Compare › Methodology › Data provenance
Data provenance and commercial relationships
Bullion Price Check is precious-metals data software, not a dealer. Our software reads each dealer's public product page every hour, around the clock, and records the single-unit price, stock status and the time it was read. Some dealers pay us a commission when a visitor buys through our link. Partners pay to list, never to rank: every table is sorted by price alone. A dealer that thinks a price is wrong can dispute it through our contact page.
How prices are collected
- Source: the dealer's own public product page for one specific coin or bar. Where a dealer offers an official product feed that we are allowed to use, we read the feed instead and record the feed's own timestamp.
- What we record: the single-unit price on the cheapest payment basis (usually check or wire), the card price when the page lists one, stock status, and the exact time of the read. Shipping and tax are not included in the listed price; the true cost calculator adds each dealer's published shipping and payment fees.
- Checks before a price is shown: a price must fall between 0.9 and 1.6 times melt value, and a price at or below melt value plus 0.5% is rejected as likely wrong. An out-of-stock product gets no price.
- Freshness: Dealer prices and spot are refreshed every hour, around the clock (24/7), usually around 44 minutes past the hour. A dealer price older than 120 minutes is never ranked or called the cheapest: it shows as a dated “See price” link instead (one short price feed: older than 60 minutes). The premium index is marked stale after 70 minutes, which means the next hourly refresh is late or was missed.
- Dealers we do not read: if a dealer blocks automated requests, or its terms do not allow automated price collection, we do not collect its prices. It may still appear with a plain link and no price, and the data quality page shows it as not checked.
- Spot prices come from gold-api.com, read at every refresh.
- Nothing is estimated: when we have no fresh price, we show none. We never fill a gap with an older price or a guess.
How commercial relationships work
- Affiliate links: many dealer links are affiliate or referral links, through affiliate networks or direct agreements. If you buy after clicking one, the dealer may pay us a commission. It costs you nothing extra. These links are marked
rel="sponsored". - Partners pay to list, never to rank. A partner dealer may carry a “Partner” label. Its prices are ranked exactly like everyone else's, by price only. We never sell a position in a ranking, a “cheapest” badge or a spot in an answer box.
- Non-partners are listed too. We compare dealers whether or not they pay us. A dealer that does not pay us can still be ranked first when its price is lowest.
- Ads are labeled. Banner ads carry an “Ad” label and are kept apart from the price tables.
- Developer tools: the standard API and MCP tools are free. A business can pay for a version fine-tuned or customized to its needs (pricing by email via contact). Custom work never changes the public rankings.
- Full disclosure: affiliate disclosure · partner terms: dealer partners.
How a dealer can dispute a price
- Send the product page URL, the price we showed, the time printed next to it, and the correct price through our contact page.
- Every price is re-read on the next hourly refresh, so a price the dealer has already changed is replaced automatically.
- If our software misread the page, we fix how that page is read, or remove the listing until it reads correctly.
- A dealer can also ask us to use an official feed instead of reading its page, or ask to be removed.
Current freshness of every dealer, and why any price is excluded: data quality (as of Nov 11, 2026 8:53 AM ET). Rules for ranking and premiums: methodology.