Gold Nisab for Zakat: the 85-Gram Threshold, the Lunar Year, and the 2.5% You Owe

The gold nisab for zakat is 85 grams of pure (24-karat) gold: if you have owned at least that much gold for one full lunar year (*hawl*), you owe 2.5% of it in zakat. The equivalent threshold in silver — the second nisab — is 595 grams of pure silver, and many scholars advise paying against the lower (silver) threshold when your wealth is in cash, because more people then qualify to give and more of the poor are served. Everything else about zakat on gold — the jewellery question, mixed karats, gold bought mid-year — is a refinement of these two numbers: 85 grams, one lunar year, 2.5%.

Getting the threshold right matters more than ever, because gold's price has moved so far that many families who assume they are below the nisab crossed it years ago without noticing.

What is the gold nisab for zakat, exactly?

The nisab is the minimum wealth at which zakat becomes obligatory, and for gold it was set by the Prophet ﷺ at twenty *mithqal* — which the classical jurists weighed at 85 grams of pure gold. Twenty mithqal was not a random figure: it approximated the value of two hundred dirhams of silver, the parallel threshold for currency, tying the duty on precious metal to the duty on money. The International Islamic Fiqh Academy and the fatwa bodies of every major school confirm the 85-gram figure as the operative nisab for gold today.

Two conditions attach to the threshold. First, the gold must reach the nisab at the *start* of your zakat year. Second, you must still own at least the nisab when the lunar year completes. What happens in between — buying, selling, small fluctuations — does not restart the clock under the majority view; only dropping below the nisab entirely does.

How much is the gold nisab worth right now?

Because the nisab is a *weight* of gold, its cash value moves with the gold price — and the gold price has moved dramatically. Gold traded near $2,900 per troy ounce in early 2025 and pushed through $4,000 per ounce by late 2025, one of the strongest runs in the metal's history. At roughly $4,000 an ounce, 85 grams (about 2.73 troy ounces) of pure gold is worth close to $10,900. At the prices of just five years earlier, the same nisab was worth under $5,000.

The practical consequence is easy to miss: a household that held $8,000 in savings and assumed it was safely below the threshold may now hold *more* than the nisab without having added a single dollar — because the yardstick itself moved. The correct habit is not to remember a dollar figure but to check the live gold price once a year: multiply today's price per gram by 85, and compare your zakatable wealth against that.

Do you pay zakat on the gold jewellery you wear?

This is the one question where the four schools genuinely part ways, and you should know your own school's position rather than average them. The Hanafi school — and the position of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy — is that all gold and silver is zakatable once it passes the nisab, including jewellery in regular personal use, because the metal's nature as stored wealth does not change by being worn. The Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools exempt jewellery that is genuinely for a woman's personal, customary use — within the normal limits of her community — and levy zakat only on jewellery held as investment, hoarded, or beyond customary amounts.

Two practical notes follow. If you follow the Hanafi position, weigh the jewellery itself: a kitchen scale and the piece's karat are all you need. And whichever school you follow, the weight is of *pure gold content* — 100 grams of 21-karat jewellery (87.5% purity) contains only 87.5 grams of pure gold, and it is the pure content that counts against the 85-gram nisab.

How do you calculate zakat on gold that is not pure?

Convert everything to pure-gold equivalents before comparing against the nisab. A karat is a twenty-fourth part: 24-karat is pure, 22-karat is 91.7% gold, 21-karat is 87.5%, 18-karat is 75%. Multiply each piece's total weight by its karat fraction, sum the pure-gold grams, and only then ask whether you have crossed 85. Many people who think they own "a lot of gold" discover, after the karat conversion, that they are below the nisab — and others who mixed heavy 18-karat bangles with a small 24-karat bar discover the opposite.

If your gold is only part of your wealth — the common case — you do not measure it alone. Cash, bank balances, trade goods, gold and silver are combined into one zakatable pool, and the question is whether the *pool* has exceeded the nisab for a year. A family with 40 grams of gold and $7,000 in cash should not ask "is my gold over 85 grams?" but "is my gold's value plus my cash over the nisab?" — and it almost certainly is.

When exactly is zakat on gold due?

Zakat falls due on the day your personal *hawl* — your zakat year — completes, counting from the first day your wealth reached the nisab. It is a lunar year of about 354 days, not the 365-day solar year, which is why your zakat date creeps forward by roughly eleven days each year unless you anchor it to a fixed Hijri date such as the first of Ramadan. You may pay early — zakat paid in advance of the due date is valid under the majority view — but delaying it past the due date without a genuine excuse is a debt you owe to the poor, not merely a missed appointment.

Rate, finally, is the easy part: one-fortieth, 2.5%, of the full value of your zakatable gold on the due date — not on the weight you owned at the start of the year and not on your purchase price, but on what the gold is worth on the day the year completes. If you hold 100 grams of pure gold worth $12,800 on your zakat day, your zakat is $320, payable from the gold itself or from cash of equal value.

Where does the gold nisab fit in your wider financial map?

Zakat discipline is, at heart, record-keeping discipline — and the same record that tells you whether you have crossed 85 grams is the record your family will need if you are ever not there to explain it. The annual nisab check is a natural moment to update everything else: what you own, what you owe, where the documents live, who should be told.

WiseEnding is built around exactly this habit. My World keeps your assets and liabilities in one zero-knowledge vault that only you can read — including the gold log that makes the nisab check a two-minute ritual instead of a reconstruction. The Debt Anchor keeps the other side of the ledger honest, and the Legacy Heartbeat ensures that if your silence ever becomes permanent, the map — not just the gold — reaches the people you chose. Zakat purifies wealth once a year; a complete, current record protects it every day in between.