every few seconds during market hours and is derived from aggregated interbank quotes.

Gold has no single exchange; it trades nearly 24 hours a day from Sunday evening to Friday evening New York time. The most active price discovery happens when London and New York overlap, because that is when the largest bullion banks and hedge funds are trading. Outside those hours the market is thinner, and the price can move more on less volume.

The spot price is the midpoint between the bid and the ask. When you look at a chart, you are usually seeing the bid or the mid, depending on the platform. For trading, you always buy at the ask and sell at the bid, so the spread is the first cost you face on any gold trade.

Why your broker’s price differs: the spread

Your broker’s gold price will not be identical to the spot price shown here because every broker adds a spread. The spread is the difference between the price at which you can buy (ask) and the price at which you can sell (bid). It is how the broker earns revenue on commission-free accounts, and it is a real cost that reduces your profit or increases your loss on every trade.

Spreads on gold are not fixed; they depend on liquidity, volatility and the broker’s own pricing model. During major news events — a US inflation print, a Federal Reserve meeting, an unexpected geopolitical shock — spreads can widen dramatically. A wider spread means you need a bigger move in your favour just to break even.

For South African traders, the spread is charged in US dollars because XAU/USD is a dollar-denominated instrument. When you convert the cost to rand, the exchange rate matters too. The pip value calculator on this site can show you the spread cost in rand for your lot size, so you know exactly what you are paying before you enter.

How to read the change and refresh

The live price display shows the current spot price, the change from the previous close, and the percentage change. A positive change means gold is more expensive in dollars than it was at the last daily settlement; a negative change means it is cheaper. Because gold is priced in dollars, a rising gold price often reflects a falling dollar or rising uncertainty.

The price refreshes continuously during trading hours, but the feed can pause during rollover, weekends, or when your internet connection is slow. If the number has not moved for several minutes, check whether the market is actually open — gold closes from Friday evening to Sunday evening New York time, which is Saturday morning to Monday morning in South Africa.

Do not trade off a stale price. If the live feed lags, use your broker’s platform for the tradable quote. The calculators here allow you to enter any price, so you can always work with the number your broker is actually offering.

How this price feeds the calculators here

Every calculator on Veld Terminal can use the live price as its starting point. Enter the live XAU/USD quote, your stop distance in pips, and your account risk in rand, and the position size calculator will tell you how many lots to trade. No spreadsheet, no mental arithmetic.

The pip value tool uses the same price to convert a 0.01 move into rand for your lot size and account currency. If you are trading a standard account in USD, one pip on one lot is $1; in rand terms it depends on the USD/ZAR exchange rate. The tool does that conversion automatically.

The profit/loss calculator takes your entry and exit prices and shows the result in pips and money, after accounting for the spread. Because you can override the price, you can model a realistic worst case — for example, entry at the ask, exit at the bid — before you risk a single cent.

Where the live XAU/USD price on this page comes from and what its latency means

The number on this page is a composite reference rate, pulled together from real-time interbank and exchange feeds for XAU/USD, and it refreshes automatically as those feeds update. It is not the price of any single venue, but a blended midpoint that gives you a quick, screen-sized read on where gold is trading right now. Because it is a reference, not an executable quote, you should treat it as a starting point for your own trade sizing, not as the exact price your broker will fill you at.

Latency is the delay between a price change on the underlying market and that change appearing on your screen. On this page, latency comes from two places: the feed itself and your connection. The feed may aggregate prices with a small delay to keep the stream stable, and if you are on mobile data in Sandton or on a slow ADSL line in Durban, your browser may render the update a second or two later. For gold, a few seconds can mean a few cents on a $4,275 handle, which is usually not material for a position you are sizing, but it is worth knowing.

For traders who need to act on the exact second, the practical fix is not to stare at this page. Open your broker's platform — MT4, MT5, cTrader or FxPro Edge — and watch the live bid and ask there, because that is the quote you can actually trade. Use this page to keep a general sense of the gold market and to pre-set your lot size and margin in your head. Then when you see your level on the platform, you can size any trade in seconds from one screen, without a spreadsheet.

Why your broker's XAU/USD quote can differ from the reference price on this page

Your broker's quote differs from this page because the broker adds a spread and adjusts the price to reflect its own liquidity and risk, while this page shows a raw reference midpoint. The reference price is an average of interbank and exchange data, with no spread and no markup. A broker like FxPro, serving South Africa through FxPro Markets Direct Costa Rica Latam SRL, quotes you a bid and an ask around that reference, and the gap between them is the spread. That spread is not a fixed number; it depends on market volatility, liquidity and the time of day.

The difference is not an error and it is not the broker being dishonest. It is the cost of having an executable price at all. When you trade gold as XAU/USD, you are not buying a printed number; you are entering a market where someone must stand on the other side. The broker's quote incorporates the cost of that service, plus any price adjustments for their own hedging. On this page, the number is free and fast, but you cannot trade it. On the platform, the number is tradeable, but it costs a spread, and that cost depends on conditions.

To plan a trade without surprises, compare the reference price here with the live bid and ask on your platform before you confirm a position. If gold is at 4275.0 on this page and your broker's ask is 4275.8, that 0.8 difference is part of your cost. Do not judge a broker by the size of that gap alone, because the gap moves. Instead, use this page to get a stable reference, and use your platform to see the real, tradable price at the moment you click.

Reading the bid, the ask, and the gap between them on a gold quote

The bid is the price at which you can sell XAU/USD right now, and the ask is the price at which you can buy it. On a live gold quote, these two numbers sit side by side, with the ask always above the bid. For a standard lot of 100 oz, one pip equals 0.01, so if the bid is 4274.9 and the ask is 4275.1, that is a 20-pip gap. The gap is the spread, and it is the immediate cost of entering and exiting a trade, though its size in dollar terms depends on your lot size.

The gap between bid and ask is not a fixed fee, but a moving reflection of market conditions. When gold is calm during London hours, the gap may be narrower; during high-impact news or thin overnight trading, it may widen. Your broker's platform will show the live bid and ask, and that is the only gap that matters for your execution. The reference price on this page is a midpoint, so it sits between those two numbers, and it is useful for checking whether the quote you see is broadly in line with the market.

For fast trade sizing, you do not need to calculate the spread in rand. You need to know that you buy at the ask and sell at the bid, and that the difference is a cost you must recover before the trade is profitable. Set your entry and stop on the chart using the bid for sells and the ask for buys, and let the platform handle the arithmetic. That way, you can size any gold trade in seconds from one screen, without opening a spreadsheet or second-guessing the quote.

What a stale gold quote looks like and how to handle it on this page

A stale quote is a price that has stopped updating, or one that is out of line with the live market by more than a few cents. On this page, you might see the same number for several minutes while gold is moving, or a price that suddenly jumps to catch up. On a broker platform, a stale quote often appears as a frozen bid or ask, or a spread that widens dramatically because one side of the quote has not refreshed. It is not a wrong price, but it is an old one, and trading on it can give you a fill far from where you expected.

The first thing to do is verify the price against a second source. If you are on this page, open your broker's platform and compare the live XAU/USD quote. If the platform price is moving and this page is not, the reference feed may be delayed or your browser may have cached an old value. A hard refresh of the page usually fixes it. If the platform quote itself is stale, check your internet connection and the market status. Gold trades nearly 24 hours, but there are brief daily pauses and weekend closes, and during those times a quote can sit unchanged.

Never place a market order on a stale quote. If you are about to trade and the price has not moved for a while, switch to a limit order or wait for the quote to update. On FxPro's platforms, you can also check the depth of market or the time of the last tick. The goal is the same: size your trade quickly from one screen, but only when the screen is alive. A stale quote is the one case where fast execution is a risk, not an advantage, so confirm the price is fresh before you click.

The reference XAU/USD feed on this page and its delay

The number on this page is a reference XAU/USD mid-price from a consolidated data provider, not a tradable quote from any broker. It is shown in ZAR terms where relevant, but the underlying instrument is gold priced in US dollars per ounce. The price you see is intended for orientation, not execution, and it typically updates every few seconds. The exact latency depends on the provider’s feed and your internet connection, but it is not real-time tick data. For live execution on Veld Terminal, you must check the quote inside your FxPro platform, which reflects the actual bid and ask available to your account.

The latency on this reference price means it can lag the actual market by a few seconds, especially during volatile moves in XAU/USD. Because gold is traded globally around the clock, a few seconds can be significant when price moves quickly. The delay comes from the steps between the exchange or liquidity provider, the data aggregator, and your browser. No reference feed is instantaneous. If you need the most current price to size a trade in seconds from one screen, use the live quote in your trading platform. The number on this page is a compass, not a trigger.

To check how delayed the number is, compare it with the quote in your FxPro MT4, MT5, cTrader, or FxPro Edge platform at the same moment. If the difference is consistently more than the typical spread you see, the reference feed may be stale. This page does not guarantee a specific latency in milliseconds because it depends on the provider and your location in South Africa. For fast decision-making, treat the reference price as a sanity check and your platform quote as the source of truth. Latency is a fact of market data; the only way to avoid it is to trade directly from the platform’s price stream.

Why your FxPro XAU/USD quote is not the same as this page

Your FxPro quote for XAU/USD includes a spread, which is the difference between the bid and the ask price, so it cannot match a single reference mid-price exactly. The reference number on this page is a mid-price, meaning it sits between the buy and sell prices. Your broker’s quote also reflects the liquidity available to FxPro at that moment, which depends on the interbank market, trading volume, and time of day. This is not an error; it is how OTC gold trading works. The reference feed is a benchmark, while your broker’s quote is the real price you can actually trade at.

The difference between the reference price and your broker’s quote can also come from the entity that serves your account. In South Africa, your account may be with FxPro Markets Direct Costa Rica Latam SRL, while FxPro also has entities licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, and an FxPro entity holds an FSCA licence in South Africa. Different entities can have different liquidity providers and execution models, which can cause small variations in the XAU/USD price you see. Always check which entity your own account is opened with, as this affects the quote you receive.

Another reason for the difference is the time of day and market conditions. Gold trades nearly 24 hours a day, and the spread can widen during rollover, news events, or low liquidity periods such as late evenings in South Africa. The reference price may not capture these temporary widenings. If you size a trade in seconds from one screen, use the bid and ask from your platform, not the mid-price here. The numbers on this page are for context; your platform shows the executable price. A difference of a few cents per ounce is normal and not a sign of manipulation.

Recognising a stale XAU/USD quote on this page and what to do next

A stale quote on this page looks like a price that has not changed for several seconds while the market is moving, or a price that is far from the quote in your FxPro platform. For example, if the reference price shows 4275.0 but your platform shows 4276.5, and the reference price does not update for 30 seconds, it is stale. This can happen due to a slow data feed, a temporary provider outage, or a poor internet connection. A stale quote is dangerous because it can mislead you into thinking the market is calmer than it is. If you see a stale price, do not make trading decisions based on it.

When you suspect a stale quote, the first step is to refresh the page or wait a few seconds to see if the price updates. If it remains unchanged while your platform price is moving, the reference feed is lagging. You can also check the timestamp on the page if one is shown, but do not rely on it. The most reliable action is to switch to your FxPro MT4, MT5, cTrader, or FxPro Edge platform and use its live bid and ask. The platform quote is executable and reflects the current market. This page is a supplementary tool, not a substitute for the trading platform’s price stream.

To avoid trading on a stale quote, always cross-check the reference price with your platform before sizing a trade. If the difference is more than a few cents per ounce, assume the reference is stale. In volatile markets, gold can move several dollars in seconds, so a stale price can lead to poor entry or exit decisions. In South Africa, where internet latency can vary, this is especially important. Remember that the reference price on this page is for orientation only, and the only price that matters for execution is the one in your broker’s platform. If the page consistently shows stale prices, report it to the site administrator, but continue trading from your platform.