What Is the Ruthenium Price Today?#
There is no exchange-traded ruthenium price: today's figure is a refiner base price or dealer quote, most commonly Johnson Matthey's or Umicore's. On this page the ruthenium price today is $1,750.00 per troy ounce, 0.00% over 24 hours, on the dealer quote for sponge. All six metals are quoted under platinum group metal prices today.
Ruthenium Price per Troy Ounce, Gram and Kilogram#
One troy ounce of ruthenium costs $1,750.00, one gram $56.26 and one kilogram $56,263.81, converted from the dealer quote. The ruthenium price for five common weights is listed below in US dollars and euros.
| Weight | Grams | Troy ounces | Price (USD) | Price (EUR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 gram | 1 | 0.0322 | $56.26 | €50.18 |
| 10 grams | 10 | 0.3215 | $562.64 | €501.80 |
| 1 troy ounce | 31.1034768 | 1 | $1,750.00 | €1,560.77 |
| 100 grams | 100 | 3.2151 | $5,626.38 | €5,018.00 |
| 1 kilogram | 1,000 | 32.1507466 | $56,263.81 | €50,180.00 |
How much is 1 gram of ruthenium? A gram is the ounce price divided by 31.1034768, and a kilogram is the ounce price times 32.1507466. At a hypothetical 1,000 USD per troy ounce, a gram would cost 32.15 USD and a kilogram 32,150.75 USD. Euro values convert the dollar base price; they are not Umicore's quote.
How Is the Ruthenium Price Set?#
The ruthenium price comes from refiner base prices, not an exchange: Johnson Matthey quotes five platinum group metals, platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium and ruthenium, but no exchange lists ruthenium futures. Every quote source and its license terms are documented under ruthenium price data sources.
Ruthenium has no clearing house and no published trade volume, so every ruthenium number is a refiner quote or a commercial assessment from houses such as Metals Focus and SFA (Oxford).
Platinum and palladium are the contrast: both clear twice a day in an electronic auction run by ICE Benchmark Administration since 1 July 2026, explained under LBMA platinum and palladium prices.
Johnson Matthey Base Prices: The De Facto Ruthenium Benchmark#
Johnson Matthey's base price is the de facto ruthenium benchmark, quoted for sponge in US dollars per troy ounce and reset four times each business day in Hong Kong, London and New York. The four settings fall at 08:30 and 14:30 Hong Kong time, 09:00 London and 09:30 US Eastern.
Johnson Matthey defines base prices as "quoted prices for our customers of wholesale quantities of platinum group metals," for ruthenium sponge of at least 99.9% purity. Each is one firm's assessment, not an auction result or a regulated benchmark.
Umicore and Other Dealer Quotes#
Umicore quoted ruthenium at €53,950.00 per kilogram on a "Sales Price Fabricated" basis on 24 September 2026, a different basis from the Johnson Matthey figure and not directly comparable to it. That is €53.95 per gram, fabrication included.
Heraeus publishes a third ruthenium series; Kitco quotes none. Retail is a fourth basis: Strategic Metals Invest listed $62.59 per gram as its "retail price for private investors" on 5 August 2026.
Ruthenium chemicals are priced on metal content: commercial ruthenium(iii) chloride is the hydrate RuCl3·xH2O, sold by Sigma-Aldrich in a grade assayed at 45% to 55% ruthenium.
What Drives the Ruthenium Price?#
The ruthenium price is shaped by a structural supply deficit: world primary supply of about 30 tonnes against 2025 demand of 39.3 tonnes, a shortfall of 23% of demand (Johnson Matthey, May 2026). Unlike the factors in what drives the platinum price, ruthenium's drivers include no automotive demand at all.
Ruthenium Supply: A Structural Deficit#
World ruthenium supply was about 30 tonnes (972,000 ounces) in 2025 against demand of 39.3 tonnes (1.265 million ounces), a deficit of 293,000 ounces that Johnson Matthey calls "a shortfall of almost a quarter of annual consumption." It is the deepest proportional deficit in the platinum group metals market. The Johnson Matthey balance for 2021 to 2026 is listed below.
| Johnson Matthey basis ('000 oz) | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 forecast |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary supply | 1,417 | 971 | 914 | 1,125 | 972 | 977 |
| Total demand | 1,029 | 954 | 1,008 | 1,170 | 1,265 | 1,193 |
| Movement in stocks | +388 | +17 | -94 | -45 | -293 | -216 |
Supply cannot answer the price, because ruthenium is a by-product of platinum and palladium mining. The 2021 spike was a release of producer stock, and Johnson Matthey says those holdings "have been much depleted over the past decade."
South Africa supplies over 85% of primary ruthenium (Johnson Matthey, May 2026) from the ruthenium-rich UG2 reef, covered under ruthenium occurrence. Recycling adds 42 tonnes a year (2024), all of it closed loop.
Ruthenium Demand: Chemicals, Electronics and the AI Data-Center Boom#
Ruthenium demand splits into four blocks: chemical (45%), electrical and electronics (32%), other uses (13%) and electrochemical (10%) on a Johnson Matthey January 2026 basis (IPA/SFA Ruthenium Factsheet 2026). The four blocks and their 2025 tonnages are listed below.
- Chemical, 18 t: caprolactam and adipic acid catalysts, the Cativa acetic acid process.
- Electrical, 13 t: chip resistors, hard disk media, contacts.
- Other, 5 t: jewelry alloys, anti-glare mirror coatings.
- Electrochemical, 4 t: chlor-alkali anodes.
Chemical demand is the swing block: Chinese chemical-industry purchasing of platinum group metals hit an all-time high of nearly 1 million oz in 2025, "above all" on ruthenium catalysts for nylon precursors (Johnson Matthey, May 2026). Year-by-year demand is tracked under the ruthenium market.
High prices feed back into demand: the Cativa process displaced rhodium's Monsanto process in major acetic acid plants, but "high iridium and ruthenium prices have made the alternative rhodium-catalysed Monsanto process more competitive" (Johnson Matthey, May 2026).
Electronics demand rests on ruthenium oxide, RuO2 (CAS 12036-10-1), whose paste sits in resistors "for almost every chip device" (IPA/SFA); see ruthenium(iv) oxide.
The AI boom adds hard disks. Heraeus wrote on 11 August 2025 that AI storage is "fuelling a resurgence in HDD demand," and Seagate and Western Digital each reported 14% quarter-on-quarter product revenue growth in Q2 2025.
Laboratory compounds, such as tris(bipyridine)ruthenium(ii) chloride, a photoredox catalyst, are small by volume.
Ruthenium in Chip Interconnects and Fuel Cells#
Ruthenium is emerging as the leading candidate to replace copper in chip interconnects at 2 nanometers and below, and pairs with iridium in PEM electrolyzer anodes, where ruthenium gives higher activity and iridium gives higher durability. Interconnect films are only nanometers thick, so the chip story is strategic, not a tonnage driver (IPA/SFA Ruthenium Factsheet 2026). In electrolysis, ruthenium oxide is more active than iridium oxide but dissolves faster, so iridium remains the incumbent PEM anode metal and ruthenium-iridium mixed oxides are the main route to thrifting it.
Every other industrial application is covered under ruthenium uses.
Ruthenium Price History and the 2026 Record#
The highest ruthenium price ever recorded is $1,750 per troy ounce on 13 March 2026, on the Johnson Matthey base price, reported by Reuters, Kitco and Mining Weekly on 16 March 2026. The previous record was $1,275 per ounce at the end of December 2025, and Johnson Matthey describes the price as "almost quadrupling between January 2025 and March 2026."
The daily path since then is drawn on the ruthenium price chart, live and over longer ranges.
Ruthenium's Long-Run Price Range#
Ruthenium rose from $560 an ounce in March 2025 to its $1,750 record a year later, a 212% gain, and from $65 an ounce in 2014, a roughly 27-fold increase over 12 years. Dated levels, each with its series, are listed below.
- 2005 to 2019: mostly $40 to $270 per ounce, moved by "hard disk drive demand" and "a processing problem in South Africa" (IPA/SFA).
- 2014: $65 per ounce (SFA Oxford).
- March 2025: $560 per ounce (Reuters, LSEG).
- 11 August 2025: $895 per ounce (Heraeus weekly quote).
- End of December 2025: $1,275 per ounce, then a record (Johnson Matthey).
- 13 March 2026: $1,750 per ounce, the all-time high (Johnson Matthey base price).
Annual averages on a separate series, Engelhard unfabricated prices published by the US Geological Survey (Mineral Commodity Summaries, February 2026), are listed below; the 2025 rise of 53% was the largest of any PGM.
| Year | Ruthenium annual average (USD per troy ounce) |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 576.12 |
| 2022 | 577.02 |
| 2023 | 466.49 |
| 2024 | 451.02 |
| 2025 (estimate) | 690, up 53% |
Buy, Sell and Track Ruthenium at Today's Price#
Ruthenium buyers and sellers use today's dealer quote for investment bars, plating and industrial recycling settlements. Small bars and fabricated products trade on their own quotes, not the wholesale sponge price.
Selling Ruthenium: Industrial Recycling, Not Consumer Scrap#
Ruthenium has no significant consumer scrap market: open-loop recycling is undeveloped because most end products contain too little ruthenium to justify recovery. All 42 tonnes recycled in 2024 returned through closed loops, such as spent industrial catalysts (Johnson Matthey Circularity Whitepaper 2024).
Refiners pay a payable percentage of assayed metal, lower for ruthenium than for platinum and palladium, or zero in some contracts. Refining routes are compared under scrap platinum group metals.
Buying Ruthenium: Bars, Plating and Investment#
Ruthenium is bought as small investment bars and used as a plating and alloying metal, priced off the day's dealer quote. Johnson Matthey sells only to accounts with a genuine manufacturing need, not to individuals, so private buyers pay retail prices. Bars, coins, ETFs, stocks and futures for platinum are compared under investing in platinum.
Is ruthenium jewelry safe? The metal and its simple insoluble compounds carry no health hazard classification (IPA/SFA), and Pt950/Ru is a standard European and Japanese bridal platinum alloy. Buying steps are in how to buy platinum, and ruthenium products in ruthenium investment.
Ruthenium Price per Gram, Kilogram, Chart and Other PGM Prices Today#
Ruthenium prices for other weights, time ranges and the other five platinum group metals have dedicated pages. The four ruthenium pages are listed below.
- Gram: ruthenium price per gram
- Kilogram: ruthenium price per kilogram
- India, in rupees: ruthenium price in India today
- Chart: ruthenium price chart
Each other metal's main price source is listed below.
| Metal | Symbol | Main price source | Live price page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platinum | Pt | LBMA Platinum Price (IBA auction), NYMEX futures, Johnson Matthey base price | platinum price today |
| Palladium | Pd | LBMA Palladium Price (IBA auction), NYMEX futures, Johnson Matthey base price | palladium price today |
| Rhodium | Rh | Johnson Matthey base price, Kitco bid and ask; no exchange | rhodium price today |
| Iridium | Ir | Johnson Matthey base price, Umicore and Heraeus quotes; no exchange | iridium price today |
| Osmium | Os | Osmium-Institut price for crystalline osmium; no Johnson Matthey quote | osmium price today |
Ruthenium Price FAQ#
Is ruthenium a precious metal?#
Ruthenium is a platinum group metal, traded and priced as a precious metal by Johnson Matthey, Umicore and Heraeus. Customs tariffs place unwrought ruthenium under HS 7110.41, inside heading 7110 for platinum group metals, alongside iridium and osmium.
What is the current spot price of ruthenium?#
Ruthenium has no spot price: "today's price" means the latest refiner base price or dealer quote, not an exchange-cleared trade. The latest dealer quote is $1,750.00 per troy ounce at 5 Oct 2026, 15:30 UTC.
How rare is ruthenium compared with gold?#
Ruthenium is far scarcer in annual supply than gold: it made up 7% of 2025 primary PGM supply against platinum's 40% (IPA/SFA), and platinum's own mine supply is less than a tenth of gold's. Scarcity did not keep it expensive: ruthenium traded at $40 to $270 per ounce for most of 2005 to 2019. Rhodium, which Kitco quotes with a bid and ask, is priced on rhodium price today.
Why did the ruthenium price jump in 2026?#
The ruthenium price rose in 2026 on record Chinese chemical demand and an AI-driven hard-disk-drive boom. Johnson Matthey also reports Chinese export controls on ruthenium, imposed in February 2025, that "may have intensified shortages in other regions"; no underlying instrument is confirmed, and China's documented 4 February 2025 controls named tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium. Iridium, ruthenium's partner in the Cativa process, is quoted on iridium price today.
Where was ruthenium discovered?#
Ruthenium was discovered in 1844 by Karl Klaus (Karl Ernst Claus) at Kazan University in Russia, in residues of Ural platinum ore, and named after Ruthenia, the Latin name for Rus. The full story is on ruthenium discovery and history.
What are ruthenium's symbol, atomic number and CAS number?#
Ruthenium has the symbol Ru, atomic number 44 and CAS number 7440-18-8, with an atomic mass of 101.1 (PubChem). It melts at 2,607 K (2,334 °C) and has a density of 12.364 g/cm3. The element itself is covered on ruthenium (Ru), element 44.