BullionVault vs Goldmoney

At Gold Investor Research, we get asked to compare BullionVault and Goldmoney more than almost any other pairing of gold platforms. Both let you buy allocated physical gold online and store it in a professional vault instead of a safe deposit box.

Both have been operating since the 2000s, both publish fee schedules, and both hold client assets in the billions.

The differences show up in the details: how commission scales with order size, what a small holding actually costs to store month to month, and who owns the company behind the vault relationship you're signing up for.

We reviewed both platforms' current fee schedules, vault networks, and account structures to lay out where they actually diverge.

Key Points

• BullionVault's commission drops as low as 0.05% on large orders, while Goldmoney charges a flat 0.5% on standard marketplace trades regardless of size.
• Goldmoney's $10 monthly storage minimum is more than double BullionVault's $4 minimum, a gap that matters most for smaller accounts.

What You're Actually Buying

BullionVault launched in 2005 and is run by Galmarley Ltd, a UK company that isn't publicly traded. It operates as an order board: clients trade directly against each other's live bids and offers, similar to how a stock exchange matches buyers and sellers.

The platform stores metal in five vaults, in London, Zurich, New York, Toronto, and Singapore, using vault operators Loomis International, Malca Amit, and Brink's, all accredited by the London Bullion Market Association.

Daily audits of vault contents are published so clients can check holdings against their own account balance.

Goldmoney traces back further. James Turk started the original GoldMoney in 2001 as one of the first digital gold currency services. In 2015, BitGold, a Toronto company founded by Roy Sebag and Josh Crumb, acquired GoldMoney, and the combined business took the Goldmoney Inc name.

It now trades publicly on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker XAU. Goldmoney stores metal in six locations, the UK, Switzerland, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US, through operators including Loomis International, Rhenus Logistics, Brink's, and the Royal Canadian Mint.

Holdings are fully allocated and segregated, meaning your bars are assigned to you specifically rather than pooled with other clients' metal.

BullionVault works the same way at its core: clients hold a recorded ownership share of allocated bars, not a claim on a pooled account, which puts both platforms in the allocated ownership category rather than the paper gold category that ETFs fall into.

Trading Costs

Commission is where the two platforms split hardest. BullionVault charges a sliding scale on both buy and sell orders:

Goldmoney charges a flat 0.5% on standard marketplace transactions, no matter the order size. On a $500,000 order, that difference stops being theoretical.

On BullionVault, that trade falls in the 0.1% band, a $500 commission. On Goldmoney's flat rate, the same trade costs $2,500.

Smaller, routine purchases land closer together: a $2,000 gold buy costs $10 in commission on either platform.

Goldmoney also charges 0.75% to convert between metals or move holdings between vault locations, a cost BullionVault doesn't really have an equivalent for, since each metal settles on its own separate order board there.

Storage Fees, and Where the Minimums Bite

Storage tells a similar story once you look past the headline percentage. BullionVault charges 0.12% a year for gold, with a $4 monthly floor, and 0.48% a year for silver, platinum, and palladium, with an $8 floor.

Goldmoney's published fee schedule sets a $10 monthly minimum across every holding, with rates that vary by metal and vault.

Gold storage there generally runs between roughly 0.12% and 0.216% annually depending on location, and palladium is fixed at 0.25% a year across all six vaults.

Run the numbers on a modest account and the gap becomes visible fast.

At $2,000, both platforms' percentage rate would round to just a couple of dollars a month, so the minimum decides the actual bill. That's a $72 annual difference on a small account, entirely a function of where each provider sets its floor.

The gap narrows as balances grow, since the percentage rate takes over once it exceeds the minimum.

Withdrawal and Physical Delivery

Both platforms let you convert digital holdings into physical metal, and both charge for it. BullionVault applies a 2.5% fee on physical gold withdrawal, with an additional surcharge for bar sizes smaller than a standard delivery bar.

Goldmoney sets a flat minimum charge of $1,250 USD per redemption request, which makes it an expensive way to cash out a small holding as physical metal. Neither platform is built around fast physical delivery.

Both are designed for clients who want to buy, hold, and sell gold as a financial position, with physical redemption available as an option rather than the default use case.

What the Current Gold Market Adds to the Comparison

Gold has moved enough this year that fee structure matters more than it did a few years back. Spot gold traded near $4,400 per ounce in early September 2026, according to Trading Economics, up roughly 23% over the trailing twelve months.

A position bought a year ago is worth substantially more today, and that kind of gain is exactly when a flat commission or a high storage minimum starts to eat into returns if you're not tracking where the percentage rate crosses over the fixed floor.

Goldmoney reported close to $2.9 billion CAD in client precious metals under custody as of March 2025, per company disclosures tied to its public filings. BullionVault, per Gold IRA Blueprint's 2026 review of the platform, holds over $4 billion in client bullion across more than 175 countries.

Neither figure tells you which platform is better run. Both confirm these are large, established custodians rather than fringe operators.

The Ownership Difference That Doesn't Show Up in a Fee Table

One structural difference matters even though it never appears next to a percentage sign. BullionVault is privately held, run by Galmarley Ltd, a company that doesn't file public financial statements.

Goldmoney is a public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, which means its financials, share structure, and insider ownership show up in public filings.

Roy Sebag, Goldmoney's CEO, held roughly a quarter of the company's shares as of his last disclosed filing in January 2024.

That level of disclosure can be an advantage if you want visibility into who runs the platform and how it's capitalized. It also means Goldmoney answers to public shareholders in a way a private company simply doesn't.