The Dubai counter sits above the London metal price

The Dubai counter price is always above the London metal price, and the gap between the two is the cost of buying gold in Dubai rather than in London. That gap is not a fixed margin; it moves with the market, the karat and the shop. What sits inside it is the cost of refining, fabrication and the shop's own margin, and none of those are published.

The shelf and the metal inside it

One gram in Dubai, against the London price for the gold it contains.

Counter price read: 28.10.2026 11:40

The shop's gram against London's gram

The table above this page shows the Dubai suggested retail price per gram for each karat, and the London metal price per gram in dirhams. The London figure is taken from two sources, independent of each other and of the Dubai Jewellery Group page: a gold price in dollars an ounce from one source, and the dirham rate from another. The gap between the two columns is the cost of buying gold in Dubai rather than in London.

The London figure is never taken from the same page as the Dubai price, because the two must be independent for the gap to mean anything. If both came from the same place, a single error would move both numbers and the gap would lie. The table shows the gap in dirhams, not as a percentage, because a percentage is the wrong tool for a buyer who wants to know the money.

What sits inside the gap

The gap between the Dubai counter and the London metal price is made of three things: refining, fabrication and the shop's own margin. Refining is the cost of turning London-grade metal into the karats that Dubai sells, and it is a real cost that falls on every gram. Fabrication is the cost of making a piece, and it is higher for a finished piece than for a bar. The shop's own margin is the profit the shop takes, and it is the part of the gap that a buyer can negotiate.

None of these costs are published. The Dubai Jewellery Group publishes a suggested retail price per gram, but it does not break that price down into its parts. A buyer who wants to know what they are paying for must ask the shop to itemise the making charge, and even then the refining and fabrication costs remain hidden.

What the gap cannot tell you

The gap between the Dubai counter and the London metal price cannot tell you what a shop paid for its stock, what it pays on buy-back, or what its margin is. The gap is a single number, and it hides the three costs that make it up. A wide gap may mean high fabrication costs, a high shop margin, or both, and a buyer cannot tell which from the gap alone.

The gap also cannot tell you what the metal is worth to you. The London price is the price of a good delivery bar in a London vault, not the price of a bangle in a Dubai shop. The gap is the cost of turning one into the other, and that cost is real but not transparent.

The dirham's peg and the London figure

The London figure is converted to dirhams at the UAE's institutional peg, and a rate that has wandered off the peg is treated as a broken source rather than as news. The peg is a fact of the UAE's monetary system, and a source that ignores it is not a source worth reading. The dirham's rate against the dollar is checked on every run, and the London figure is only used if the rate is on the peg.

The peg means that the London figure in dirhams moves with the dollar price of gold, and the gap between the Dubai counter and the London figure is the local premium. That premium is the cost of buying gold in Dubai, and it is the number the table shows.

The band of refusal

A reading whose counter price sits outside a band of zero to fifteen per cent above the London metal is refused, and nothing is written that run. The band is not a rule about what the premium should be; it is a rule about what a plausible premium looks like. A counter price that is below the London metal is impossible, because a shop cannot sell gold for less than the metal is worth. A counter price that is more than fifteen per cent above the metal is suspicious, because it suggests a broken source or a misread page.

The band is a check on the data, not a claim about the market. If the reading is refused, the desk writes nothing, and the table is empty for that run. That is the honest way to handle a number that cannot be true.

The gap in dirhams, not percentages

The table shows the gap in dirhams, not as a percentage, because a percentage is the wrong tool for a buyer who wants to know the money. The same percentage is a different sum of dirhams on a gram and on a tola, and a buyer who thinks in percentages mistakes the size of the gap they are paying. The table shows the gap for each weight and each karat, so a buyer can see the dirham cost of buying in Dubai.

The gap is the honest unit for this question, because it is the money a buyer pays above the metal. A percentage hides that money in a single number, and a buyer who wants to know what they are paying must see the dirhams.

The gap narrows on heavier weights because the fixed costs are spread thinner

A shop has fixed outgoings that do not change with the weight of gold sold. Rent on a counter in a gold souk, salaries for the staff who stand behind it, security, display lighting, and the card terminal all cost the same whether the customer buys a thin chain or a heavy bangle. Those costs must be recovered from the difference between what the shop pays for metal and what it charges at the till. On a small piece, the fixed share of that difference is a large slice of the total. On a heavy piece, the same share is spread across more grams, so the gap per gram shrinks.

This is visible in the table on this page when the column for the London metal price is compared with the column for the Dubai counter price at different weights. The gap per gram is not a straight line. It falls as the weight rises, because the shop's fixed costs are being divided by a larger number of grams. The same effect appears between a half tola and a full tola, and again between a full tola and a heavier bar. A buyer who is quoted a rate per gram on a small piece is paying for more than metal; the fixed costs are concentrated there.

The practical consequence is that comparing two pieces only by their quoted rate per gram can mislead. A lighter piece with a lower quoted rate per gram may still deliver less gold for the dirhams spent than a heavier piece with a slightly higher quoted rate, once the fixed costs are spread. The table cannot show this directly, but a reader who watches how the gap per gram changes as the weight rises will see the fixed costs being diluted. That is why the page insists on thinking in dirhams, not in percentages or in rates alone.

A shop's buy-back price is set from the London figure, not from its own shelf price

When a customer sells gold back to a Dubai shop, the shop does not start from the price it charged when the piece was bought. It starts from the London metal price on that day, or from a local benchmark that tracks it closely. The shop then deducts its margin, any refining costs if the piece is not pure, and a buffer against price movement between the time of the quote and the time the shop can resell the metal. The shelf price the customer paid is irrelevant to the buy-back calculation.

This means the gap between the Dubai counter price and the London price works differently on the way out. On the way in, the gap is the shop's gross margin, covering fixed costs, making charges, tax treatment, and profit. On the way out, the shop is buying metal that it must resell at or near the London price, so the buy-back quote sits below the London price, not above it. The customer who paid the counter price and later sells back the same piece will receive less than the metal value shown in the table for that weight.

The table on this page shows what a buyer would pay at the counter and what the metal inside is worth at the London price. It does not show what a seller would receive, because that is a different calculation. A buyer who assumes the shop will buy back at the same margin above London is making a costly error. The buy-back price is set from the London side of the table, and the spread between the buy-back and the London price is the shop's protection, not the buyer's.

The dirham's peg to the dollar means the London price moves in dirhams before the shop opens

The London metal price is set in US dollars on international markets. The United Arab Emirates dirham is pegged to the US dollar at a fixed rate, which means the dirham price of gold moves exactly with the dollar price of gold, with no currency conversion risk for a Dubai shop. When the London price rises or falls in dollars, the equivalent dirham figure moves by the same proportion before the shop has opened its doors. There is no exchange rate to negotiate and no currency spread to build into the price.

This peg has a practical effect on the gap between the Dubai counter and the London price. Because the dirham does not float against the dollar, a Dubai shop does not need to hedge currency risk when it restocks gold. The shop can price its inventory from the London fix with confidence, adding only its local costs and margin. If the dirham floated, the shop might widen the gap to cover the risk that the currency would move against it between the time it bought gold and the time it sold the piece.

A buyer in the Emirates should understand that the London figure quoted in the table is already a dirham figure, derived directly from the dollar price via the peg. There is no hidden currency cost in the gap. The gap consists of local charges, not exchange risk. When the London price moves sharply, the Dubai counter price moves with it, because the shop cannot sit on a stale price without losing money on restocking. The peg makes the table's comparison between London and Dubai a clean one.

A buyer who asks for the making charge separately often changes the negotiation

In a Dubai gold shop, the price on the ticket for a finished piece is usually a single number: the gold value plus the making charge plus any tax, all rolled together. The shop is not obliged to break that number down, and many customers never ask. When a buyer asks for the making charge to be stated separately, the negotiation changes. The shop must reveal how much of the total is metal and how much is workmanship, and that revelation puts the buyer in a position to compare the workmanship charge across shops and across pieces of different weights.

The making charge is not a percentage of the gold value. It is a fixed amount per piece, or per gram, set by the shop for the work involved in turning raw gold into a finished item. A heavier piece may carry a lower making charge per gram because the work is spread over more metal, but the total making charge is still a separate sum. When it is stated separately, the buyer can see whether the gap between the Dubai counter price and the London price is mostly metal margin or mostly workmanship. That distinction is what the published table cannot provide.

The table on this page shows the counter price and the London metal price, but it cannot separate the making charge from the shop's margin on the metal. A buyer who wants that separation must ask for it at the counter. The question is not rude; it is standard practice among experienced buyers. Once the making charge is on the table, the buyer can decide whether to pay for the work or to choose a bar, where the making charge is minimal and the gap between the counter and London is mostly metal margin.