Silver (XAG/USD): Live Price, Contract Size and Why It Is Not Gold
Silver behaves like gold with the volume turned up and the liquidity turned down. Same safe-haven story, plus industrial demand, on a contract fifty times larger in ounces.
XAG/USD is one troy ounce of silver priced in US dollars, with a standard contract of 5,000 ounces - fifty times the ounces in a gold lot. A $0.01 move is $50 per standard lot. Silver carries gold's monetary story plus industrial demand, and it is thinner, so it moves further in percentage terms in both directions.
Silver (XAG/USD) right now
One pip = 0.01 of price. A standard lot is 5,000 troy ounces, so pip value = pip size × contract size × lots. Figures assume a USD account; confirm the contract size with your broker.
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Open XAGUSD on the live desk (H1) → See what the desk does →The contract catches people out
A standard silver contract is 5,000 ounces against gold's 100. With silver near $30, one lot is a notional position of roughly $150,000, and a $0.01 tick is $50. Traders who size silver like gold end up with far more exposure than intended - the tool above computes it from the live price.
Two demands, one price
- Monetary demand, which it shares with gold: real yields, the dollar, safe-haven flows.
- Industrial demand, which gold barely has - electronics and solar manufacturing are real consumers of silver, so growth data matters here in a way it does not for gold.
That second leg is why silver sometimes falls while gold rises: a growth scare is bullish for the monetary story and bearish for the industrial one.
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Play free, no signup →Liquidity and behaviour
Silver is a smaller market than gold, so spreads are wider, moves overshoot more, and the same headline produces a larger percentage swing. The gold-silver ratio is widely watched as a relative value gauge; it is a description of the relationship, not a trading signal.
Sizing it
Work in dollars of price movement rather than "pips", because the conventions vary even more than gold's. Stop distance in dollars times 5,000 times lots is your risk - which usually means fractional lots on a retail account.
How far XAG/USD actually moves
Measured on the OANDA feed our charting desk runs on, 2026-01-08 to 2026-09-17 (180 completed daily bars). Recalculated every week.
| Average daily range | 4.5 dollars |
|---|---|
| Median day | 3.5 dollars |
| Widest day in the window | 45.2 dollars |
| Quietest day | 1.3 dollars |
| Average as % of price | 6.153% |
| Widest weekday | Friday (5.3 dollars) |
| Busiest hour | 13:00 UTC, about 1.0 dollars in that hour (quietest 20:00, 0.3) |
The median is the middle day and the average is pulled up by a handful of violent ones, so size a stop against the median and expect the average to flatter you. Full table for every instrument, with the method, on average daily range by pair.
Frequently asked questions
How big is a silver contract?
A standard XAG/USD contract is 5,000 troy ounces, so a $0.01 move is $50 per standard lot.
Is silver more volatile than gold?
In percentage terms it usually moves more, because the market is smaller and it carries industrial as well as monetary demand.
Why does silver sometimes fall when gold rises?
Silver has a large industrial demand component. A growth scare can support gold's safe-haven bid while hurting silver's industrial one.
What is the gold-silver ratio?
The number of silver ounces one gold ounce buys. It is widely watched as a relative-value gauge, but it describes the relationship rather than predicting it.
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