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Silver Spot vs Futures Price

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

Quick answer: The spot price is what silver costs for near-immediate delivery. A futures price is what buyers and sellers agree today for delivery in a named later month. At our latest refresh, the front COMEX silver futures contract stood at $51.53 per troy ounce and spot at $51.66, a difference of $-0.13. Both figures were read at the same refresh, November 10, 2026, so the gap is not an artifact of two different moments.

Spot and futures, read at the same refresh ()

  • $51.66 spot quote, gold-api.com
  • $51.53 front COMEX futures (SI=F), Yahoo Finance
  • −$0.13 futures minus spot

Three prices get called "the silver price" in the news, and they come from three different places. One is a spot quote, the number at the top of most price pages, including our silver market price chart. One is a futures price from COMEX in New York. The third is the LBMA Silver Price, set once a day in London. They usually land close together. They are rarely identical, and the reasons say a lot about how the market works.

What "spot" means on a price page

Spot is shorthand for prompt delivery: you pay now, and the metal is yours within a short settlement period. The professional market for it is largely between banks and dealers rather than on a single exchange. ICE describes the London benchmark as the price for unallocated silver delivered in London, which gives a sense of what "spot" refers to: big bars, held in vaults, changing owner on paper.

There is no single official spot price in the way there is an official closing price for a futures contract. Every website that shows spot takes it from a data provider. Ours comes from gold-api.com and refreshes every six hours, with a time stamp beside every figure. Other sites use other feeds, update at other intervals, and may show a bid, an ask or a midpoint. This page can't tell you exactly how each feed assembles its number, because providers rarely publish their method in full. That is the main reason two websites can show different spot prices at the same moment.

COMEX silver futures, the basics

A futures contract is a standard agreement to deliver a fixed amount of metal in a named month. Silver's main US contract trades on COMEX, part of CME Group. CME's own pages did not respond to our reads, so the contract terms here come from the exchange's rule text as filed with the CFTC in 2021: silver futures sit in rulebook Chapter 112 under commodity code SI. Each contract covers 5,000 troy ounces, with a weight tolerance of 10% either way. Silver delivered against it must assay to at least 999 fineness and come from an exchange-approved brand, delivered as five bars of 1,000 ounces each. Rule text can be amended after a filing, so treat these as the 2021 terms.

Contract months come from a broker's summary, since CME's specification page was not readable to us. The broker MetroTrade lists March, May, July, September and December, plus the current and next two calendar months, and a minimum price move of $0.005 per ounce, worth $25.00 per contract. The same broker lists a smaller Micro Silver contract of 1,000 ounces.

Most charts and quote pages show the nearest active month. Yahoo Finance labels its SI=F quote "Silver Dec 26" and marks it as COMEX, and TradingView describes its "1!" symbol as the front or nearest month, joined into a continuous series. If the letters and suffixes on a quote screen are unfamiliar, our guide to silver ticker symbols decodes them. The metal sitting behind these contracts, and the difference between registered and eligible bars, is covered on our COMEX silver inventory page.

The LBMA silver price auction

London's benchmark is different again: not a running quote but a price struck once each business day. ICE Benchmark Administration runs it independently, and LBMA holds the rights to it. The auction begins at 12:00 noon London time and sets a price in US dollars per fine ounce; pound and euro figures are conversions from that dollar price.

The auction works in rounds. Participants enter what they want to buy and sell at a proposed price; if the imbalance between the two sides is within a set threshold, the auction ends and that is the price. IBA's 2017 specification sets each round at 30 seconds. There is no fixed publication time, since the length of the auction varies, and LBMA's own website shows the results with a delay.

This system is newer than the market it serves. On 15 August 2014 the LBMA Silver Price replaced the Silver Fixing, which had existed since 1897, and IBA took over administration and the auction from 25 September 2017, subject to regulatory approval. Many long-term contracts and fund valuations refer to this price because it is a single, published, dated number. Its noon start converts to an early-morning hour in New York, set out on our page on when the silver market opens.

Why the three rarely match

Start with carry. Someone who buys silver today and holds it until a later month gives up interest on the money and pays to store and insure the bars. A futures price for that month tends to sit above spot by roughly those costs, because otherwise you could buy the metal, sell the future and lock in a gain. The further away the delivery month, the larger the carry.

A worked example, with round numbers: at $50 an ounce, a three-month hold financed at 4 percent a year costs about fifty cents in interest before storage. The 4 percent is chosen as an example because it sits at the top of the Federal Reserve's target range set in September 2026; a dealer's actual borrowing rate is its own.

Carry is the textbook gap, and it can flip. When metal for immediate delivery is scarce, holders may pay up for bars now, and spot can sit at or above the nearby future. Silver had a stretch like that in October 2025, when the Silver Institute described a liquidity squeeze with metal moving into CME vaults and explosive lease rates. Lease rates are what it costs to borrow metal rather than money, and they push against carry.

Timing and venue add the rest. A spot feed refreshes when its provider updates; a futures contract trades nearly around the clock on weekdays; the London auction prints once a day at noon. Shanghai sets its own benchmark in yuan, with a premium or discount of its own, described on our page about the Shanghai silver price. Gold follows the same structure, with spot, futures and a London auction, which is why the two metals can be laid side by side on our page of gold and silver market prices.

Today's gap, worked through

At our latest refresh the front futures contract was at $51.53 and spot at $51.66. The difference was $-0.13. That number is the market's combined answer to carry, to how tight nearby metal is, and to small timing differences between the two feeds. When the front month is only weeks from delivery, carry is small, and a gap of a few cents is normal. When the front month rolls to the next one on most quote screens, the futures figure can jump by the carry between the two months even though nothing happened to silver itself.

That roll is worth knowing about when you read a long chart. Our guide on how to read a silver price chart covers how futures-based lines are joined, and why their resolution changes over long ranges.

Which price a dealer uses for your quote

Most retail price lists start from a spot figure and add a premium for the coin or bar, its fabrication and the dealer's margin. Some dealers take that spot figure from a feed built on futures; others from wholesale quotes. Either way, the number you pay is not the spot price, and a buyback offer is usually below it. The dealer's own pages should say which feed its prices follow and when they refresh. If they don't, that is a fair question to ask before you confirm an order.

Where this page stops

This page can't tell you which of the three prices is "right"; each is correct for what it measures. It can't tell you what the gap will be next week, because carry, scarcity and timing all move. And it can't tell you the exact method behind any third-party spot feed, ours included, beyond the source we name. What it can do is show you both live numbers from the same moment and the arithmetic between them. The headline figure, with its time stamp, is always on the main silver price page.

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.

Comparing benchmarks is one step; owning metal through an IRA is another. This site's partner for that is Augusta Precious Metals, and our page on the company records what it states and the points we could not confirm.

Frequently asked questions

Is the silver spot price the same as the futures price?

No, though they are usually close. Spot is for near-immediate delivery and futures are for a named later month, so futures normally carry the cost of financing and storing metal until then. When nearby metal is scarce the gap can shrink or reverse. Our box above shows both, read at the same refresh.

What is the LBMA silver price?

It is a benchmark set once each business day in London by an auction that starts at noon London time, run by ICE Benchmark Administration. The price is formed in US dollars per fine ounce through 30-second rounds. It replaced the old Silver Fixing on 15 August 2014 and is used for many contracts and valuations.

Why does my dealer's price differ from the spot price?

A dealer's selling price is built from a spot figure plus a premium for the product, its fabrication and the dealer's own margin, so it sits above spot. Its buyback price usually sits below. The size of both depends on the product and the dealer, which is why the same coin can be priced differently in two shops.

Sources

Each page we drew a fact from, with whether it was the publisher's own page or a page reporting it.