freegoldapi.com

Free, comprehensive historical gold price data spanning 768 years (1258-2025)

📊 Live site: freegoldapi.com

Dataset Overview

Total: 1,678 records with increasing granularity over time:

Source	Period	Records	Granularity
MeasuringWorth British Official Price	1258-1717	460	Annual
MeasuringWorth London Market Price	1718-1959	242	Annual
World Bank Commodity Prices	1960-2024	780	Monthly
Yahoo Finance Gold Futures (GC=F)	2025-present	196	Daily

Quick Start

Download the latest data:

• CSV: data/latest.csv

CSV Format:

date,price,currency
1258-01-01,0.89,GBP
1259-01-01,0.89,GBP
...
2025-10-10,4000.40,USD

Features

• 📈 768 years of data from medieval Britain to modern futures markets
• 🔄 Automatically updated daily via GitHub Actions
• 📊 Interactive timeline visualization showing data source coverage
• 💾 Raw data available - download individual source files
• 🆓 Completely free - no API keys required for basic dataset
• 📜 Proper attribution - full citations for all data sources

Data Sources & Attribution

British Official Price (1258-1717)

• Source: MeasuringWorth
• Citation: Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, 'The Price of Gold, 1257-1945,' MeasuringWorth, 2025
• Granularity: Annual
• Currency: GBP

London Market Price (1718-1959)

• Source: MeasuringWorth
• Citation: Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, 'The Price of Gold, 1718-2024,' MeasuringWorth, 2025
• Granularity: Annual
• Currency: GBP (until 1949), USD (1950+)

World Bank Commodity Prices (1960-2024)

• Source: World Bank Pink Sheet
• Granularity: Monthly
• Currency: USD per troy ounce

Yahoo Finance (2025-present)

• Source: Gold Futures (GC=F)
• Granularity: Daily
• Currency: USD per troy ounce

Architecture

The system uses a single unified script that handles everything:

update_gold_data.py

One script to rule them all - fetches, merges, and updates in a single run.

python update_gold_data.py

What it does:

1. Fetches data from all enabled sources:

   • MeasuringWorth (annual, 1258-2024): Tries website first, falls back to API
   • World Bank (monthly, 1960-present): Always fetches fresh from API
   • Yahoo Finance (daily, 2025-present): Always fetches fresh from API

2. Merges with proper priority ordering:

   • Higher granularity data overrides lower granularity
   • Priority: Daily > Monthly > Annual

3. Generates output:

   • data/latest.csv (always current)
   • data/gold_spot_YYYYMMDD.csv (timestamped)
   • data/source_stats.json (statistics)
   • index.html (updated with latest data)

GitHub Actions (automated)

Runs daily at 6 AM UTC to fetch and publish updated data.

Local Development

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/olddatasets/gold-spot-downloader.git
cd gold-spot-downloader

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Fetch, merge, and update everything
python update_gold_data.py

# View locally
python -m http.server 8000
# Visit http://localhost:8000

Configuration

Edit config.json to enable/disable data sources:

{
  "backfill_sources": {
    "measuringworth_british": {
      "enabled": true,
      "series": "British",
      "granularity": "annual"
    },
    "worldbank": {
      "enabled": true,
      "granularity": "monthly"
    },
    "yahoo_finance": {
      "enabled": true,
      "granularity": "daily"
    }
  }
}

GitHub Pages Setup

This repository is configured to deploy to GitHub Pages automatically:

1. Enable GitHub Pages:

   • Go to repository Settings → Pages
   • Source: GitHub Actions
   • The workflow will deploy automatically on push

2. Automatic Updates:

   • Runs daily at 6 AM UTC
   • Fetches latest data from all sources
   • Rebuilds and deploys site

Use Cases

• 📊 Financial analysis and modeling
• 📈 Historical trend research
• 💹 Investment strategy backtesting
• 🎓 Educational projects
• 📉 Economic research

License & Terms

• Code: MIT License
• Data: See individual source attributions above
• Usage: Non-profit educational purposes
• MeasuringWorth data: Used with proper attribution per their terms of use

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Submit a pull request

Potential improvements:

• Additional data sources
• More granular recent data
• Data quality improvements
• Visualization enhancements

Support

• 🐛 Issues: GitHub Issues
• 📧 Contact: Open an issue for questions

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to:

• MeasuringWorth for providing comprehensive historical gold price data
• World Bank for maintaining the Commodity Price (Pink Sheet) database
• Yahoo Finance for current gold futures data

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Last updated: 2025-10-12