How does Gold IRA Insight rate gold IRA companies?

Every company is scored 1–5 on five weighted criteria: fees and pricing (25%), customer feedback and ratings (25%), transparency and education (20%), buyback and liquidity (15%), and products and storage options (15%). The weighted average produces the overall score you see on each review.

Do companies pay for better ratings?

No. We do not sell review placement, and a company can never pay to change a score. Ratings are locked in by our published criteria before any commercial relationship exists. Our affiliate disclosure explains how the site may earn money without affecting ratings.

Where does your data come from?

From primary and public sources: company websites and published fee schedules, BBB profiles, Trustpilot and ConsumerAffairs pages, court records, and IRS publications. Every review lists its sources with the date we checked them.

How often do you update ratings?

We re-verify fees, ratings and minimums at least quarterly, and sooner when a company changes terms or news breaks. Each review shows the date its facts were last checked.

How We Rate Gold IRA Companies: Our Methodology

Gold IRA companies ask you to trust them with retirement money. That trust should be earned with published numbers, not sales calls — and the same standard applies to the sites that review them. This page explains exactly how Gold IRA Insight scores every company, where our data comes from, and what would never happen here: paid placements, invented ratings, or scores that move when a marketing budget does.

Maintained by Marcus Whitfield, Senior Editor, Retirement & Precious Metals. Scores are computed, not negotiated: the same rules apply to every company, including the ones we may earn a commission from (disclosure).

The Five Criteria and Their Weights

Each company is scored 1 to 5 on five criteria. The overall score is the weighted average below, rounded to one decimal. Weights reflect what actually moves your money: what you pay, and what other customers experienced.

Rating criteria, weights and what we measure
Criterion	Weight	What we measure
Fees & Pricing	25%	Setup, admin and storage costs, spreads, hidden line items — published pricing scores higher.
Customer Feedback & Ratings	25%	Volume and shape of BBB, Trustpilot and ConsumerAffairs records: ratings, complaint themes, resolution behavior.
Transparency & Education	20%	Does the company publish real numbers, disclose markups, and educate before it sells?
Buyback & Liquidity	15%	Published buyback terms, no-liquidation-fee commitments, how fast you can realistically exit.
Products & Storage Options	15%	IRS-approved product range, depository choice, segregated storage availability.

Scoring rules that keep us honest

Pricing you can't see caps the fees score. If a company refuses to publish fees and quotes everything by phone, its fees score cannot exceed 3.5 — opacity is itself a cost.
Unresolved complaint patterns cap the feedback score. A stream of similar, unanswered BBB complaints caps customer feedback at 3.5, whatever the star average says.
Claims need documents. "Best prices", "no fees ever" or "A+ rated" claims count only when the company's own fee schedule, BBB profile or contract wording supports them.
History counts, with context. Bankruptcies, lawsuits and regulatory actions are weighed on facts and dates — and so are remediation and clean years since. We describe both.
No invented precision. When two sources disagree, we publish the range and say so. When a number can't be verified, we mark it rather than round it into confidence.

Data Sources

We rate from primary and public records, in this order of authority:

Company documentation — published fee schedules, account agreements, storage options, buyback terms on the company's own site.
Regulatory and complaint records — BBB profiles (rating, accreditation, three-year complaint volume and themes), plus FTC and court records where relevant.
Independent review platforms — Trustpilot, ConsumerAffairs and Google reviews: we read the distribution and the complaints, not just the average.
Government sources — IRS publications for every tax statement we make (Pub 590-A/590-B, IRC §408).

Every review ends with a source list and the date we checked it. Company fees and ratings change; treat our date stamp as part of the data.

What Money Never Does Here

Gold IRA Insight may earn commissions when readers open accounts with companies we review — that is how review sites survive. What money can never do here: change a score, remove a con, or buy a ranking. The criteria on this page were published before we applied to any affiliate program, and ratings are locked to them. Full details are in our affiliate disclosure.

Update Schedule

Fees, ratings and minimums are re-verified at least quarterly, and reviews are re-dated when facts change. Substantive rating changes are explained in the review itself. If you spot a number that no longer matches the company's site, tell us — verified corrections ship within days, not quarters.

What Our Ratings Are Not

Our scores measure how a company performs as a Gold IRA dealer or custodian on record today. They are not investment advice, not a prediction of gold prices, and not a recommendation that a precious metals IRA suits you — for many savers it doesn't. Read the honest case for and against Gold IRAs before any company comparison.