Silver has had an extraordinary two years in India. The rate per kilogram more than doubled through 2025, peaked above ₹3.38 lakh in January 2026, then fell almost 40% in two months. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are now asking whether silver is a good buy.
Nobody can honestly answer that for you, and this article won't try. No one knows where silver goes next. What the site's own price history can show is how silver has actually behaved in India: how much it has returned, how violently it moves, and how it compares with gold. That's the evidence worth weighing before buying any metal.
Today's rate is ₹1,81,460.00 per kg (999 silver, 2 Nov 2026). All figures below are the national 999 (fine) silver rate, metal value only, unless stated.
Returns: silver vs gold
| Period | Gold | Silver |
|---|---|---|
| 1 year | +20.6% (+20.6% a year) | +32.7% (+32.7% a year) |
| 3 years | +152.8% (+36.2% a year) | +191.2% (+42.8% a year) |
| 5 years | +219.7% (+26.2% a year) | +220.9% (+26.3% a year) |
| 10 years | +394.7% (+17.3% a year) | +353.7% (+16.3% a year) |
Change in the national per-gram rate up to 2 Nov 2026; the figure in brackets is the compound annual rate. Past performance says nothing about future returns.
When this was written in October 2026, silver was ahead over every period: up about 44% in a year against gold's 18%, and roughly 4.6 times its price of ten years earlier against gold's 4.4 times. Over ten years the two are almost neck and neck, at about 18–19% a year each.
But the long-run average hides very different journeys. From the start of 2015 to the end of 2019, silver went almost nowhere. It began 2015 at about ₹31,900 per kg and ended 2019 at about ₹40,900, with years in between below ₹30,000. Gold rose about 45% over the same five years. Nearly all of silver's decade-long return came in two bursts: 2020, and late 2025 into early 2026.
Volatility: twice as bumpy as gold
Over the last five years, silver's daily price swings in India have been roughly twice as large as gold's. Measured the standard way, as annualised volatility of daily returns, silver comes out near 40% against gold's roughly 19%. In plain terms, a 5% day is unremarkable for silver and rare for gold.
The extremes show it more clearly:
| Event | Gold | Silver |
|---|---|---|
| Largest fall from a peak since 2015 | −20.7% (2020–21) | −39.1% (Jan–Mar 2026) |
| Single-day move on 30 January 2026 | −11.6% | −31.5% |
| March 2020 pandemic crash, 13 and 16 March | −2.4% and −3.2% | −8.8% and −13.3% |
Silver's 2026 crash took it from ₹3,38,545 per kg on 26 January to about ₹2,06,000 on 26 March. Someone who bought at the January peak was sitting on a 39% loss two months later. Gold's worst fall in the same period was about 16%.
Why silver moves differently
Gold is held almost entirely as a store of value: jewellery, bars, coins and central-bank reserves. Silver has a second identity as an industrial metal. More than half of global demand comes from electronics, solar panels, electric vehicles and other manufacturing. That pulls its price two ways:
- When investors pile into precious metals, silver is a smaller, less liquid market than gold, so the same flood of money moves it further, up and down.
- When the industrial outlook changes, silver reacts in ways gold doesn't, as it did in early 2020 when factories shut.
For Indian buyers the rupee and import duty sit on top of both. The effective duty on silver rose from 6% to 15% on 13 May 2026, which lifted the domestic rate in a single day independently of the world price.
The gold–silver ratio
The gold–silver ratio is how many grams of silver one gram of gold buys. It's a common way to compare the two metals' relative price.
- Today: about 70 (on 20 October 2026).
- Lowest since 2015: about 44, on 26 January 2026, the day silver peaked.
- Highest since 2015: about 127, on 18 March 2020, at the depth of the pandemic sell-off.
- Median since 2015: about 79.
So silver is currently a little more expensive relative to gold than its ten-year middle, and well below the peak it reached in January. The ratio describes the past relationship. It doesn't predict which way it will move, and it has stayed far from its average for years at a time.
The cost of holding silver
How you buy silver changes your real return as much as the price does:
- Bars and coins (999): closest to the published rate when you buy, but resale quotes are typically a few percent below it, and wider than for gold. Storage is bulky. A kilogram of silver is a sizeable bar, worth only about as much as 14 g of gold today.
- Jewellery, utensils and articles (925 or lower): carry making charges and 3% GST on purchase, and resale is on the metal value only, often at a purity below 925 after testing. They're best thought of as purchases for use, not investments.
- Silver ETFs: traded on the stock exchange since 2022. They track the rate closely without storage or purity worries, at the cost of an annual expense ratio and the need for a demat account.
On tax, gains on physical silver and on silver ETFs are treated as capital gains, at different holding periods and rates depending on the form. Check the current rules for the year you sell, because they have changed several times recently.
So, is it a good buy?
That depends on things only you know: how long you can hold, how you'd react to a 40% fall, and what else you own. What the data does show:
- Over ten years silver has matched gold, but with twice the volatility and much deeper falls.
- Its returns came in short, violent bursts separated by long flat stretches.
- It's cheaper per gram, so smaller amounts are easier to accumulate, but costlier to buy and sell in physical form.
Many Indian households treat silver as a small addition alongside gold rather than a replacement for it, for exactly these reasons. If you're comparing the two, the silver rate page has the daily rate and long-range chart, and the gold, silver, platinum and SGB guide compares the ways to hold each.
This article describes historical data only and is not investment advice or a price forecast.