GoldBroker Review

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Gold hit record highs above $3,300 per troy ounce in early 2025 and has continued climbing into 2026, with spot prices sitting around $4,830 as of April 2026.

That kind of run pulls a lot of investors toward physical precious metals, and with that interest comes a harder question: where do you actually hold the metal? GoldBroker.com, founded in 2011 by French entrepreneur Fabrice Drouin Ristori, was built specifically to answer that.

The platform lets individuals and companies buy allocated, segregated bullion held in their own name, stored outside the banking system, with direct vault access. It manages a stock of precious metals worth several hundred million euros across clients in multiple countries.

Key Takeaways

• GoldBroker stores physical gold and silver in your own name, fully segregated from the company's balance sheet, across four international vault locations.
• Annual storage fees start at 1.50% with a $125 account maintenance fee for holdings under $20,000, and scale down as your position grows.
• The minimum first-order amount for storage is $5,000, making the platform better suited to serious wealth preservation than casual small purchases.

Who Is GoldBroker?

The company's origin tracks directly to the 2008 financial crisis. Ristori, who had been managing his own gold investments since 2008, saw that most retail investors had no clean way to hold physical bullion outside a bank or broker's custodial chain.

He launched GoldBroker in 2011 to fill that gap. By 2012, Egon von Greyerz, the founder of Von Greyerz AG (Matterhorn Asset Management) and one of the better-known advocates of physical gold in the institutional world, joined the advisory board.

In 2020, the company moved its headquarters to London, the world's primary hub for physical gold trading, and today operates from 25 Eccleston Place, SW1W. It serves clients in French, English, and German-speaking markets.

GoldBroker has appeared across financial media outlets including MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, ZeroHedge, and Investing.com. The platform operates a mobile app available on iOS and Android for account monitoring on the go.

What GoldBroker Actually Sells

The core offer is physical bullion: bars and coins in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. All products sold through the platform come from recognized refiners and mints, including Valcambi, PAMP, Argor-Heraeus, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Austrian Mint, the Royal Mint, and the US Mint.

That matters because the chain of custody is unbroken from manufacture to vault, which directly affects resale value.

Here is a sample of current product categories available:

Investors can choose between two services: storage at one of four international vaults, or home delivery via an insured international carrier. For storage orders, the minimum first purchase is $5,000 excluding service fees.

There is no minimum for shipping orders. For orders above $400,000, GoldBroker provides personalized quotations. Orders above $136,000 can also request custom pricing.

Storage: The Core of the Model

The platform's real differentiator is how it structures custody. When you open a storage account, you sign a direct contract with GoldBroker's partner, Malca-Amit, a private logistics and vaulting company founded in 1963 that is independent of the banking system.

Malca-Amit then issues a storage certificate specifying your name and the serial numbers of your bars or coins. GoldBroker itself is not the custodian. Your metals never appear on GoldBroker's balance sheet, which means even in a bankruptcy scenario for the company, your holdings are protected.

Vault locations include:

• Zurich, Switzerland (free-trade zone)
• Singapore Freeport
• New York, USA
• Toronto, Canada

All four are free-trade zones, which means no customs duties or VAT apply on storage. Silver investments in storage are exempt from VAT specifically because of this structure.

Each client can personally visit their chosen vault by appointment to inspect or withdraw their metals without a GoldBroker representative present.

The metals are insured against all risks at LBMA spot price through an insurance policy Malca-Amit holds with Lloyd's of London.

Buybacks on stored metals are processed within roughly two business days. GoldBroker applies a 1% commission on the total resale amount.

Fees: What You Will Actually Pay

GoldBroker charges no separate transaction fee at the point of purchase. The premium over spot is baked into the product price and varies by product weight, refiner, and market demand for that specific coin or bar.

Smaller products carry higher premiums, which is standard across the bullion industry.

Storage fees are charged annually and are tiered by total holding value:

Gold Storage Fees

Silver, platinum, and palladium storage start at 1.50% for holdings under $250,000, then drop to 1.40% above that threshold. The fee structure covers account opening and maintenance, secure transport, customs formalities, vault storage, sealing, the ownership certificate, certificate reissuance after each transaction, and full insurance. SEPA wire transfers are free. SWIFT transfers cost $10.

Optional vault visit services carry separate fees: a stock inspection or physical pickup costs $220, and a photo service (available only before storage) costs $20 per item. Vault pickups for silver require paying customs import declarations and VAT since removing silver from the free-trade zone triggers those obligations.

Market Context: Why Physical Bullion Matters Now

Gold has not behaved like a niche hedge in recent years. As of April 2026, gold is trading around $4,830 per ounce on GoldBroker's live price feed, up sharply from under $2,000 at the start of 2024. Silver is running at approximately $80.56 per ounce, with a gold/silver ratio that many precious metals analysts consider historically elevated, implying silver has room to close the gap. Platinum is around $2,144 and palladium at $1,583.

Central bank gold buying has been a major driver. According to the World Gold Council, central banks purchased over 1,000 tonnes of gold in both 2022 and 2023, the highest two-year total in over 50 years. That demand has not softened. Combined with ongoing concerns about dollar debasement, escalating geopolitical tensions, and inflationary pressures in the US and Europe, the case for holding physical metal outside the financial system is getting more mainstream attention, not less.

For investors watching these dynamics, the question of where to hold bullion is not academic. ETF wrappers carry counterparty risk. Bank custodial accounts can be frozen or confiscated. Home storage creates insurance and security problems.

 GoldBroker's structure addresses all three by putting the legal title directly in the investor's name with an independent storage company in a stable jurisdiction.

The Buying Process

Getting started requires creating an account and verifying your identity with supporting documents. Once verified, you select products, lock in a price during market hours, and pay by bank card or wire transfer.

For storage orders, the metals are transported into the vault and sealed. GoldBroker issues confirmation and Malca-Amit issues the ownership certificate.

For buyers choosing home delivery, GoldBroker ships through a specialized international carrier with full tracking. There is no minimum order for shipping.

The practical consideration is cost: insured shipping for heavier or higher-value orders adds up, so the storage option tends to make more economic sense once you cross a certain threshold.

Who GoldBroker Works Best For

The $5,000 minimum for storage and the annual fee structure make GoldBroker a poor fit for someone trying to put $500 into gold as an experiment. The product is designed for investors who want serious, long-term wealth preservation outside the banking system.

That means individuals and families with meaningful capital to protect, businesses looking for off-balance-sheet hard assets, and international investors in jurisdictions where domestic currency risk is a real concern.

The platform also has a partnership track for wealth managers and business providers who want to offer clients access to allocated bullion storage.

What to Watch

The 1.50% annual storage fee at smaller holding sizes is not cheap in absolute terms. On a $10,000 gold position, you are paying $150 per year in storage plus the $125 maintenance fee, totaling $275 in annual costs before any metal price movement.

That drag matters. As your position grows past $60,000, the fee rate drops meaningfully and the maintenance fee disappears, which is where the economics become considerably more attractive.

GoldBroker does not offer allocated storage in jurisdictions like Hong Kong or Dubai, which some competitors do. The four locations (Switzerland, Singapore, New York, Toronto) are solid geopolitically, but investors with specific regional preferences should verify the vault choice before committing.

The platform also does not offer margin, leverage, or paper gold products. If you want exposure to gold price movement without taking delivery, this is not the right service. GoldBroker is purely for investors who want the metal itself.

Pros and Cons at a Glance