How Cheapest Silver works

Who runs this, where the numbers come from, how the ranking is calculated, and what it cannot tell you. Last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Who runs it

Cheapest Silver is run by the same person as Cheapest Gold, as an independent price comparison for UK buyers of physical silver. It is not a dealer and does not sell silver. We take no commission on the prices shown and no dealer pays for placement or ranking — the order of the table is decided entirely by the numbers below.

Where the prices come from

Every price is read directly from the dealer's own website by an automated check, and every figure on this site is a real listed price for an item that was in stock at the time of reading. Nothing is estimated, modelled or filled in by hand. If a dealer cannot be read, that dealer shows as Currently unavailable rather than carrying a stale or guessed number.

The date and time of the last successful check is shown above the comparison table and beside each static ranking. Prices move with the silver market, so a figure more than a day old should be treated as indicative and confirmed on the dealer's site before you buy.

A few dealers cannot be read automatically at all, because their pages do not expose prices in a readable form. Those are checked by hand, less often, or left out. We would rather show eight dealers we can stand behind than thirteen with four sources of doubt.

The silver price we compare against

Premiums are measured against a real dealer's own published silver spot price, not our own ticker. This matters: two price sources always differ slightly, and measuring a dealer's premium against a number they never used would misstate it. The source in use is recorded in the data file behind the site.

How the ranking is calculated

The question we answer is: for your budget, which dealer puts the most silver in your hands? Not which has the lowest sticker price.

• Whole units only. You cannot buy 4.7 coins. We work out how many whole items your budget buys, which is why two dealers with different prices can deliver the same weight.
• Best size for the budget, not the biggest. A 1kg bar has a lower premium per ounce than 1oz coins, but one bar can leave a large part of your budget unspent, and unspent money buys no silver. We test both and rank on whichever actually yields more.
• VAT included, at the rate that applies. New silver carries 20% VAT. Some dealers list prices excluding VAT; where they do, we add it, and say so on the row.
• Delivery included where it can be read. Where a dealer only sets delivery at checkout, the row is marked + delivery instead of treating it as free.
• Ties broken on what you pay. If two dealers give you the same weight, the cheaper one ranks higher.

What counts as the same thing

We compare on metal, not design. Any .999 fine silver of the right size counts, so a Kangaroo or a plain round can beat a Britannia on price. For that to be safe, three things must match:

• Size — 1oz against 1oz, 1kg against 1kg.
• Purity — .999 or finer only. This matters more than it sounds: sterling (.925), Britannia-standard (.958) and pre-1947 UK coinage (.500) are all sold by the ounce and contain markedly less silver. A cheap-looking "1oz" pre-1947 crown holds about half an ounce of actual silver. Those are excluded.
• VAT route — the three routes are never mixed in one ranking. See below.

The three VAT routes, and why they are kept apart

This is the single biggest source of confusion in UK silver, and the reason a blended "cheapest silver" figure would be misleading.

• New, VAT paid. Standard 20% VAT on top. The straightforward baseline.
• Pre-owned, margin scheme (some dealers call it the Special Scheme). The dealer pays VAT only on their own margin, so the price is genuinely lower, it is delivered to your door, and the low price is the final price. The trade-off is second-hand condition and whatever stock the dealer happens to hold.
• Vaulted, VAT-free. Cheapest on paper, but the saving is deferred, not given: the silver is VAT-free only while it stays in the vault, and taking delivery later triggers 20% VAT on its value at that date.

A pre-owned margin-scheme price and a vaulted VAT-free price can look identical in a list and are not the same offer. Our guide to VAT-free versus VAT-paid silver works through it in full.

Capital Gains Tax

UK legal-tender coins such as the Silver Britannia are exempt from Capital Gains Tax; foreign coins and all bars are not. On a large holding that exemption can be worth more than a few percent on the purchase price. We do not rank on it, because most buyers will never approach the annual allowance and filtering to Britannias alone would make the site more expensive for them. Instead there is a CGT-free only filter, and qualifying coins are badged in the table.

Where a coin is flagged CGT-free we are either recognising a UK legal-tender series or taking the dealer's own explicit statement. Where we are unsure, we do not claim it — a missed exemption costs you nothing, while a wrongly claimed one could mean an unexpected tax bill.

What this site cannot tell you

Being straight about the limits:

• Prices are a snapshot, not live to the second. Always confirm on the dealer's site.
• Some dealers show "from" prices that assume a bulk quantity, so a single-unit buyer may pay more than the figure shown.
• We track a fixed list of products per dealer. A dealer may have a better deal on something we do not track.
• We do not assess dealer solvency, insurance or service quality. Trustpilot scores and trade accreditations are shown for information, not as a recommendation.
• Physical bullion is unregulated in the UK: outside the FCA, and not covered by the FSCS or the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Corrections

If a price here is wrong, it is worth telling us, and it is the kind of report we act on: a listing we read as VAT-inclusive when it was not, or a product that is out of stock. Use the contact form on the homepage.

This page is information, not financial or tax advice. The value of silver can go down as well as up.