What It Really Costs to Own Vaulted Gold in the UK: Five Platforms Compared

For most of history, owning gold meant holding it. You bought a coin or a bar from a dealer, paid a premium over the gold price, and then had to decide where to keep it: a safe at home, a bank's safe deposit box or a paid storage service. When you wanted to sell, you took it back to a dealer and accepted their buying price.

Vaulted gold works differently. You buy physical gold online, often in fractions of a gram, and it stays in a professional, insured vault. You own the metal itself rather than a share in a fund such as a gold ETF, but you never have to store, insure or transport it, and you can usually sell it back at the live price from your phone. That convenience is why many savers choose vaulted gold over coins and bars kept at home.

Buying fractional gold takes a few taps. Working out what it costs to own is harder, because the charges are split across a buy premium, a sell fee, gold storage fees, a minimum monthly charge and a withdrawal fee, and every platform combines them differently. So we added them up. On Wednesday 14 October 2026, we collected the live prices and published fees of five vaulted gold platforms that UK investors use, and calculated what the same purchase would cost over a full year of ownership on each. For one ounce of gold, worth £3,105.79, the total cost ranged from £54.32 to £129.19.

The five platforms were BullionVault, Glint, Goldmoney, OneGold and The Royal Mint's DigiGold. For each one, we modelled the same scenario: buy the gold, store it for 12 months, sell it at an unchanged price and withdraw the cash to a UK bank account. The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive was £74.87 on a single ounce. But the ranking did not hold at every size. On a single gram, and on a full kilogram, a different picture emerged.

One ounce is how most people picture gold: a classic coin or a small bar. At £3,105.79 it sits in the middle of the range. It is a meaningful sum for a private saver, but far from a large investment. That makes it the fairest single yardstick, and the one we lead with.

At this size, the cost of a year's ownership ran from £54.32 to £129.19. The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive platform was £74.87, more than the cheapest platform charged in total.

OneGold came first at £54.32. It charges no premium to buy its Swiss-vaulted gold and 0.30% to sell, so the trade itself cost £9.32. Most of its total was fixed: a £5 quarterly storage minimum (£20 a year) and a £25 bank withdrawal fee.

The Royal Mint's DigiGold was second at £65.22. It has no minimum fees and free UK bank withdrawals, but charges 0.5% to buy, 1% to sell and 0.5% a year plus VAT for storage.

Glint (£67.90) charges a 0.9% exchange fee each way and a vault fee of at least £1 a month. BullionVault (£71.24) charges 0.5% commission each way on top of its order-board spread, and a storage minimum of about £3.04 a month (US$4). Goldmoney (£129.19) charges 0.5% each way, but its monthly storage minimum of about £7.59 (US$10) came to £91.13 over the year on its own.

Every platform's charges fall into two kinds. Variable fees, such as a buy premium, a sell fee or a storage rate, grow with the size of the holding. Fixed fees, such as minimum gold storage fees or a flat withdrawal fee, stay the same whether you own a gram or a kilo.

On a small holding, the fixed fees dominate. On a large one, they almost disappear and the variable fees take over. Each platform mixes the two differently, so the cheapest choice depends on how much gold you hold.

A minimum storage charge stops mattering once the holding is large enough for the percentage rate to exceed it. On our figures, that happens at about £5,000 at Glint, £16,667 at OneGold, £30,377 at BullionVault and £36,452 at Goldmoney. The Royal Mint has no minimum, so its storage cost is always a straight percentage.

If you are still weighing up where and how to buy gold in the first place, our guides to the best way to buy gold and where to buy gold compare vaulted gold with coins, bars and funds.

At one kilogram, worth about £99,853, minimum fees no longer apply anywhere. What remains is the cost of trading and the storage rate.

OneGold's 0.30% round trip put it first at £444.38. BullionVault was second at £915.04. Its commission is 0.5% on roughly the first £57,000 (US$75,000) a customer buys or sells in a year and 0.1% after that, so a kilo, worth about £99,850, pays the lower rate on most of the order. Its withdrawal goes by CHAPS at £20. Goldmoney was third at £1,255.17; at this size it prices the trade at its next daily fix rather than its live price. Glint and the Royal Mint, with the highest percentage fees, came last.

Very few investors buy a single gram of gold and nothing else. Most start small and add regularly, or buy a larger amount at once. We include one gram to show how fees behave at the smallest size, not as a typical holding. A gram was worth £99.85 on the day.

The percentages look extreme because the fixed fees are measured against a very small sum. The Royal Mint has no minimum charges, so it costs 2.10% at any size. Glint's £1 monthly vault minimum adds £12 a year. BullionVault's monthly minimum of about £3.04 (US$4) adds about £36. OneGold's £5 quarterly minimum adds £20, and its £25 withdrawal fee comes on top. Goldmoney's monthly minimum of about £7.59 (US$10) takes almost the whole gram.

For anyone building a holding gradually, the useful question is how quickly a platform's minimums stop mattering, as set out above.

Scenario. A UK resident opens a standard account, pays in pounds by bank transfer, buys 1g, 1oz (31.1035g) or 1kg of gold, holds it in the platform's vault for 12 months, sells it at an unchanged gold price and withdraws the proceeds to a UK bank account. Delivery, tax, card payments and inactivity fees are excluded.

Platforms. We included five platforms that UK investors use to buy vaulted, fractional gold, where the customer owns physical gold stored in a professional vault: BullionVault, Glint, Goldmoney, OneGold and The Royal Mint's DigiGold. Where a platform offers several vaults, we used the cheapest: Switzerland for OneGold, and London for BullionVault, where storage costs the same in every vault but the measured dealing spread was narrower.

Terms. We used only standard terms available to a new customer, taken from each platform's public fee pages. Welcome offers, referral rewards and other promotions were excluded, including OneGold's own. No platform offered free storage as a standard term.

Live prices. Live buy and sell prices were captured on Wednesday 14 October 2026, in a timed sweep from 15:05 to 15:07 UK time, just after the LBMA afternoon auction. Each platform was captured in the order spot, buy, sell, spot, against one reference spot price source (goldprice.org, GBP per troy ounce). A confirmation sweep in reverse order ran from 15:38 to 15:40. No spread changed by more than 0.04 percentage points between the two sweeps, and the spot price moved less than 0.1% during each sweep. Every capture was screenshotted with a UK timestamp.

Published fees and live prices. Where a platform prices gold at the spot price plus a published fee, we used the published fee and checked it against the live prices captured in the sweep. OneGold's live prices were 0.09% below the reference spot to buy and 0.39% below to sell: a round trip of 0.30%, the same as its published fees. The Royal Mint's live buy price was 0.59% above the reference spot, against its published 0.5% fee; it does not publish a live sell price, so its published 1% sell fee was used. BullionVault has no fixed premium, because its prices are set by customers trading on its order board, so we used its measured spread (about 0.06% each way in London) plus its commission. Glint and Goldmoney show live dealing prices only to logged-in customers, so their published fees were used and any additional spread is not included.

Royal Mint buy fee. The DigiGold page we cite lists a 0.5% buy fee. A second Royal Mint DigiGold page lists 0.33%. We used 0.5%, which is consistent with the live buy price we captured on 14 October.

Reference price. All costs were valued at the LBMA Gold Price PM in sterling for 14 October 2026: £3,105.79 per troy ounce. BullionVault and Goldmoney set some fees in US dollars. We show all amounts in pounds, converted at GBP/USD 1.3168 on the day, with the original dollar amount in brackets so it can be checked against the providers' own pages. The Royal Mint trades in units of 0.001oz, so 1g was priced as 0.032oz.

Specific assumptions. OneGold's published 0% buy premium was used. BullionVault's cost combines its measured order-board spread with its commission for a new customer: 0.5% on roughly the first £57,000 (US$75,000) bought or sold in a year, 0.1% on the next £570,000 (US$750,000) and 0.05% above that, as set out in its QuickStart guide. Its tariff page does not say how a single order that crosses that first threshold is split, so for the kilo we applied 0.5% to the first £57,000 and 0.1% to the rest. At 1g, BullionVault's withdrawal minimum of about £76 (US$100) is assumed to be met by paying storage from separate cash. Goldmoney's 1kg trade is priced at its daily Fixed Price, because it exceeds the limits for its live price.

All fee pages were accessed on 14 October 2026. The Royal Mint's free UK bank withdrawal was confirmed in its customer account area.

Who carried out this comparison. This article was produced by OneGold, which competes with the other four platforms compared. It was not commissioned, reviewed or endorsed by any of them.

What was compared. The comparison covers one feature only: the total cost of the scenario described in the methodology, at one point in time. It does not compare other differences between the platforms, such as vault locations, how ownership and custody are structured, insurance, payment options, app features, customer service or regulatory status. These may matter to you as much as cost.

A dated snapshot. All figures reflect prices and published standard fees on 14 October 2026 and will not be updated. Fees, prices and terms change. Check each provider's current terms before you invest.

How to verify these figures. The methodology and the fee pages used are listed above, so every figure can be checked against the providers' own published terms. Our full workbook, with every formula, fee source and timestamped screenshot, is available on request through our contact page. If you are one of the providers named and believe any figure is inaccurate, please contact us the same way and we will review it promptly.

Trade marks. BullionVault, Glint, Goldmoney, The Royal Mint and DigiGold are trade marks of their respective owners. They are used only to identify the services compared. OneGold has no affiliation with these companies.

Not financial advice. This article is for information only and is not financial or investment advice. Your costs will depend on how much you invest, how long you hold and how you pay. The value of gold can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you put in. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances.

This comparison was carried out by OneGold, one of the five platforms compared. We applied the same rules, the same reference price and the same scenario to every provider, OneGold included. Our full workbook, with every formula, fee source and timestamped screenshot, is available to journalists on request.