How Much Gold Is Left? ·Latest year 2025 est.
At today's mine rates, known gold reserves cover another 20 years
Copper covers 43 years, silver 23. Gold ranks scarcest of the three on this ratio. The ratio counts what is worth mining at today's price, not what is in the ground.
US official gold vs world mine output
The United States holds 8,134 tonnes of gold in official reserves. That is 2.5 years of everything every mine on earth produces. See the full breakdown of central-bank gold holdings by country.
Where output actually fell
Two of the five metals here lost ground in 2025: platinum by 5.0%, palladium by 12.4%. They are also the only two with no reserve figure at all. USGS reports platinum-group reserves as one pooled number rather than per element, so the supply that is shrinking is the supply we cannot put a clock on.
Gold
Mine production · 2025
3,300 t
+0.6% vs 2024
Reserves
66,000 t
worth mining at today's price
Reserves ÷ production
≈ 20 years of cover at 2025 mine rates
Silver
Mine production · 2025
26,000 t
+2.8% vs 2024
Reserves
610,000 t
worth mining at today's price
Reserves ÷ production
≈ 23 years of cover at 2025 mine rates
Copper
Mine production · 2025
23 Mt
+0.0% vs 2024
Reserves
980 Mt
worth mining at today's price
Reserves ÷ production
≈ 43 years of cover at 2025 mine rates
Platinum
Mine production · 2025
170 t
-5.0% vs 2024
Reserves
—
USGS reports platinum-group-metal reserves jointly, not per element, so no single-metal reserves figure is published.
Palladium
Mine production · 2025
190 t
-12.4% vs 2024
Reserves
—
USGS reports platinum-group-metal reserves jointly, not per element, so no single-metal reserves figure is published.
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Common questions
- How many years of gold are left?
- About 20 years at current mine rates, and that is not a countdown. USGS books world gold reserves at 66,000 t against mine production of 3,300 t a year. "Reserves" means the gold worth digging at today's price with today's technology. Raise the price and lower-grade rock becomes economic, so the reserve grows without a single new ounce being discovered. The number measures economics, not geology.
- What is the reserves-to-production ratio?
- Reserves divided by one year of mine production. It answers a narrow question: if output held flat and nobody ever proved another deposit, how long would the booked reserve last. It is a comparison tool, and the comparison is the interesting part: gold covers 20 years, copper 43. Neither figure forecasts anything. Both are re-estimated every year, and both move.
More questions
- Does a 20-year reserve figure mean gold will run out?
- No, and the mechanism is worth understanding. A reserve is the slice of a deposit that pays to extract under current economics, not the metal in the ground. Miners book perhaps a decade or two of it because proving more costs money that earns nothing until it is mined. So the ratio keeps resetting: metal comes out, price and exploration put more in, the years-of-cover figure stays in the same band. A short cover is how the industry finances itself, not a warning.
- How much gold, silver, and copper is mined each year?
- Gold 3,300 t a year, silver 26,000 t, copper 23 Mt. Platinum and palladium are a rounding error beside them, under 200 tonnes each. This page carries the latest annual figure for each metal, next to the prior year. The figures are world totals from the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries. The newest year is a USGS estimate; the year before it is an actual.
- Where does this data come from?
- The U.S. Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries, published once a year by the USGS National Minerals Information Center. World-total mine production and reserves, taken as published. We report the figures and do the arithmetic on this page; we do not re-estimate the underlying numbers.
Data source, and what moves these numbers
World-total mine production and reserves from the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries, taken as published. The newest production year is a USGS estimate; the year before it is an actual, which is why a figure can move after it first appears.
A reserve is not a measurement of the metal in the ground. It is the slice of a known deposit that pays to extract at today's price with today's technology, so it moves when either of those moves, and it moves without anyone finding anything. That is the whole reason a reserve figure can be re-cut higher in a year when the world mined a record tonnage out of it.
Next reading: USGS publishes once a year, and this page carries the 2025 production year. The cards update when the next edition lands, and the reserves-to-production figures are recomputed from it rather than carried forward. We report the figures and do the arithmetic; this is not investment advice.