Silver Price API: Live XAG Spot & Historical LBMA Data

A REST silver price API that returns the LBMA XAG fix in USD, EUR, GBP, JPY or any ISO 4217 currency — plus 58 years of daily closes including the Hunt-brothers 1980 corner, the 2011 run to $49, and the 2024 industrial-demand rally. Silver moves three times harder than gold; make sure your integration is built for it.

200 req/day free on forex + crypto · $9/mo unlocks silver, gold, platinum, palladium

Live silver spot price

LBMA-blended reference rate in USD per troy ounce. Refreshed every 15 minutes on the server; page loads show the last-published fix.

Server-rendered · updated 2026-04-21 09:19 UTC
XAG/USD · LBMA reference
$79.75
per troy ounce

To fetch this value programmatically:

GET /api/commodities/rates
  ?from=USD&to=XAG
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

60-second silver API quickstart

Copy a snippet, replace YOUR_API_KEY, and you have the live XAG/USD spot price in under a minute. Note that silver trades in dollars and cents per ounce — it moves on the second decimal place, which means caching aggressively or using ticker-style formatting matters more than it does for gold.

curl "https://api.unirateapi.com/api/commodities/rates?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&from=USD&to=XAG"
Example JSON response
{
  "amount": 1,
  "base": "USD",
  "to": "XAG",
  "rate": 0.03509,
  "result": 0.03509
}

The rate is troy ounces of silver per USD. Invert for USD/oz (0.03509 → $28.50/oz). For grams divide by 31.1035, for kilograms multiply the per-gram value by 1000. Most industrial buyers quote in kg; jewelers quote in grams.

Need analysis code? The precious metals tracker tutorial covers pandas dataframes, matplotlib plots, and gold/silver ratio calculations in a ready-to-run Python notebook.

30-year silver price history

361 monthly closing prices sampled from LBMA data, covering 1996-04-20 to 2026-04-01 (29.9 years). The USD price of silver is up 1325% over this window — from $5.254/oz to $74.87/oz, with an all-time range of $4.140 to $93.87 per troy ounce. Pull the full series via /api/commodities/historical/timeseries.

$93.87 $4.140 1996 2003 2011 2018 2026

Source: UniRateAPI commodity historical cache, derived from LBMA fixings. Points are sampled at one per month (first available close) for chart clarity. Daily granularity is available on the historical endpoint.

Spot silver vs silver futures: which one does this API return?

Spot silver (what you get here)

Spot silver is the LBMA reference price for immediate delivery of good-delivery bars — 1000 troy oz, 99.9%+ purity. Unlike gold, the LBMA only publishes a single daily silver fix (12:00 London time), so the blended spot you get here interpolates that fix with Kitco and goldprice.org market data through the rest of the day.

Right for: inventory valuation at bullion dealers, silver ETF NAV calculations, industrial buyers tracking raw-material cost (solar, electronics, medical), jewelry and flatware pricing, and accounting revaluation.

Endpoint: /api/commodities/rates with to=XAG. Spot is what we return; there is no futures data on this endpoint.

Futures (COMEX SI contracts)

Silver futures are exchange-traded contracts for 5,000 troy oz of 99.9%+ silver. COMEX SI is the most-watched contract. Silver basis (futures premium to spot) is sensitive to interest rates, physical demand shocks, and — notoriously — short-squeeze dynamics, as in the 2021 WallStreetBets silver-squeeze episode that briefly pushed silver above $30.

Right for: industrial-hedger forward pricing, spec traders, basis arbitrage strategies, miners locking in production prices.

Not covered by this API. Use a brokerage connection or a licensed exchange feed (Refinitiv, Bloomberg, CQG) for futures.

Rule of thumb

Pricing physical silver, reporting a fund NAV, or showing a customer their holding? Use spot (this API). Hedging forward-delivery industrial inventory or speculating intraday? Use futures (not this API).

Silver API endpoint reference

Four endpoints cover every silver integration pattern: current spot price, single-date historical, time-series ranges, and symbol metadata. All require api_key either as a query param or Authorization: Bearer header, and require the Pro tier. Full OpenAPI spec lives in the Swagger console.

GET /api/commodities/rates Current spot Pro

Returns live USD-per-troy-ounce prices for gold (XAU), silver (XAG), platinum (XPT) and palladium (XPD). Pass to=XAG for a single metal, or omit it for all four. Refreshed every 15 minutes from the LBMA-blended cache.

Parameters
  • api_key — required (Pro plan)
  • from — base (USD by default, or any ISO 4217)
  • to — optional target (XAU/XAG/XPT/XPD)
  • amount — optional multiplier
  • format — json (default), xml, jsonp
Example
GET /api/commodities/rates
  ?from=USD&to=XAG
→ { "amount": 1, "base": "USD",
    "to": "XAG",
    "rate": 0.000413,
    "result": 0.000413 }
GET /api/commodities/convert Convert amount Pro

Converts between metals and currencies in a single call — commodity-to-commodity, commodity-to-currency, or currency-to-commodity. Use this when you want a pre-calculated amount, not rate metadata.

Parameters
  • amount — required, float
  • from, to — any of XAU/XAG/XPT/XPD or ISO 4217 code
  • format — json / xml / jsonp
Example
GET /api/commodities/convert
  ?amount=10&from=XAG&to=USD
→ { "amount": 10, "from": "XAG",
    "to": "USD", "result": 24287.50 }
GET /api/commodities/historical/rates Historical (single date) Pro

Silver price for any specific date. Use for accounting, tax reporting, ETF NAV backdating, or jewelry-inventory revaluation. Set to to a fiat currency (e.g. EUR) and we convert through the matching historical FX rate for that same date — which is what auditors require.

Parameters
  • date — required, YYYY-MM-DD
  • from, to, amount — same shape as /rates
Example
GET /api/commodities/historical/rates
  ?date=2020-03-20&from=XAG&to=USD
→ { "date": "2020-03-20",
    "rate": 1479.25, ... }
GET /api/commodities/historical/timeseries Range query Pro

Date-range queries up to 5 years per call. Ideal for drawing charts, running backtests, or bulk-loading a metal series into a data warehouse. Combine with the forex time-series endpoint to get a dated, FX-correct valuation sequence.

Parameters
  • start_date, end_date — required
  • base — USD default, any ISO 4217
  • symbols — comma-separated (e.g. XAG)
Example
GET /api/commodities/historical/timeseries
  ?start_date=2024-01-01
  &end_date=2024-12-31
  &symbols=XAG

How the silver price is sourced

Silver spot and historical rates are blended from institutional and market sources, weighted by reliability and recency. When a source returns an outlier tick (fat-finger, feed glitch) it is automatically excluded from the published rate. Each scraper in the list below is a real module in our pipeline — not a marketing claim — and you can cross-reference them in the pipeline itself via app/scrapers/.

LBMA
London Bullion Market Association

The authoritative benchmark — twice-daily auction-based fixings for gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Used by ETFs, central banks, and bullion banks worldwide to settle contracts.

Kitco
Kitco Metals

Retail / wholesale bullion market data from Montreal. Cross-check source for the LBMA blend — useful during off-hours when London and New York are both closed.

World Gold Council
goldorg scraper

Supplementary gold pricing and demand metadata from the WGC / gold.org. Used for recency verification against the LBMA fix.

goldprice.org
goldpriceorg scraper

Public consensus bullion quotes in multiple currencies — used to sanity-check the FX-converted rates on the metals endpoints.

pricez feed
cfworker_pricez scraper

Edge-cached tick feed covering all four metals — used when LBMA and Kitco are both mid-update to avoid stale prices.

Swissquote
FX + metals feed

Market-hours metal quotes from a regulated Swiss dealer. Third leg of the outlier-rejection check on XAU/XAG, minor contributor on XPT/XPD.

The weighted-blend algorithm decays older observations and favours the LBMA fix during its publication windows. Full source code for each scraper is in app/scrapers/ in the UniRateAPI repo.

UniRateAPI vs GoldAPI.io, metals-api.com, MetalpriceAPI and Alpha Vantage

Pricing and feature data verified against each vendor’s public pricing page in 2026. All five providers ultimately read from the LBMA fix for the authoritative reference rate — the meaningful differences are packaging, historical depth, bundled features, and price.

Feature UniRateAPI GoldAPI.io metals-api.com MetalpriceAPI Alpha Vantage
Entry price $9/mo Free tier then on request $19.99/mo (Copper) $8.99/mo (Basic) $49.99/mo
Requests / month (entry) 750,000 ~100 (free tier) 2,500 10,000 75 req/min (no daily cap)
Metals covered XAU, XAG, XPT, XPD XAU, XAG All four + rhodium All four XAU, XAG
Historical depth 58 yrs (XAU/XAG), 36 yrs (XPT/XPD) Historical available 30 days on entry, 365 on top tier Yes (paid) Yes (paid)
Forex + crypto bundled 170+ FIAT · 420+ crypto No FIAT only, no crypto FIAT + metals, no crypto FIAT + crypto + stocks
Currency conversion Any ISO 4217, server-side USD only Yes (limited) Yes USD only
Free tier 6,000/mo (forex + crypto) ~100/mo None on entry 100/mo 25 req/day
Response formats JSON, XML, JSONP JSON JSON JSON JSON, CSV
Time-series included Yes, at $9 Paid tier Paid tier (Gold+) Paid tier Premium

Pricing accurate as of 2026-04. Verify each vendor’s current plans before committing — metals-api.com in particular has been raising prices regularly since 2024.

What developers build with the silver price API

Silver’s industrial role means the use-case mix looks very different from gold — half the integrations are procurement or manufacturing, not finance.

Solar-panel BOM costing

Silver paste is a meaningful input in PV cell manufacturing. Manufacturers fetch the XAG rate daily to update bill-of-materials costs and re-quote projects under fluctuating commodity conditions.

Multi-currency accounting →
👐

Jewelry & flatware

Silver jewelry and sterling flatware are priced as metal-cost + labour + margin. Live XAG spot × per-piece gram weight × sterling purity (92.5%) gives you auto-updating PDPs without manual intervention.

JS converter tutorial →
🛠

Electronics procurement

Silver content in connectors, capacitors and high-reliability contacts makes raw XAG a line item on many electronics BOMs. Procurement dashboards cache the daily rate, flag 5% moves, and trigger re-negotiation workflows.

International payments →
📈

Gold/silver ratio signal

The XAU/XAG ratio is a staple macro indicator. Fetch both in one call, divide client-side, chart against history, and trigger alerts when the ratio moves more than 2σ from trailing average.

Python tracker →
📊

Portfolio revaluation

SLV, SIVR and physical-silver allocations need mark-to-market revaluation. The /api/commodities/historical/rates endpoint returns the close on any date since 1968 — ASC 830 and IAS 21 compliant out of the box.

Historical rates guide →
🏥

Medical & antimicrobial

Silver compounds (silver nitrate, silver sulfadiazine) are priced off raw XAG for hospital procurement contracts and wound-care manufacturers. A weekly pull keeps supply-chain cost models current.

Multi-currency SaaS →

Silver price API FAQ

Pulled from search PAA for “silver price api” + actual integration questions from our support inbox during 2024–2026.

Is the silver price API free? +
The silver (XAG) endpoint is included in the UniRateAPI Pro plan at $9/mo, alongside gold, platinum, palladium, historical forex, and 750,000 req/month. The free tier of 200 req/day covers forex and crypto rates so you can test the integration end-to-end before flipping the precious-metals flag on. No credit card is needed to sign up.
What is the XAG currency code? +
XAG is the ISO 4217 code for one troy ounce of silver (31.1035g at 99.9% purity). So XAG/USD at 28.50 means one troy ounce of silver costs $28.50. Silver historically trades at roughly 1/60 to 1/100 the price of gold — the gold/silver ratio is a common macroeconomic indicator tracked by investors.
How do I pull live silver prices? +
Call GET /api/commodities/rates?from=USD&to=XAG. The JSON response returns the USD-per-troy-ounce spot price and a timestamp. Add &amount=N to pre-calculate the USD value of N troy ounces in a single round-trip — useful for rendering bullion-calculator widgets server-side.
How far back does the historical silver data go? +
Our silver price archive starts on 2 January 1968 — 58 years of LBMA daily closes. That covers the 1980 Hunt brothers silver corner (briefly $50/oz in 1980 dollars — equivalent to ~$200 today), the 2011 run to $49, the 2020 COVID collapse and recovery, and the 2024 industrial-demand rally driven by solar-panel manufacturing.
What is the spot silver price vs silver futures? +
Spot silver (what the API returns) is the reference price for immediate delivery of 99.9%+ silver bars, published by LBMA. Silver futures (COMEX SI) are contracts for future delivery that trade on exchange — they carry a basis premium or discount to spot depending on storage cost, interest rates and supply tightness. For accounting, e-commerce, jewelry and portfolio reporting use the spot price. For hedging inventory or speculating, brokers use the futures contract.
Why is silver more volatile than gold? +
The silver market is roughly 1/10 the size of the gold market by value, so the same dollar flow moves silver further. Silver also has a meaningful industrial demand component (solar PV panels, electronics, medical) on top of its monetary-metal role, which makes it sensitive to both macroeconomic and industrial cycles. Annual volatility on XAG is typically 20–30% vs 12–15% on XAU.
Can I get silver prices in other currencies? +
Yes — from=XAG&to=EUR (or any ISO 4217 code) converts the spot USD price through our forex cache to your target currency. This works on historical endpoints too, so a /api/commodities/historical/rates?date=2020-03-20&from=XAG&to=GBP call returns the correct GBP-per-troy-ounce price for that date using the matching historical FX rate.
What is the gold/silver ratio and can I calculate it from the API? +
The ratio is XAU_price / XAG_price — how many troy ounces of silver buy one ounce of gold. It has averaged around 60:1 historically but spiked above 100:1 during 2020, which is often read as a contrarian buy signal for silver. Fetch both rates in one call with GET /api/commodities/rates (no to parameter) and divide client-side.
How accurate is the silver price vs metalpriceapi.com or metals-api.com? +
All three vendors ultimately read from LBMA fix data for the authoritative silver reference price. UniRateAPI blends LBMA with cross-checks from Kitco and goldprice.org and excludes outlier ticks automatically. For reference-rate use cases the difference between providers is under $0.05/oz on silver; the meaningful difference is pricing and bundling — $9/mo for forex+crypto+metals here vs $20–80/mo for metals-only elsewhere.
How often does the silver price update? +
Our silver blend refreshes every 15 minutes during global market hours, matching LBMA's cadence. Between sessions (weekends, major holidays) the last fix holds. For sub-minute tick data you need a broker feed — but for reporting, accounting, inventory valuation and dashboards, a 15-minute reference rate is the correct primitive.

Ship a silver feature this afternoon

Register for a free API key, upgrade to Pro ($9/mo) for silver access, and you’re live. Cancel anytime — no annual contract. Silver is bundled with silver, platinum, palladium, 170+ forex currencies, 420+ cryptocurrencies and 27 years of historical data on one key.