How we measure
Every number on XAU Meter carries its date, its source and a link to this page. If something is not available, we say so instead of showing a zero.
Principles
- We measure, we do not forecast. XAU Meter publishes no price forecasts and no trade signals of its own.
- Other people's forecasts are quoted, not copied. Each forecast is shown with its author, the date it was issued, its horizon and a link to where it was published.
- Sources are used under their terms. Where a provider requires a licence or permission, we do not show its data until we have it.
- No affiliate links. If that ever changes, every page with such a link will say so, and no ranking will change because of it.
Forecasts
- Since 24 October 2026 we take a daily snapshot of public gold forecast pages (algorithmic forecast sites and published polls) and keep the original pages as evidence. Bank forecasts are entered by hand from public sources and checked against the original wording.
- The issue date is the date the source states, not the date we saw it. Some sites leave an old forecast online for days; that shows up in the archive.
- Scoring: the error of each forecast against the actual price at its target date, in dollars and percent, and against a naive benchmark ("the price will not change"). A source is ranked only after enough of its forecasts have matured.
Trading costs
- Since late October 2026 we record every XAUUSD price tick (bid and ask) from demo accounts at several international brokers, on MetaTrader 5, for both a standard (spread only) and a raw/ECN (spread plus commission) account type at each broker.
- Spread is sampled once a minute (the last quote of each minute), so a burst of ticks around a news release does not outweigh a quiet hour. We publish the median ("typical") and the 90th percentile ("busy moments"), by account and by trading session.
- Limits: demo prices can differ from live accounts; we measure only the brokers that accepted our accounts; the spread page shows the spread alone for now - commission (raw and ECN accounts) and swap will be added to give the full cost, and the page says what is included.
Time
- All times are UTC unless shown otherwise. A trading day closes at 17:00 New York time (the gold futures daily break), so daily figures use that close, not midnight.
- Market hours follow the CME Globex schedule for gold futures, which most brokers also use for XAUUSD. Holiday schedules are listed separately by CME.
Price
We do not republish licensed benchmark prices (such as the LBMA Gold Price) without a licence. Prices on XAU Meter come from our own broker data feeds and are labelled as such: "gold now" is the median mid-price ((bid + ask) / 2) across the broker accounts we record, refreshed every 10 minutes. When the market is closed we show the last quote and say so.
Corrections
If a number is wrong, write to [email protected]. Corrections are dated on the page where they were made.
Page data last updated: · Measured and edited by Adrian Troy · How we measure