Gold Price History in India: 118 Months of RBI Data

Executive summary

This report publishes and analyses the Reserve Bank of India’s monthly average price of standard gold in Mumbai from October 2016 to July 2026, the longest consistent official monthly gold-price series for India that BankCreds could source end to end. Over the period the price rose 374%; calendar-year averages rose in 8 of 8 year-on-year comparisons, with the largest increase (+43.6%) in 2025. The highest monthly average, ₹1,54,756, came in May 2026, and by July 2026 the price was 7.9% below that high. The full monthly table, yearly averages and a PDF edition of this report are below; RBI has not yet published August 2026 and September 2026, which are therefore not included.

What this series measures

The figures are RBI’s monthly average price of “standard gold” in Mumbai, in rupees per 10 grams — the average of the month’s daily prices, as published in RBI’s Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy and, for the latest months, the RBI Bulletin. Standard gold is the bullion trade’s 99.5% fineness grade. Prices exclude the 3% GST and jewellers’ making charges, so they are lower than what a shop charges for jewellery.

Because it is a monthly average, the series is smoother than the daily rate: a sharp rise or fall within a month shows up only partly. For today’s price, see the daily gold rate in India, which tracks the IBJA 999 rate every evening.

How the price moved, year by year

Calendar-year averages show the shape of the decade. The average was ₹28,975 in 2017 and ₹34,853 in 2019. It then reached ₹47,231 in 2020 (+35.5% on 2019), was almost flat in 2021 (+0.3%), and climbed in each of the next four years — +7.6% in 2022, +15.9% in 2023, +19.8% in 2024 and +43.6% in 2025, when the average reached ₹1,01,561.

The 2026 figure covers only the months published so far (7 months), so it is shown in the table but not compared with full years. This report describes the movements in the data; it does not attribute them to particular causes.

Reading long-run gold returns carefully

A compound annual growth rate of 17.3% summarises the whole period but hides the path: the price fell as much as 15.6% from a previous high (August 2020 to March 2021) and took until December 2022 to regain it. The answer to “how much did gold return?” also depends heavily on the start and end months chosen — over five years to July 2026 the figure was 24.5% a year, over three years 34.3%. Past movements do not indicate future prices. Our volatility and drawdowns study looks at the path in detail.

What it means if you hold or borrow against gold

The rupee value of gold you own moves with this price, and so does how much a lender will advance against it. A gold loan is sized on the gold’s current value, so the same jewellery supported a much larger loan in July 2026 than in October 2016. You can estimate today’s amount with the gold loan eligibility calculator.

Methodology

Data. RBI monthly average price of standard gold, Mumbai, ₹ per 10 grams (dataset version 1.0, updated 8 October 2026). Each month is taken from the latest RBI Handbook edition that contains it; months not yet in the Handbook come from the RBI Bulletin (published to the nearest rupee). Values are stored exactly as published — nothing is interpolated or filled from another series.

Calculations. Growth multiples compare the last month with the first. Compound annual growth = (end ÷ start)^(12 ÷ months between) − 1. Calendar-year averages are the mean of that year’s monthly averages; year-on-year changes are shown only between complete years. “Below the high” compares the latest month with the highest earlier monthly average. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place after calculation.

Checks. RBI’s Handbook and Bulletin values agree on every overlapping month, and the series was cross-checked against the MCX gold price published by the World Gold Council (median difference close to zero).

Full standards: BankCreds research methodology.