Reviewed September 2026 against World Gold Council / Metals Focus data.

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All-in sustaining cost (AISC) is gold mining’s standard measure of what it actually costs a producer to keep an ounce coming out of the ground — not just labor and energy at the pit, but the sustaining capital, royalties, and closure obligations needed to keep production going. The World Gold Council (WGC) introduced the metric in 2013, and it now sits at $1,785 per ounce globally as of Q1 2026, up from an average of $1,276/oz in 2023. That’s not a stable baseline — it’s the 28th consecutive year-over-year increase the industry has recorded.

World Gold Council AISC Definition

The World Gold Council‘s all-in sustaining cost definition, laid out in its official guidance, calculates AISC as the sum of a mine’s direct cash operating costs plus every additional dollar needed to sustain current output at that same rate — sustaining capital, corporate G&A tied to operations, royalties and production taxes, and rehabilitation or closure provisions. It deliberately excludes growth capital: money spent on new mines, expansions, or exploration for future deposits. That line matters because it’s the one operators most often blur, and it’s the one WGC’s guidance is strictest about.

You can read the full AISC methodology directly from the World Gold Council — it documents each component and how Metals Focus, WGC’s data partner, aggregates company disclosures into industry-wide figures.

What’s Inside AISC: The Full Component List

• Cash costs: what it takes to run the site today — labor, materials, energy
• Sustaining capital: keeps output flat, not growing. A new haul truck replacing a worn one counts; a new pit does not
• Corporate overhead allocated to the operating mine, not head-office growth functions
• Closure & rehabilitation: the accrued liability for regulatory and environmental obligations at end of mine life
• Royalties and production taxes: government and landowner take, scaled to output

Current AISC Data: Global Average and Quartile Ranges

The most recent published figures come from World Gold Council’s Q1 2026 gold focus report. The global average AISC across all producers was $1,785 per ounce in Q1 2026, and the production-weighted median across the industry stood at $1,709 per ounce in Q4 2025 — two related but distinct cuts of the same underlying data, since a weighted median is pulled by output volume while a straight average is not.

Costs vary sharply by producer. WGC’s Q1 2026 breakdown put the first-quartile (lowest-cost) producers below $1,413/oz, while the fourth-quartile (highest-cost) producers ran above $1,982/oz — a spread of more than $560/oz between the best- and worst-positioned mines. That gap is the reason a single “average AISC” headline number is close to useless for evaluating any one operation: where a mine sits in that quartile range depends on ore grade, strip ratio, labor market, and how far along it is in its mine life.

AISC vs. Cash Cost: Why the Distinction Matters

Total cash cost only covers what it takes to run the site today — labor, energy, consumables. AISC adds sustaining capital, corporate overhead, royalties, and closure provisions on top. The gap between the two numbers is exactly the sustaining spend a cash-cost figure hides, which is why a mine can report a flattering cash cost while its AISC — the number investors and lenders actually use — tells a different story. When you see a company press release lead with “cash cost,” check whether an AISC figure appears in the same release; if it doesn’t, that’s worth asking about directly.

What’s Pushing AISC Higher

WGC’s Q1 2026 gold focus report attributes the sustained rise — 28 straight years of year-over-year increases through Q1 2026 — to a combination of higher labor costs, energy prices, and royalty burdens that scale with the record gold price itself, since many jurisdictions levy royalties as a percentage of revenue rather than a fixed per-ounce rate. That last mechanism means AISC has a built-in tailwind whenever the gold price runs up: higher revenue triggers higher royalty payments, which raises AISC even if physical operating costs haven’t moved. It’s a detail that’s easy to miss if you’re reading AISC purely as an inflation gauge.

For a category-by-category split of exactly how much of that increase comes from labor versus energy versus royalties, WGC’s public reporting doesn’t break out industry-wide percentages — that level of detail is typically only disclosed by individual miners in their own quarterly filings, not aggregated across the sector.

How to Check the Current Number Yourself

Because AISC moves every quarter, any figure printed here has a shelf life. Here’s how to get a number fresher than the one in this article:

• For the global average and quartile breakdowns: World Gold Council publishes updated AISC metrics on its GoldHub platform each quarter, typically mid-quarter following the prior quarter’s close. Check the Gold Focus report series for the latest release.
• For a specific producer’s AISC (Barrick, Newmont, or any other major): major gold miners report AISC in their quarterly earnings releases, filed with the SEC or Canadian regulators within roughly 30 days of quarter end. Search the company’s investor relations page for its most recent quarterly report.
• For 2026 industry cost projections: S&P Global publishes an annual Mine Cost Outlook, typically released January–February, with updated commodity-specific forecasts available through its Market Intelligence portal.

That refresh path is the durable part of this article — the dollar figures above will move, but the sources and the quarterly cadence they publish on will not.

Gold Producer Cost Tiers: Structured Comparison

Source: World Gold Council, Gold Focus, August 2026. WGC’s public data does not break these figures out by region (e.g., North American vs. African producers) — that level of granularity is generally only available through subscription mining databases or individual company disclosures.

Where AISC-Style Thinking Applies Beyond Gold

AISC was built for gold, but the underlying discipline — separate what sustains current output from what grows future output, and report both — transfers cleanly to any resource operation with a long tail of closure or land-restoration obligations. A few places it shows up:

• Sustainable financing and project appraisal: lenders use AISC-equivalent figures to gauge the true marginal cost of keeping an asset producing, independent of expansion plans
• Long-term resource management: replanting, restoration, and land rehabilitation commitments mirror mining’s sustaining-capital logic in any extractive or land-intensive operation
• Disclosure and comparability: a standardized sustaining-cost metric lets operators be evaluated on the same basis regardless of geography

The risk of skipping this discipline is the same everywhere: if you don’t itemize sustaining spend separately from growth spend, you understate what it actually costs to keep the lights on — and that gap tends to surface at exactly the moment a project needs financing or a regulator asks for it.

Satellite Intelligence for Lower-Cost Exploration

Since AISC rises with every dollar spent chasing ore that turns out uneconomic, the single biggest lever a junior or mid-tier producer has before AISC even becomes relevant is cutting wasted exploration spend. Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection identifies prospective targets before a single hole is drilled, so exploration budgets go toward ground that’s already been screened rather than blanket-covering an entire concession.

• Faster target identification, cutting early-stage exploration spend that would otherwise inflate a project’s cost base before production even begins
• Zero ground disturbance during early-stage screening, avoiding rehabilitation liabilities that would otherwise need to be provisioned later
• Mineral intelligence reports that support scenario planning for the sustaining and closure costs a project will eventually carry
• Better capital allocation toward the targets most likely to become productive, sustainable operations

Explore Farmonaut’s Satellite-Based Mineral Detection Service for prospectivity screening, or review the Satellite Driven 3D Mineral Prospectivity Mapping methodology for geological modeling and target analysis.

Get a Quote or Contact Us to discuss satellite-driven exploration for your project.

Video Library: Exploration Technology in Practice

These cover satellite-based exploration workflows referenced above, in practice across different jurisdictions and commodities:

FAQs: All-in Sustaining Costs

All-in sustaining cost is the number that tells you whether a gold mine’s current output is actually economic once every ongoing obligation is counted — not just the headline cash cost. The figures move every quarter; the method for checking them, through WGC’s GoldHub releases and individual producers’ quarterly filings, doesn’t.