Average Gold AISC 2026: What Miners Actually Pay Per Ounce

Reviewed September 2026 against the World Gold Council’s Goldhub cost-curve data and its Q1 2026 gold-focus analysis.

Try it: Run your own numbers →

The global average all-in sustaining cost (AISC) for gold mining was $1,785 per ounce in Q1 2026 (quarter ended March 31, 2026), according to the World Gold Council’s Goldhub cost-curve data, compiled with Metals Focus’s Mine Cost Service. That is up 16% year-on-year against Q1 2025, and it marks the 28th consecutive year of year-on-year AISC increases across the gold sector. One quarter earlier, in Q4 2025, the production-weighted global median AISC stood at $1,709/oz, with a wide spread beneath that median — see the cost-curve breakdown below.

That is the number most searches for “AISC mining” or “gold AISC” are actually after. The rest of this article explains where it comes from, how the World Gold Council’s quartile system works, why the figure keeps climbing, and how to pull the next quarter’s number yourself once Goldhub refreshes — because it will, and this page is written to stay accurate when it does.

What AISC Actually Measures

The All-In Sustaining Cost (AISC) is the fully loaded cost of producing one ounce of gold at a mine’s current level of output. The World Gold Council introduced the metric in June 2013 as an industry-standard alternative to “cash cost,” which understated the true economics of running a mine by excluding capital needed just to keep production steady. AISC is not an operating margin, not a break-even price, and not a forecast of the gold price — it is a cost figure, quoted per ounce, that every major producer now discloses in quarterly and annual filings.

Two things make AISC different from a simple mine-site cash cost:

• ✔ It includes sustaining capital — the equipment replacement, underground development, and infrastructure spend required to hold output flat, not grow it.
• ✔ It includes corporate G&A, exploration to sustain reserve life, and closure/rehabilitation provisions — costs a bare cash-cost figure leaves out entirely.
• ⚠ It excludes expansionary capital — new mines, capacity growth, and acquisitions are tracked separately as growth investment, not sustaining cost.

Current Average AISC for Gold: The Cost Curve

There is no single “AISC for gold” — the World Gold Council reports it as a cost curve split into quartiles across the global producer base, because a low-cost open-pit operation in a stable jurisdiction and a deep, narrow-vein underground mine face entirely different economics. The Q4 2025 figures (quarter ended December 31, 2025) break down as follows:

Source: World Gold Council, Goldhub AISC data, Q4 2025, compiled with Metals Focus’s Mine Cost Service.

One quarter later, the World Gold Council’s global average (as distinct from the production-weighted median) reached $1,785/oz in Q1 2026 — a 16% jump against Q1 2025 and the highest reading in the series’ history at time of writing. The gap between the average and the median matters: it tells you the distribution has a long high-cost tail, which is consistent with the $569/oz spread between the first and fourth quartile in the prior quarter.

If you are pricing a specific mine, jurisdiction, or company against these benchmarks, the individual producer’s own 10-K or 6-K filing (SEC EDGAR) is the correct comparison point, not the global average — a low-cost Nevada or Ontario operation can sit well inside the first quartile while a deep underground mine in a high-labor-cost jurisdiction sits above the fourth-quartile line.

Why AISC Keeps Rising — 28 Years Running

The World Gold Council’s Q1 2026 analysis frames the current run of cost inflation as structural, not a one-quarter blip: global average AISC has risen year-on-year for 28 consecutive years through Q1 2026. The report’s title captures the dynamic directly — record gold prices are currently outpacing rising mining costs, which means margins have widened even as AISC climbs, but the cost side of the ledger keeps moving up regardless of price.

• Ore grade decline: as easily accessible high-grade zones are depleted, producers move to lower-grade ore, which means more tonnes moved and processed per ounce recovered — a direct driver of higher sustaining capital and processing cost per ounce.
• Labor and energy inputs: mining is input-intensive in exactly the categories — skilled labor, diesel, grid power, steel, cement — that have seen sustained cost pressure across the current cycle.
• Sustaining capital intensity: aging fleets and deepening underground workings require more replacement capital per ounce just to hold output flat, which is precisely what AISC is designed to capture and a cash-cost figure would miss.
• Regulatory and closure provisioning: environmental compliance, water management, and mine-closure financial provisions are increasingly built into current-period cost rather than deferred.

None of these drivers is published as a percentage breakdown of the global AISC figure — the World Gold Council’s public data does not disaggregate the $1,785/oz average into labor, energy, and materials shares, and company disclosures vary too widely to average meaningfully. If you need a component breakdown for a specific producer, that detail sits in the cost-and-expenses notes of its 10-K or 6-K filing on SEC EDGAR, not in the aggregate industry figure.

What Goes Into the AISC Number

When a producer reports AISC per ounce in a 10-K or 6-K filing, four categories roll up into the figure:

• Direct operating costs: drilling, blasting, hauling, ore processing, refining, and site security — the core cash cost of extraction.
• Sustaining capital expenditure: equipment replacement, underground development, and infrastructure spend needed to maintain — not grow — current output.
• General and administrative costs: corporate overhead, brownfield exploration that sustains reserve life, and regulatory compliance.
• Environmental and closure provisions: tailings and water monitoring, and financial provisioning for eventual mine rehabilitation and closure.

What AISC leaves out

• ➖ Expansionary capital for new mines, capacity increases, or acquisitions
• ➖ Speculative growth investment outside the current operation
• ➖ Costs unrelated to sustaining the mine’s existing output level

How to Check the Latest AISC Yourself

This figure is not static, and a page that only repeats today’s number stops being useful the day the next quarter posts. Here is the actual refresh path, so you can pull a current figure whenever you read this:

• World Gold Council Goldhub: the cost-curve data at gold.org/goldhub/data/aisc-gold is updated quarterly in partnership with Metals Focus’s Mine Cost Service, typically with a one-to-two month publication lag after quarter-end. Check this page first for the newest quartile breakdown.
• World Gold Council gold-focus commentary: narrative analysis of what moved AISC and why is published alongside the data — the Q1 2026 edition is at gold.org/goldhub/gold-focus.
• Individual producer filings: major gold miners disclose their own AISC per ounce guidance and actuals in SEC Form 10-K (annual) and Form 6-K (semi-annual, for foreign private issuers) filings. Search SEC EDGAR by company name for the most recent filing period if you need a specific producer’s number rather than the industry average.
• S&P Global Mine Cost Outlook: S&P Global publishes an annual global AISC forecast, typically released in the January–February window, through its market intelligence service.

A rolling month-by-month AISC trend within a single quarter is not published anywhere — the World Gold Council reports at quarter-end snapshots only, so intra-quarter movement cannot be sourced. If your use case needs a finer time resolution than quarterly, the individual producer’s cost guidance updates (typically issued with quarterly results) are the closest available substitute, and USGS mineral commodity summaries are worth checking for US production-volume context, though the USGS itself does not publish an AISC metric.

What Actually Moves AISC Down: Exploration Cost

Sustaining capital and closure provisions are largely fixed by geology and regulation, but one line item in the AISC build-up — exploration spend to sustain reserve life — is directly shaped by how a company finds new ore before it starts drilling. Traditional ground-based exploration (geological mapping crews, drill-pad access roads, camp logistics) is capital-intensive before a single assay comes back, and every dollar of that early-stage spend lands inside AISC’s G&A component.

Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection targets this specific cost line. The platform screens for spectral signatures and structural indicators associated with gold, copper, lithium, and rare-earth mineralization from orbital imagery before any ground crew is mobilized, and Farmonaut reports this non-invasive approach reduces preliminary exploration field costs by up to 85% compared with legacy ground survey methods — narrowing the ground-truthing budget to the highest-probability zones rather than a blanket survey grid. Farmonaut’s satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping report format layers spectral analysis, prospectivity heatmaps, and subsurface models to hand a technical team a prioritized drill target list rather than raw imagery.

• 🌍 Coverage: Farmonaut’s satellite platform has been used across more than 80,000 hectares in 18-plus countries for early-stage gold, lithium, copper, and rare-earth prospecting.
• ⚡ Turnaround: area targeting and drilling recommendations are delivered in days rather than months, which shortens the cash-outlay period before a go/no-go decision on ground exploration.
• 🌱 No pre-drill footprint: remote-sensing exploration produces no land disturbance or emissions before the drilling phase begins, which matters increasingly for the environmental-provisioning side of AISC as well.

None of this changes sustaining capital or processing cost at an operating mine — it acts upstream, at the discovery stage, before AISC even starts accruing on a project. For a company weighing where exploration dollars go before committing to a resource, that is the leverage point.

Get a quote or ask about a specific project: Get Quote | Contact Us

AISC Beyond Gold

AISC was built for gold, and gold remains the only sector where the World Gold Council maintains a standardized, quarterly, quartile-based public cost curve of the kind cited above. Copper, nickel, lithium, and rare-earth producers increasingly disclose an AISC-style figure in their own filings, following the same logic — folding sustaining capital and closure provisioning into a per-unit cost rather than reporting bare cash cost — but there is no equivalent cross-industry public dataset comparable to Goldhub’s gold series for those commodities. If you are benchmarking a base-metals or battery-metals project, the comparable figure has to be pulled from that specific producer’s own reporting rather than an industry-wide average, because none is published.

Calculator: Your Mine’s AISC vs. the Cost Curve

Enter a mine’s actual annual sustaining spend and ounces produced to see where it lands against the Q4 2025 global cost-curve quartiles above.

Assumes direct operating cost and sustaining capital/G&A/closure figures are already annualized in USD. Excludes byproduct credits, hedging effects, and expansionary capital, consistent with the World Gold Council's AISC definition. Quartile bands are the World Gold Council's Q4 2025 global cost curve and will shift each quarter — recheck against Goldhub before relying on this for a live decision.

FAQ: Gold AISC

• What is the average AISC for gold mining right now?
  
  The World Gold Council's global average AISC reached $1,785/oz in Q1 2026 (quarter ended March 31, 2026), up 16% year-on-year. The production-weighted global median was $1,709/oz in Q4 2025. These are two different statistics (average vs. median) from two adjacent quarters — check Goldhub for whichever quarter is current when you read this.
• What is AISC in mining?
  
  All-In Sustaining Cost is the fully loaded per-ounce cost of maintaining current gold production: direct operating costs, sustaining capital, G&A, and environmental/closure provisions, excluding expansionary capital. The World Gold Council introduced the standard in June 2013.
• What is the range between low-cost and high-cost gold producers?
  
  In Q4 2025, first-quartile (low-cost) producers averaged $1,413/oz and fourth-quartile (high-cost) producers averaged $1,982/oz — a $569/oz spread, per World Gold Council Goldhub data.
• Why has gold AISC risen for so many years in a row?
  
  Q1 2026 marked the 28th consecutive year of year-on-year AISC increases, driven by declining ore grades, labor and energy input costs, rising sustaining-capital intensity, and increased environmental/closure provisioning, per the World Gold Council's Q1 2026 gold-focus report.
• Where can I find a breakdown of what makes up the AISC number (labor vs. energy vs. materials)?
  
  No standardized public breakdown exists for the global average — company disclosures vary too widely to aggregate. For a specific producer's component costs, check that company's 10-K or 6-K filing on SEC EDGAR.
• Is there a US-specific average AISC figure?
  
  No. AISC is tracked as a global metric by the World Gold Council; no regional US or North American breakdown is published. For a US mine's cost, check that specific producer's SEC filing.
• Does AISC apply to metals other than gold?
  
  Copper, nickel, lithium, and rare-earth producers increasingly report their own AISC-style figures, but no standardized cross-industry public cost curve comparable to Goldhub's gold series currently exists for those commodities.
• How can exploration costs affect a project's eventual AISC?
  
  Exploration spend to sustain reserve life is part of the AISC build-up. Reducing the cost of early-stage, pre-drill targeting — for example, through satellite-based mineral detection — lowers that line item before ground costs are even committed. See a fuller AISC and mineral-extraction breakdown here.
• How do I get a quote for satellite mineral detection?
  
  Visit Get a Quote from Farmonaut or Contact Us directly.