Pricing in this industry moves quietly. A minimum drifts, a waiver threshold doubles, a free-metal offer runs for a quarter and vanishes, and nobody publishes a note saying so. This page is the correction: an append-only log of every fee, minimum and promotional term we have verified across the ten providers we cover, newest at the top, each entry stamped with its figure and the evidence under it.
Advertising disclosure: Gold IRA Consulting is reader-supported. We may earn a commission when you open an account through some links on this page (marked sponsored). This never influences our editorial scores, which are based on independent research.
This is a running ledger of every fee, minimum and promotional term our researchers have confirmed across the ten gold IRA companies we cover, ordered newest first, with the figure and the evidence attached to each line. The log currently opens with our October 5, 2026 re-verification pass, which corrected Birch Gold Group's minimum to $5,000 and logged newly published schedules from Lear Capital and Noble Gold, and it rests on the June 2026 baseline verification that all ten of our review pages were first built from.
Here is the limitation, stated up front because it governs how you should read everything below. An entry lands on the day we verified it, never on the day the company changed it, because no provider in this category publishes change notices. A term can move six weeks before it surfaces on this page. Every figure here is a number to confirm in writing, not a number to plan around.
Twelve entries so far: ten from the June 2026 baseline pass, one recording a live promotion in August, and one October 2026 re-verification pass that supersedes several baseline figures. Older entries stay as written, because a changelog that edits its own history is not a changelog. Nothing here is a projection or a figure inferred from a competitor's page, and where a provider publishes nothing we say so rather than fill the gap.
What we logged: A re-verification pass against each company's own pages. Where the figures below differ from the June baseline further down, these supersede them; the baseline entries are left untouched as the record of what we found then.
Verification basis: Each company's own published pages, loaded on October 5, 2026, plus BBB.org for complaint counts. Patriot Gold Group, Orion Metal Exchange and American Bullion were not re-verified in this pass and keep their June figures.
What we logged: Birch Gold Group is running a promotion of up to $20,000 in free precious metals, recorded on the date we confirmed it live because no start date was published.
The figure: Up to $20,000 in metal, awarded as a credit rather than a reduction in any recurring charge. Birch's published annual schedule is unchanged by it and still totals roughly $265 a year flat.
Verification basis: The partner creative we serve at the top of every page on this site, checked live on the date above. The words that matter are "up to". Qualifying purchase size, metal selection and any holding requirement are set by Birch and were not stated in the creative, so ask for the full terms in the same email as your fee quote.
The ten entries below close our June 2026 sweep, each recording what we confirmed for one provider, at what confidence, against what document. These are the figures every other page on this site cites.
Figure: $50 one-time account setup, a $30 wire fee, $110 a year for storage and insurance, $125 a year for account management. Recurring items total roughly $265 a year, flat rather than scaled to your balance. Minimum to open approximately $10,000. The first year is waived on qualifying rollovers of $50,000 or more. Custodian partners named in published material: Equity Trust, STRATA Trust, GoldStar Trust.
Basis: Birch's own published schedule, readable before a sales call. The only schedule among the ten we could audit item by item, and the one entry here we hold at full confidence. Working on the Birch fee page.
Figure: Setup roughly $50, custodian roughly $100 a year, storage and insurance roughly $100 a year, all flat. Minimum to open approximately $50,000, the highest of the ten. On qualifying accounts, Augusta covers the custodian and storage charges for up to ten years. Storage is segregated at the Delaware Depository. No custodian is named publicly.
Basis: Augusta's published terms. The ten-year waiver is the largest recurring-cost offer in the category, and the reason a $50,000 balance behaves so differently here than a $40,000 one. See the Augusta fee page.
Figure: Minimum to open approximately $25,000. A flat annual structure covering the custodian and the depository rather than a percentage of assets, with the annual amount quoted rather than published. The headline offer is metal, not fee relief: up to ten percent back in free silver on qualifying purchases. Custodian partners named: Equity Trust, STRATA Trust.
Basis: Company material plus our own verification, with a caution attached: reported Goldco minimums differ noticeably between sources, some citing a figure well under $25,000. We carry $25,000 because that is what our verification supports, and flag it as the kind of data point that moves with promotions and account type. Detail on the Goldco fee page.
Figure: Roughly $180 a year all-in, of which about $75 is management on accounts under $100,000, with storage and insurance making up the balance. No liquidation or buyback fee on the way out. Minimum to open approximately $10,000, joint lowest among the majors. Custodian named most often: Equity Trust.
Basis: Company-quoted all-in figure, confirmed in our verification. One gap logged deliberately: the management component above $100,000 is not published, so an account over that line should have the all-in figure re-confirmed rather than assumed. See the American Hartford Gold fee page.
Figure: Minimum to open approximately $20,000 in our dataset. Annual charges are flat amounts rather than a percentage of account value, following the standard three-part shape of setup, custodian and storage plus insurance. Storage choice between International Depository Services in Texas and the Delaware Depository. No custodian named publicly.
Basis: Our provider dataset. Widest spread of any entry here: published sources variously cite $2,000, $10,000 and $20,000, and they cannot all describe the same product. No universal schedule exists that we could audit, so the annual amount stays unpriced. Detail on the Noble Gold fee page, and the site's conflicting statements are set out in our Noble Gold complaints and BBB check.
Figure: Minimum to open approximately $10,000. Storage and the custodian fee waived for the first year on a qualifying account, with no rollover-size condition published against it, which makes this the only unconditional first-year waiver we could verify among the ten. Depository assigned rather than chosen. No custodian named publicly.
Basis: Company material. Deliberately incomplete on the point that matters most over a long hold: the year-two-onwards schedule is not published, so the waiver is a discount with an unpriced tail. Ask what year two costs before accepting a free year one.
Figure: Minimum to open approximately $25,000. Flat annual charges, amount not published. No fee waiver advertised. Depository assigned, confirm at setup. No custodian named publicly.
Basis: Our provider dataset. Nothing about the pricing changed between passes, and nothing about it is public: two different statements this log keeps separate. Advantage Gold competes on onboarding quality rather than price, and prices accordingly.
Figure: Minimum to open approximately $5,000, the lowest gate of the ten, with a higher threshold of roughly $10,000 commonly attached to promotional offers. Fees may be waived under certain balance thresholds; those thresholds are not published. No sell-back fee. More than one depository partner, none of the custodians named.
Basis: Our provider dataset. Both numbers can be accurate for different products at different moments, which is why we log the pair rather than the flattering one. Confirm in writing which applies to a retirement account.
Figure: Minimum to open approximately $10,000. Commonly reported at approximately $280 in the first year, covering account setup and initial maintenance, and approximately $200 a year thereafter, with waivers possible depending on how much you fund with. Depository assigned, confirm at setup. No custodian named publicly.
Basis: Commonly reported figures rather than a published schedule, logged as such. Lowest confidence tier on the page: treat $280 and $200 as numbers to test against a written quote, not numbers to budget from.
Figure: Minimum to open approximately $25,000. A No Fee For Life structure on qualifying accounts, meaning Patriot absorbs the custodian and storage charges for as long as you hold the account. The qualifying funding level is commonly reported at around $100,000, and a setup charge of roughly $225 is generally waived once you meet the initial minimum. Depository assigned, confirm at setup. No custodian named publicly.
Basis: Company material for the structure, commonly reported figures for the threshold. The gap between a $25,000 entry point and a $100,000 qualifying level is the whole story of this offer, which is why both numbers sit on one line.
Sources for the entries above: published company fee schedules and promotional terms, our own provider dataset, and the individual review pages linked in each entry. All figures verified Jun 2026 unless the entry states another date. Fees, minimums, waiver thresholds and promotions are set by the providers and change without notice; confirm current pricing directly before you fund an account.
The log above is the detail. This is the version you would want on a phone while a representative is talking, sorted low to high, because the gate decides whether a conversation is worth having at all.
| VERIFIED MINIMUM | COMPANY | FIRST-YEAR POSITION | CUSTODIAN NAMED PUBLICLY | LAST VERIFIED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | Birch Gold Group | $315 first year, $235 after; first-year fees paid on new accounts over $50,000 | Equity Trust, STRATA Trust, GoldStar Trust | Oct 2026 |
| ~$5,000 | Orion Metal Exchange | May be waived under balance thresholds, thresholds not published | NOT NAMED | Jun 2026 |
| $10,000 | American Hartford Gold | ~$180 all-in, no size-linked waiver published | Equity Trust | Oct 2026 (minimum), Jun 2026 (fees) |
| ~$10,000 | American Bullion | $0 first year on storage and custodian, no size condition published | NOT NAMED | Jun 2026 |
| ~$10,000 | Lear Capital | $315 or $365 first year, $235 or $285 after (published schedule) | NOT NAMED | Oct 2026 |
| $20,000 | Noble Gold Investments | $50 setup, $30 wire, $125 a year plus $160 storage (support FAQ says $80 and $275) | NOT NAMED | Oct 2026 |
| ~$25,000 | Goldco | One flat annual fee, may be reimbursed; up to 10% back in free silver on $100,000+ | Equity Trust, STRATA Trust | Oct 2026 |
| ~$25,000 | Advantage Gold | Flat annual, amount not published | STRATA Trust, Equity Trust | Oct 2026 |
| ~$25,000 | Patriot Gold Group | No Fee For Life on qualifying accounts, threshold reported around $100,000 | NOT NAMED | Jun 2026 |
| ~$50,000 | Augusta Precious Metals | $50 setup, $125 custodian, $100 storage per its archived fee sheet; ten-year waiver not on that sheet | NOT NAMED | Oct 2026 |
Source: published company fee schedules, promotional terms and minimum investment statements, plus our provider dataset, verified Jun 2026, with the rows marked Oct 2026 re-verified on October 5, 2026. A blank in the custodian column records an absence of public disclosure, not a criticism of any custodian. Full working on the gold IRA comparison chart.
A changelog is only worth reading if the bar for getting into it is high and stated. Ours has three tiers, and every entry above sits in one of them.
A fee schedule printed on the company's own site, readable without giving anyone your phone number. Strongest evidence in the category, and the rarest: one provider of the ten meets it line by line, two more publish a partial or all-in figure. Entries at this tier carry the specific items, because we can point at them.
A custodian election form, an account application, or a fee disclosure handed over during onboarding. These beat any marketing page, because the custodian rather than the dealer is the party that bills you. If a figure in this log contradicts your election form, the election form wins.
A figure supplied in writing by the provider to an identifiable prospect. We accept those and we label them, because a quote binds nobody and can differ between two callers on the same afternoon. A figure that is neither published nor quoted but recurs consistently across independent reporting gets marked "commonly reported" and treated as the weakest thing here.
One more rule, and it is the one that makes this page worth keeping. Entries are appended, never rewritten. If we get something wrong the correction arrives as a new dated line and the original stays put. A log you can silently edit is not a log.
The practical use of this page is narrow. You have a quote in front of you, or you are about to get one, and you want to know whether it resembles the number we last verified. Open the log, find the provider, compare. A gap of a few dollars means the schedule drifted. A gap of a hundred and fifty means one of two things, and both are worth a phone call: the provider repriced since June, or you have been quoted something other than the standard schedule.
Do three things with a discrepancy. Ask for the current schedule in writing, in full, including the year-two figure rather than the promotional first-year one. Ask which custodian will administer the account, because that schedule bills you for as long as you hold while a dealer promotion typically covers one year. Then run both numbers through the arithmetic before deciding the difference is trivial: a $235 annual fee is about $2,350 over a decade, before the metal does anything at all.
Where to go next, depending on what you are trying to settle:
If you hold a written quote, a custodian election form or a promotional term that contradicts an entry above, send it through the contact details on our about page. Redact your account number and personal details; the useful part is the figure, the provider and the date on the document. Anything that checks out gets its own dated entry rather than a quiet amendment to the original. Reader paperwork is the fastest route we have to catching a change, because providers do not announce them and our own passes are periodic.
We add an entry whenever we verify something, not on a fixed publishing calendar. A full baseline pass across all ten companies runs periodically, and the most recent complete pass closed in June 2026. Between passes we log individual items as we catch them: a promotion appearing in live partner creative, a revised published schedule, a minimum that a written quote contradicts. Nothing is ever quietly edited out. Corrections arrive as fresh entries carrying their own date, so the record of what we believed and when we believed it stays intact and auditable.
Because a verification date is the only date we can evidence. Gold IRA providers do not issue change notices, do not version their fee schedules, and do not date their promotional terms. The single thing our researchers can stand behind is the day a figure was confirmed against a published schedule, a custodian election form, or a written quote. The practical consequence is lag: a fee can move in April and surface here in June. We would rather publish a date we can defend than an effective date we would be inventing.
As of our October 5, 2026 pass, four of the ten print line-by-line IRA fees on their own sites. Birch Gold Group prints $50 one-time setup, a $30 wire fee, $110 a year for storage and insurance and $125 a year for account management: $315 in the first year and $235 a year after. Lear Capital prints the same $50, $125 and $30 items with $110 commingled or $160 segregated storage, so $315 or $365 in year one and $235 or $285 after. Noble Gold Investments prints $50 setup, $30 wire, $125 maintenance and $160 storage, although its support FAQ quotes $80 and $275. Augusta Precious Metals' archived fee sheet shows $50 setup, $125 custodian and $100 storage. American Hartford Gold quotes a roughly $180 all-in annual figure (last verified Jun 2026). The rest describe their pricing rather than printing it. Confirm current pricing in writing.
Not the schedule, no. A free-metal offer is a one-time credit attached to a qualifying purchase, and it sits on top of an annual fee structure that has not moved. Birch Gold Group's $235 a year after the first year is the same figure whether a promotion is running or not. The costs that follow you for the life of the account are the custodian and storage charges, and, larger than either of those, the dealer markup over spot that appears on no schedule anywhere. Read promotional terms and the annual schedule as two separate documents, because that is exactly what they are.
Related reading: the full fee breakdown, the ten-company comparison chart, the fee calculator, and how we rank.
Company figures come from published fee schedules, minimum investment statements, promotional terms and our own provider dataset, verified Jun 2026 except where an entry carries a later date. Federal guidance is cited to primary sources only.
This page records verification dates, not company effective dates, and claims no figure was accurate on any day but the one stamped on its entry. Not financial advice. Confirm every number with the provider and the custodian before funding an account.
Our free kit puts the fee, minimum and waiver data behind this log into something you can hold next to a quote, with the questions that force a provider to put its schedule in writing.