Silver Price by Year

By the Silver Market Chart editorial team · Updated November 10, 2026

Quick answer: Silver averaged $40.12 per troy ounce in 2025, the last complete year, against $28.30 the year before. So far in 2026, the year-to-date average is $70.63. The table below lists one average for every year from 1900, with the percentage change from the previous year.

How to use the table

Each row is one calendar year. The average column is the price of one ounce of silver averaged across that whole year, in US dollars at the time (not adjusted for inflation). The change column compares that average with the row above it, so a year that started high and ended low can still show a rise if its average beat the year before. A short note appears beside the years that moved the market most; most rows have none, because most years were quiet.

The last row is the current year, marked "to date". Its average covers only the trading days so far and will keep changing until December closes the year. Treat it as a progress report, not a final figure.

Annual averages are smooth by design. They answer "what did silver cost, on average, in a given year?" and they're the right tool for comparing decades. They are the wrong tool for finding a peak or a trough, because a sharp spike lasting a few weeks gets averaged in with eleven calmer months. If you want to see those years drawn as a line, with tabs for 20, 30, 50 and 100 years, the silver price chart over 30 years plots this same series.

How each year's average is worked out

The table joins two sources, and the method differs by era. Knowing which one produced a row tells you how much weight its second decimal can bear.

1900 to the year before 2001: USGS unit values

For the early rows we use USGS Data Series 140, the agency's historical statistics on silver, which run to 2021. USGS publishes an annual unit value in dollars per metric ton. We convert it to dollars per troy ounce by dividing by 32,150.7466, the number of troy ounces in one metric ton. USGS rounds its values to three significant figures, so a figure from the 1920s is accurate to about the nearest cent but not beyond.

From 2001: the yearly mean of daily closes

Starting with 2001, the first full calendar year in our market feed, each row is the mean of every daily closing price of COMEX front-month silver futures in that year. That is a different measurement from USGS's, so we check the two wherever they overlap, from 2001 to 2021. The largest difference in any overlapping year is 1.5%, and the build refuses to publish if any year differs by more than five percent.

The current year: year to date

For 2026, the row is the mean of the daily closes so far this year. It updates every time the site refreshes. When the year ends, that row becomes a full-year figure and a new year-to-date row begins.

Quick answers for the years people ask about

Silver price in 2020: find the 2020 row in the table; it shows that year's mean of daily COMEX closes and the change from 2019.

Silver price in 2000: the 2000 row comes from USGS's unit value, the last year before the feed takes over, so it is rounded to three significant figures.

Silver price in 2011: the 2011 row is the high point of the feed's first two decades; the table shows how far the following years fell back from it.

Silver price in 1980: the 1980 row is an annual average, well below the brief peak traded that January; in USGS's inflation-adjusted column, 1980 is the highest year on record.

Silver price in 2025: the average was $40.12; the highest full-year average in the table belongs to 2025, at $40.12.

Silver price in 1995: the average was $5.16, thirty years before the last full year.

What sits behind the biggest rows

A handful of rows carry most of the table's drama. The jump into 1980 and the drop out of it trace the episode covered on the page about the Hunt brothers' silver squeeze, when a concentrated position in futures and metal pushed the price up until exchange rules changed. The rows after 2011 show a long, slow decline from the post-crisis high. And the 2026 row reflects a year in which silver reached a record of $121.30 on January 29, 2026, then fell to 57.5% below it; the dated account of that fall is on the page explaining why the silver price is dropping.

Notice that the record itself never appears in this table. It was a single day's high in the futures market, and averages absorb single days. That's the main reason an annual table and a daily chart can seem to disagree about the same year.

If the table's columns raise questions about candles, ranges or why a daily chart looks so different, the guide on how to read a silver price chart walks through each part of a price chart. For today's price, set against these annual figures, go back to the silver market price chart on the homepage or check the current spot quote in its price card.

What a yearly average can't tell you

This table can't tell you what silver cost on a particular day, what you would have paid a dealer, or how a holding would have performed after premiums and storage. It also can't tell you what any future row will say. Each average describes a year that has already happened, measured one consistent way. It is a record, not a forecast.

Information, not financial advice. We do not tell you to buy or sell and we do not predict prices. Figures are reference numbers as of the time shown.

What Augusta publishes about its minimum, its kit and its storage arrangements is collected on our page about Augusta Precious Metals.

Questions about silver's yearly prices

Keep reading

• the 100-year chart: this same series drawn as a line, with a 1998-dollar toggle.
• Silver Thursday: the story behind the 1980 row and its collapse.
• candlestick charts: reading the daily view that annual averages smooth away.