Gold Panning Yield Calculator
A visible flake of gold is worth about seven cents. Panning good ground by hand earns $4.58 an hour, and the arithmetic says why.
A visible flake of gold is worth about seven cents
This is the number that reorganises everything else, and it falls straight out of the density. Gold is 19.3 g/cm³, so a flake one millimetre square and five hundredths of a millimetre thick weighs 0.965 milligrams. It takes about a thousand of them to make a gram.
| Flake | Size | Weight | Worth | Per gram |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiny speck | 0.5×0.5×0.03mm | 0.145 mg | $0.01 | 6,908 |
| Small flake | 1×1×0.05mm | 0.965 mg | $0.07 | 1,036 |
| Good flake | 2×2×0.08mm | 6.18 mg | $0.48 | 162 |
| Small picker | 3×3×0.15mm | 26.05 mg | $2.01 | 38 |
At $2400 a troy ounce, a good pan showing fifty colours is under four dollars. The pan that made someone whoop on the internet is worth less than the coffee they were drinking while they filmed it. That is not a reason not to do it — it is a reason to be clear about what you are doing.
Panning is not a wage
A 14″ pan holds about 462 cubic inches, so it takes roughly 101 pans to work a single cubic yard of gravel. At ten minutes a pan — which is quick, if you are actually cleaning it out — that is seventeen hours of work per cubic yard.
On ground running a gram to the yard, which would be genuinely good ground, that comes to about $4.58 an hour. Below minimum wage in every jurisdiction that has one, and that is assuming you have already found gold-bearing gravel.
Which is exactly why sluices exist. A sluice hand-fed at a cubic yard an hour processes about seventeen times the material a panner can — and that ratio, not any difference in how well it catches gold, is the entire argument. A sluice actually recovers rather less of the fine gold than careful panning does. It simply gets through so much more that it does not matter.
About those grades
| Ground | Grams per cubic yard | |
|---|---|---|
| Poor / unproven ground | 0.05 | Most gravel anywhere. A few specks a day if you are lucky. |
| Modest recreational ground | 0.2 | A known but worked-over public area. Colours in most pans. |
| Good ground | 1 | A productive claim. Better than most recreational panners ever see. |
| Rich pay streak | 5 | A genuine pay layer. Rare, small, and the reason people keep looking. |
These are a scale to think on, not a prediction. Real ground varies enormously between rivers and between one bend and the next — that is the nature of placer deposits, which is why prospecting is mostly sampling rather than digging. If you have panned an area and know roughly what it runs, put your own figure in the box.
Before you go
- Check who owns the gold. Most productive ground is claimed, and working someone else's claim is theft regardless of who owns the land. Public panning areas exist in many places and are the right place to start.
- Check what you are allowed to move. Rules on sluices, dredges and disturbing a stream bed vary enormously and change; a pan is usually fine where a dredge is illegal.
- Fine gold is the gold you lose. Most of what a beginner washes out of the pan is the smallest and most numerous fraction. Slow down and lose less rather than speeding up and processing more.
- Sample before you dig. Ten pans from ten places tells you far more than a hundred pans from one, and finding the pay streak is the whole skill.
How to use
- Put in a spot price — it moves daily.
- Use your own grams-per-yard figure if you have sampled the ground.
- Compare panning against sluicing at the same grade.
- Ask how much gravel a given payday would actually take.
Frequently asked questions
How much is a flake of gold worth?
About seven cents for a typical visible flake. Gold is 19.3 grams per cubic centimetre, so a flake a millimetre square and five hundredths of a millimetre thick weighs 0.965 milligrams — it takes roughly a thousand of them to make a gram. At $2,400 a troy ounce that is 7.4 cents each.
How much is a pan with fifty colours worth?
Under four dollars, if they are ordinary small flakes. Fifty colours looks like a lot spread across the bottom of a pan and weighs about 48 milligrams. This is worth knowing before watching videos of people celebrating over pans worth less than their coffee.
How many pans are in a cubic yard?
About a hundred. A standard 14 inch pan holds roughly 462 cubic inches when filled to a workable depth, and a cubic yard is 46,656 cubic inches. At ten minutes a pan, which is quick if you are cleaning it out properly, that is around seventeen hours of work per cubic yard.
Is gold panning profitable?
Essentially never, as an hourly proposition. On ground running a gram to the cubic yard — which would be genuinely good ground — a pan holds about ten milligrams, or 76 cents. That is $4.58 an hour, below minimum wage in every jurisdiction that has one, and it assumes you have already found gold-bearing gravel.
Why use a sluice instead of a pan?
Throughput, and only throughput. A sluice hand-fed at a cubic yard an hour processes about seventeen times the material a panner can. It actually recovers rather less of the fine gold than careful panning does — it simply gets through so much more that the difference does not matter.
How much gravel would I need to move to make $100?
On modest recreational ground, around eight cubic yards, which is roughly twelve tons of gravel. That is the honest way round to ask the question, and the answer is usually the end of the conversation. The calculator works it out for whatever grade and price you put in.
What is a good grams-per-yard figure?
It varies enormously between rivers and between one bend and the next, which is the nature of placer deposits. As a scale to think on: unproven gravel is often under 0.1, worked-over public ground perhaps 0.2, a productive claim around 1, and a genuine pay streak several. Sample your own ground rather than trusting any table.
Why is fine gold so easy to lose?
Because it is the smallest and by far the most numerous fraction, and it floats out of a pan on the surface tension of the water if you work too fast. Most of what a beginner washes away is exactly the material the arithmetic above is counting. Slowing down and losing less beats speeding up and processing more.
Does the gold price change the answer?
It scales everything linearly but does not change the shape of it. Even at double the current spot price, hand panning good ground is around nine dollars an hour. The problem is not the price of gold, it is the volume of gravel one person can wash.
Can I pan anywhere I like?
No. Most productive ground is claimed, and working someone else's claim is theft regardless of who owns the land. Rules on sluices and dredges vary enormously and change — a pan is often permitted where a dredge is illegal. Public panning areas exist in many places and are the right place to start.
How do I find the pay streak?
By sampling, which is most of the actual skill. Ten pans from ten different places tells you far more than a hundred pans from one. Gold concentrates where flowing water slows — inside bends, behind boulders, on bedrock — and finding that layer matters more than any equipment.
Does this send anything anywhere?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser and nothing is stored or uploaded.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or stored.