Gold IRA Fees Benchmark 2026: Named Custodian Fee Schedules Compared

Educational only: This benchmark records published custodian fee schedules from named primary sources. It does not provide financial, tax, or legal advice. Fees and minimums change; customers should confirm current written pricing directly. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Quick Answer: What a Gold IRA Actually Costs in 2026

A Gold IRA has five cost buckets: account setup, annual custodian administration, storage and insurance, the dealer markup over spot, and transaction or liquidation fees. There is no universal annual figure for the recurring part, because current published schedules are structured differently. GoldStar Trust’s current schedule produces a flat $215 a year on the commingled option, unchanged from a $10,000 account to a $250,000 one. Equity Trust’s current retail schedule tiers administration by account value, so the same comparison runs from $335 to $810 a year non-segregated. The single largest cost is usually the one-time dealer markup embedded in the metal purchase, which no dealer publishes as a usable per-product schedule; a broad agreement range cannot price a specific purchase. Published provider minimums range from roughly $5,000 to about $50,000.

The Five Gold IRA Cost Buckets and How They Are Structured

Each bucket below is described by its structure, with named examples from current schedules. No market-wide numeric range is published for any of them, and none is asserted here: the figures quoted belong to the specific custodian named beside them, read on 31 August 2026.

Custodian and depository schedules are cited by document title and revision or observation date rather than linked, because they are commercial documents rather than regulator publications. Government sources are cited only where they govern the point being made, such as the CFTC advisory on dealer markups.

Why these buckets exist at all

Each bucket above is a consequence of how the law treats metals inside a retirement account, which is why none of them can simply be avoided. Internal Revenue Code section 408 treats the acquisition of a collectible by an IRA as a distribution, and carves out specific bullion and coins from that rule only where they are held by a trustee. That carve-out is the reason a Gold IRA needs a custodian and a depository at all, and therefore the reason setup, administration and storage exist as separate charges rather than being optional services. The depository side states the same arrangement operationally: Delaware Depository’s published FAQ confirms that bullion held in an IRA is controlled by the trustee or custodian and that instructions and reporting pass through that custodian rather than the account holder, which is cited here only for that structural point. The storage-options comparison guide separates those custody rules from insurance, audit-trail and cost questions before a storage quote is compared.

The same framework explains why one of the two structures compared below is value-based. A custodian must report the account’s fair market value annually, so a schedule that tiers administration by account value already has the valuation it needs in order to bill on it. A flat schedule simply declines to use it. The contribution and rollover rules that bring money into the account are in IRS Publication 590-A, and the distribution rules that govern taking metal or cash back out, which is when the transaction and closure charges in the final bucket are incurred, are in IRS Publication 590-B. These are cited for the rules they state, not as sources for any fee figure.

Two Named Schedules Compared by Account Size

This is the question asked most often and answered worst: what does a Gold IRA actually cost at different balances? The honest answer is that it depends on which schedule governs the account, so the table below compares two current named schedules at the same five account sizes rather than publishing one blended average. Every annual total is the schedule’s own arithmetic: GoldStar’s $90 precious-metals maintenance plus $125 commingled storage, and Equity Trust’s value-tiered administration plus its flat $110 non-segregated or $160 segregated storage.

Sources: GoldStar Trust, Fee Schedule for Self-Directed Traditional, Roth, SEP or SIMPLE IRAs and ESAs, current fee schedule accessed 31 August 2026 — $90 annual precious-metals maintenance plus $125 commingled storage. Equity Trust, Equity Retail Fee Schedule, Rev. 081726 — annual administration of $225 ($1–14,999), $320 ($15,000–24,999), $350 ($25,000–49,999), $425 ($50,000–99,999), $500 ($100,000–199,999) and $700 ($200,000–299,999), plus storage of $110 non-segregated or $160 segregated. Both last checked 31 August 2026. Setup fees are one-time and excluded from these annual totals.

The contrast is the point. GoldStar’s commingled total never moves, so its burden falls twenty-five-fold across the range, from 2.15% to 0.086%. Equity Trust’s total more than doubles over the same range, so its burden falls roughly ten-fold, from 3.35% to 0.324%, and stays materially higher at every size shown. Neither is “the market rate”: they are two published schedules, and the structure of whichever one applies is what determines the cost. GoldStar’s segregated option is deliberately excluded from the table because it is value-based: the schedule quotes $225 minimum/no maximum, and for values above $125,000 a charge of $1.80 per $1,000 of precious-metals value. Tabulating it would require assumptions about how those terms combine that the schedule itself does not state. Model a specific scenario on the fee calculator.

The one-time dealer markup, shown separately

The annual totals above are only the billed part of the cost. The dealer markup is charged once, on the metal purchase, and is embedded in the price rather than shown as a fee. At a 5% illustration it would be $500 on a $10,000 purchase, $5,000 on $100,000 and $12,500 on $250,000. That 5% is the conservative end of the CFTC advisory’s dated 5%–10% bullion band from the CARES Act period, used here purely to show the scale of a one-time charge against recurring fees. It is not a current market average, not a quote, and not a rate any dealer in this comparison publishes. On any of the account sizes above, a single markup at that illustrative rate exceeds several years of either schedule’s annual fees.

Structures across the other current schedules

Two schedules cannot describe a market. The table below records what the other current schedules read on 31 August 2026 actually do, which is the evidence for the claim that no single range fits.

Setup charges across these current schedules run from $0 to $100 once electronic-application waivers and IRAR’s $100 are included. That is the spread of published examples, not a market average. Storage is flat in some of these schedules, value-based in others and passed through at depository cost in others again, which is why no single depository range is published on this page.

Seven Custodians, Five Incompatible Fee Structures

Seven named custodian schedules read on 23 September 2026 use five structurally different pricing models: flat; flat plus basis points above a threshold; quarterly and charged per asset; a percentage of account value with a floor and a ceiling; and storage billed externally by a third party. That is the reason no market average exists. It is not that nobody has compiled one. It is that the models are not commensurable, so there is nothing to average.

Madison Trust’s $139 per quarter and GoldStar Trust’s $90 a year are not the same product priced differently. They are different products with different inclusions, billed on different cycles, with storage treated differently in each. An arithmetic mean across the seven rows below would describe nothing that any saver could be charged.

Only two of these schedules print an effective or revision date: GoldStar Trust (Rev. 01/2026) and Madison Trust (effective 1 January 2026). The other five were read as the current published schedule on 23 September 2026 and state no effective date, which is recorded above rather than filled in. All seven are commercial documents and are cited in plain text by title and date rather than linked. Advanta IRA was excluded because its schedule could not be retrieved by this site’s fetcher and so could not be verified.

Entrust’s annual charge carries a value component that does not fit the table: the $219 single-asset or $329 multi-asset administration fee is charged plus 0.17% of total asset value above $50,000, with annual recordkeeping capped at $2,299.

Two consequences worth stating plainly

First, two of the seven publish no storage amount at all. Entrust and Mountain West both leave storage to be billed separately by the depository, and IRA Innovations leaves it to the storage company without publishing an amount. For those custodians a quoted “annual custodian fee” is not the recurring cost of the account, because the largest recurring third-party charge is invoiced by someone else and never appears on the custodian’s schedule.

Second, percentage-based schedules mean the same account pays a different fee at different balances. Entrust bills 0.17% of value above $50,000, Mountain West bills 0.075% of account value per quarter between a $32.50 floor and a $75.00 ceiling, and Vantage prices storage at 10 basis points of account value with a $125 minimum. For those three, no single dollar figure can represent the schedule, so any table that assigns them one has already misstated them.

This is the mechanism behind the gap described in what nobody measures, which records that no representative all-in benchmark is published. That section states the absence; this one states why the absence is structural rather than accidental.

Gold IRA Provider Minimums (2026)

Published minimum investments as marketed by each provider. Minimums are a moving target and are sometimes adjusted for promotions or rollover size — always confirm in writing before funding.

Provider-specific fee detail appears on the American Hartford Gold fees and Augusta fees pages, and a full side-by-side is on the best Gold IRA companies comparison.

Why the Dealer Markup Dominates the All-In Cost

Annual custodian and storage fees are visible and recurring, but they are small relative to the one-time markup on the metal itself. On a $50,000 rollover, a markup difference of even a few percentage points can exceed a decade of annual fees under either schedule compared above. Because the markup is embedded in the purchase price rather than shown as a separate line, it is the cost most likely to be overlooked. The full data on markup ranges is on the dealer markup data page, and an interactive estimate is on the fee calculator.

Regulators describe the same problem in the same terms. The NASAA investor advisory notes that there is no standardized spread, which is the structural reason no dealer publishes a usable per-product schedule, and that buyers are frequently surprised by their first custodian statement because the spread is taken at purchase rather than billed later. The joint CFTC and FINRA investor bulletin of March 2024 makes the same point as a question to ask before buying: the premium over spot has to be requested, because it will not be presented. What those sources do and do not establish is set out by tier in the evidence table below.

What the Evidence Actually Supports, and at What Tier

Published cost figures for this market come from three different kinds of evidence, and commercial articles routinely collapse all three into a single “typical cost” range. They are not the same kind of claim. A regulator advisory stating a range is not a measurement. A figure from an enforcement action is a finding about one named defendant. Averaging them together produces a number that describes nothing.

Read the enforcement rows carefully. The markups established in the Red Rock Secured and Safeguard Metals cases are not market averages and must never be quoted as one. Enforcement populations are selected precisely because the pricing was alleged to be abusive: those buyers were reached by a regulator for that reason. They tell you what has been proven possible in this market, not what an ordinary customer should expect to pay. No source in the table below measures the second thing, which is the subject of the next section.

Each figure above was read from the primary document on 23 September 2026. The two NASAA percentages and the CFTC advisory band are statements in investor-education material: no sample, denominator or methodology is published for any of them, so they cannot be treated as measurements. The Red Rock and Safeguard figures are established in a consent order and in SEC filings respectively, for one named defendant over one named period. The broader supervisory context is set out in the joint CFTC, FINRA and NASAA warning of 20 March 2024, the accompanying CFTC flier on Gold IRA sales claims, and FINRA’s investor guidance on buying physical metals.

What Nobody Measures: The Missing Gold IRA Cost Benchmark

No regulator, academic body or industry source publishes a representative all-in Gold IRA cost benchmark by account size. Two independent deep-research passes over the 2024 to 2026 window, prioritising regulator, court, academic and government sources, found none. The figures in the table above are the best evidence that exists, and none of them is that benchmark: the advisory ranges are unmeasured, and the case figures describe defendants rather than a market.

This is worth stating precisely rather than treating as a complaint. The absence is structural. Custodian and depository schedules are published, so the billed part of the cost is knowable. The dealer markup is embedded in the metal price, is not billed as a fee, appears on no statement, and is not reported to anyone who publishes. So the largest component of the cost is the one component nobody collects.

A dataset that actually answered the question would have to report, for a representative sample of real accounts:

• Entry premium over spot on the metal actually purchased, per product
• Account setup charges, including waivers applied in practice
• Annual administration under the schedule that governed the account
• Storage and insurance, segregated and commingled separately
• Transaction costs over the holding period, including wires and shipping
• Dealer buyback discount against spot at the point of sale
• Shipping and closure costs on distribution or account termination

It would have to report these at standardised balances of $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 and $250,000, so that flat and value-tiered structures could be compared at the same sizes. And it would have to state the figure that follows from all of the above and that no published source currently gives: the gold price appreciation required simply to break even, by account size and holding period.

Two kinds of body could publish it. A regulator study from the CFTC, FINRA, NASAA or the GAO, which could compel or request the underlying data, is the most direct route: those bodies already publish the advisory material quoted above, but none has published a representative cost study behind it. Alternatively, academic researchers working with custodian and depository data under confidentiality could construct it, since custodians and depositories jointly hold the billed record and the depositories hold the metal detail needed to reconstruct entry premiums.

Until one of those exists, any single “average Gold IRA cost” figure in circulation is an estimate presented as a measurement. This page states the two things that can be sourced: what named schedules charge, and what regulators and courts have established in the cases they worked.

How to Compare Fees on a Written Quote

To compare providers on a like-for-like basis, request each of the five buckets in writing on the same day: setup fee, annual custodian fee, annual storage and insurance, the exact dealer markup over spot for the specific products quoted, and any transaction or liquidation fees. Then ask for the buyback estimate for those same products. A quote that itemizes all five is far easier to evaluate than one that leads with a promotion. The quote checklist and comparison workbook structure this process.

Reading Published "Best Company" Fee Claims (2026)

As of July 2026, several high-traffic "best gold IRA companies" roundups have begun listing company-level setup, administration, and storage charges directly on the page, making itemized fees a more prominent point of comparison across search results. That shift is useful, but a fee figure quoted in a third-party roundup is a lead, not a confirmed fact. Published lists can lag the provider's current schedule, can blend a dealer charge with a custodian or depository charge, and can omit promotional waivers that expire. Any company-specific number should be treated as "verify in a written company, custodian, or depository disclosure before relying on it."

The reliable step is to separate the three parties a single "company fee" often combines: the dealer (the markup over spot on the metal), the custodian (account setup and annual administration), and the depository (storage and insurance, segregated or commingled). A roundup usually shows one blended figure; a written quote shows all three, dated, for the exact products discussed. Where a provider will not itemize in writing, that itself is a comparison signal. The per-provider verification framework is on the company research guide, and the sourced ranges each figure should be checked against are on the dealer markup data page.

Sources last reviewed: 23 September 2026. The seven custodian schedules and the evidence-tier sources were read on 23 September 2026; the earlier named schedules were read on 31 August 2026, and each table states the date its figures were observed. Published schedules change without notice, so confirm anything material against the custodian’s current document.

Methodology

Every annual figure on this page is read from a named, current fee schedule, identified by document title and revision or observation date, and all were checked on 31 August 2026. The comparison table is not a model: each total is the schedule’s own arithmetic at the stated account size, computed from the published line items and nothing else. Custodian and depository schedules are cited in plain text rather than linked, because they are commercial documents; regulator sources are linked where they govern the point being made.

Three things are deliberately not published here. First, no market-wide annual fee range, because current schedules use both flat and value-tiered structures and any single range or midpoint misrepresents whichever structure it excludes. Second, no multi-year cumulative projection, because that would assume schedules stay unchanged for a decade when one in this set (STRATA) changes the day after these figures were observed. Third, no fee-efficiency threshold, because the balance at which costs become acceptable depends on the structure that applies and is a judgement for the saver rather than a published benchmark.

The one-time dealer markup is shown separately at an illustrative 5%, the conservative end of the CFTC advisory’s dated 5%–10% bullion band, and is never blended into an annual total. Provider minimums are each provider’s own published marketing figure as used across this site. Fees and minimums change frequently and must be confirmed in writing before funding.

External sources are classified by evidence tier rather than cited as equivalent. Regulator advisories, enforcement findings and court-established figures are three different kinds of claim, and the evidence table states which tier each figure belongs to in the same block as the figure itself. No enforcement or court figure is presented anywhere on this page as a market average or a typical cost. Only noncommercial authorities are linked: regulators, courts, the tax code and the IRS. Commercial issuers, meaning dealers, custodians and depositories, are cited in plain text by document title and date, with one exception noted at the point of use, where a depository FAQ is linked solely as evidence of the custodial arrangement rather than for any price. Where a source could not be retrieved by this site’s own fetcher at the time of writing but is a stable government publication cited elsewhere on this site, that is noted rather than concealed.

A correction is worth recording openly. An earlier version of this page published a single universal recurring-fee range, a midpoint derived from it, a claim that such fees are largely flat across the market, percentage burdens calculated from that midpoint, and a ten-year cumulative projection built on all of it. None of those figures was read from a fee schedule, and the flat premise was false as a general claim, because Equity Trust and Entrust both tier their charges by account value. The whole model has been withdrawn and replaced by the named-schedule comparison above, and the withdrawn figures are not repeated here so they cannot be quoted onward.

How to Cite This Page

Source: 401ktogoldira.org — Gold IRA Fees Benchmark 2026: Named Custodian Fee Schedules Compared.
Publisher: 401ktogoldira.org
URL: https://401ktogoldira.org/gold-ira-fees-benchmark-2026/
Sources last reviewed: 23 September 2026 (earlier schedules read 31 August 2026)
Accessed: state the date you retrieved the page, as published fee schedules change without notice.

To cite one schedule or figure rather than the page, append its row anchor to the URL — for example #row-fee-goldstar-trust or #row-size-50-000. Row anchors are derived from each row’s own key and stay stable when rows are added or reordered.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a Gold IRA cost per year?

It depends on which custodian’s schedule applies, because current published schedules use different structures. Under GoldStar Trust’s current schedule, annual precious-metals maintenance of $90 plus commingled storage of $125 totals $215 a year at every account size. Under Equity Trust’s current retail schedule, administration is tiered by account value and non-segregated storage is $110, so the same account costs $335 a year at $10,000 and $810 a year at $250,000. There is no universal annual range. The larger one-time cost is usually the dealer markup embedded in the metal purchase, which no dealer publishes as a usable per-product schedule; a broad agreement range cannot price a specific purchase.

What is the minimum to open a Gold IRA?

Published provider minimums range from roughly $5,000 at the low end to about $50,000 at the premium end. Common minimums cluster around $10,000 to $25,000. Minimums and fees change and should be confirmed in writing.

What are the five Gold IRA cost buckets?

Account setup, annual custodian administration, storage and insurance, dealer markup over spot, and transaction or liquidation costs. The dealer markup is usually the largest and least visible. Setup and administration are flat in some published schedules and tiered by account value in others, and storage is flat in some and passed through at cost in others, so each bucket has to be read from the specific schedule that will govern the account.

Which Gold IRA fee is easiest to overlook?

The dealer markup, because it is built into the purchase price rather than billed as a separate line item. It can exceed several years of annual fees on a large rollover.

At what account size does a Gold IRA become fee-efficient?

There is no universal threshold, because the answer depends on whether the governing schedule is flat or value-tiered. Under GoldStar Trust’s flat commingled example of $215 a year, the burden falls from 2.15 percent at $10,000 to 0.086 percent at $250,000 because the dollar figure never changes. Under Equity Trust’s value-tiered schedule the annual total itself rises with the balance, from $335 to $810 non-segregated, so the burden falls more slowly, from 3.35 percent to 0.324 percent. The account size at which either becomes acceptable is a judgement for the saver, not a published benchmark.

Update Log

• 24 September 2026: Structural citation pass — stable per-row anchors derived from each row’s own key, row-header scopes, table captions, an expanded citation block with a visible review date, and Dataset metadata describing the variables and method. No figure, schedule, source or observation date was re-verified or changed by this pass; the data still carry their 31 August and 23 September observation dates.
• 23 September 2026: Added a fee-structure section comparing seven named custodian schedules read the same day: GoldStar Trust, Madison Trust, The Entrust Group, STRATA Trust, IRA Innovations, Mountain West IRA and Vantage. The seven use five structurally incompatible pricing models, which is the reason no market average is published here or anywhere else. Two of the seven publish no storage amount because the depository or storage company bills it separately, and three price on a percentage of account value, so no single dollar figure represents them. Only GoldStar (Rev. 01/2026) and Madison Trust (effective 1 January 2026) print a date; the other five are recorded as the current schedule accessed on 23 September 2026 with no stated effective date. Advanta IRA was excluded as unverifiable. No existing figure, table or section was changed.
• 23 September 2026: Added an evidence-tier table separating regulator-stated ranges, enforcement-observed figures and court-established case data, with an explicit warning that enforcement populations are selected for alleged abusive pricing and are not representative of ordinary customers. Added a new section recording that no representative all-in Gold IRA cost benchmark by account size is published by any regulator, academic body or industry source, what such a dataset would have to contain, and who would have to produce it. Expanded the external authority sources from one to more than twelve, each attached to a claim the page already made: IRC section 408 and the IRS publications for why the cost buckets exist, the NASAA advisory and the CFTC and FINRA bulletins for the dealer markup, and the CFTC and SEC enforcement records for the case figures. No fee figure, provider minimum or conversion element was changed.
• 2026 update: Added a "Reading Published Best-Company Fee Claims" section covering the 2026 SERP shift toward itemized company fees and how to separate dealer, custodian, and depository charges before relying on any published figure.
• 31 August 2026: Replaced the modelled universal fee range with a comparison of named current schedules. The previous recurring-fee range, its midpoint, the “largely flat” premise, the percentage burdens derived from them and the ten-year cumulative table have all been removed: none was read from a schedule, and the flat premise is contradicted by the value-tiered schedules now shown. The cost buckets are described by structure with named examples, the dealer markup illustration is separated and labelled as the conservative end of a dated CFTC band, and IRS and FINRA pages were dropped as numeric fee sources.
• 2026: Initial fees benchmark published with the five cost buckets, provider minimum table, methodology, and FAQ schema.

How figures on this site are produced and checked is set out in the research methodology, and errors are handled under the corrections policy. Article reviewed and edited by Daniel — independent precious-metals retirement researcher.

Further Reading

Gold IRA Dealer Markup Data 2026Sourced markup and spread benchmarks by product type.Gold IRA Fee Comparison ChartCompare setup, storage, and annual fees side by side.Gold IRA Industry Statistics 2026Purity thresholds, tax rates, and cost data with primary sources.