Methodology

How we rank offers

Offers are ranked by total acquisition cost for the quantity and fulfilment method you have selected. Not by advertised unit price, and not by anything else.

The total is built like this:

unit price      = price at your quantity, after any price break
subtotal        = unit price × quantity
delivery        = 0 if collection, or 0 if subtotal ≥ free threshold,
                  otherwise the dealer's delivery charge
payment fee     = (subtotal + delivery) × surcharge %, plus any fixed fee
other fees      = sum of mandatory fees (per-unit fees × quantity)
total           = subtotal + delivery + payment fee + other fees − discount
delivered unit  = total ÷ quantity

Ties are broken by dealer name so the order is fully deterministic — the same data always produces the same ranking.

We publish four separate rankings, because “cheapest” depends on what you are doing:

• Delivered — lowest total including delivery.
• Collection — lowest total when collecting in person.
• Lowest premium — smallest margin over the intrinsic gold value.
• Lowest unit cost — cheapest per item at your chosen quantity.

Premium over spot

The premium is what you pay above the metal itself:

intrinsic value = fine gold (troy oz) × spot price (GBP per troy oz)
premium (£)     = delivered unit cost − intrinsic value
premium (%)     = premium (£) ÷ intrinsic value × 100

Two details matter. We use fine gold weight, never gross weight — a Sovereign weighs 7.99 g but contains 7.32 g of gold, and valuing the gross weight would overstate its intrinsic value by about 9%. And we use the delivered cost, not the advertised price, so the premium reflects what you actually part with.

When we cannot obtain a current spot price, we hide the premium entirely rather than calculate it against a stale one. Dealer prices remain comparable against each other.

Fee treatment

Every offer is labelled with how complete its total is. We never describe a total as including all fees unless every mandatory component we know about is actually in it.

Where a specific fee cannot be established we display “Final fee requires dealer verification” rather than substituting an estimate.

Freshness and stale data

A price is only as good as the moment it was checked, so every figure carries its age. Our current thresholds:

A critically stale price can never receive a “best price” badge, even if the arithmetic would put it first. We show it separately rather than hiding it, so you know your usual dealer is still stocking the item — we just cannot vouch for the figure.

Deal Score

A deterministic score from 0 to 100. It is arithmetic, not a model — no AI is involved, and the same inputs always produce the same score. The breakdown is shown on every offer that has one.

Rules the score obeys

• Commission is never an input. Whether a dealer pays us cannot affect the score, and there is an automated test that fails if it ever does.
• Missing data means no score. With fewer than two comparable offers we show “insufficient data” instead of inventing a number.
• Hiding a fee cannot improve a score. An offer with an incomplete total is capped at 40, and one with an unknown payment fee at 70. Without this cap, excluding a delivery charge would understate the premium and raise the score — rewarding a dealer for publishing less.
• It never replaces the price. The lowest delivered cost is always shown independently, so you can ignore the score entirely.

Historical indicators

Badges such as “Lowest premium in 30 days” compare the current premium against the daily minimum premium we recorded for that product over the window. We require at least 5 readings spanning 7 days before making any historical claim; below that we say “insufficient history”.

We compare premium, not price, and this distinction is the whole point. A coin can be £80 cheaper than last month purely because the gold price fell, while the premium over spot has actually widened. Ranking on price would call that a better deal. It is not.

How we collect prices

Prices reach us through one of several routes, and we record which one for every listing:

• Dealer-supplied feeds, where a dealer provides one.
• Affiliate feeds, where a programme offers structured data.
• Permitted automated adapters, only after a compliance review.
• CSV and JSON imports.
• Manual entry by an administrator.

Before enabling any automated collection we review the dealer’s robots instructions and terms, check whether a feed or API exists, identify ourselves with a transparent user agent, and rate-limit requests. We do not bypass CAPTCHAs, bypass authentication, rotate identities to defeat blocking, or collect anything about a dealer’s customers.

Plausibility checks

Every incoming price is checked before it can appear as a best deal. A listing failing a critical check is held out of the ranking until a human reviews it.

• Premium below -1% or above 60% over spot.
• Zero or negative prices.
• A single-update movement greater than 15%.
• A price unchanged for more than 72 hours, which usually means a parser has broken.
• Currency mismatches, missing weights and unexpected parser output.

Dealer inclusion criteria

We do not describe any dealer as “trusted”. Being listed means we verified specific, checkable things — nothing more:

• Operates a UK-registered business with a verifiable company identity.
• Publishes a physical business address and a working contact route.
• Serves its website over HTTPS with a valid certificate.
• Publishes prices and delivery terms openly, without requiring an account.
• Has an established retail presence with a trading history of several years.

Inclusion is not an endorsement, not a guarantee about a dealer’s current conduct or financial position, and not a recommendation. Do your own checks before sending money to anyone.

Sponsorship policy

We may earn a commission when you visit or buy from some dealers. This does not change the price you pay or the order of our comparison results.

Concretely, that means:

• Ranking is computed from cost alone. Commission is not an input to any published figure.
• No dealer can pay for a higher position, and no position is for sale.
• Our database supports clearly-labelled sponsored placements, but the feature is disabled and nothing on this site is currently sponsored.
• Affiliate status is disclosed on every dealer profile, whether present or absent.

Read the full affiliate disclosure.

Limitations

Things this site cannot do, stated plainly:

• We are not the checkout. Only the dealer’s own basket gives you a definitive price. Always confirm before ordering.
• Coverage is partial. We do not cover every UK dealer or every product, so “cheapest” means cheapest among the offers we hold.
• Prices go out of date between checks. That is why every figure carries a timestamp — please read it.
• We do not track buyback prices. The spread between buying and selling often matters more than the purchase premium, and you need to check it with the dealer directly.
• We give no advice. GoldSorted is a price comparison tool. We are not regulated, we do not sell bullion, and nothing here is financial or tax advice.