(This review was updated in January 2025)
We enthusiastically choose Augusta Precious Metals as top pick for best gold IRA company. This says a lot, because we carefully assessed all the elements of this company and the others, and they are clearly the best choice for those who have at least $50,000 already saved for retirement. It’s hard to argue with having 0 complaints with the BBB and BCA since beginning operation a decade ago (unlike any of their competitors), almost ALL top reviews and ratings, and a reputation for transparency and great prices. Even multi-millionaire quarterback Joe Montana and his advisors anonymously chose Augusta to be his personal gold IRA company. More about that below, but first, let’s talk a little about what the challenges are to finding the best gold IRA company…
Gold is often thought of as one of the most reliable assets in the financial world. A prudent investor who’s preparing to sail through economically uncertain waters would consider investing in gold for their IRA. Sadly, there can be a number of challenges to finding solid, straightforward information. Some gold companies out there even mislead customers into making purchases that do not benefit them. In this review of Augusta Precious Metals we will show why we believe this is a company you can trust to help you protect your hard-earned retirement savings with physical gold and silver.
About Augusta Precious Metals
Augusta Precious Metals is an industry-leading no-pressure precious metals company that specializes in physical gold and silver products and services for retirement investors. In fact, it’s the one gold IRA company we know of that has zero complaints with the BBB and BCA since the company started, and we found almost all 5-star reviews and assessments from consumer watchdogs.
Augusta has the best, most transparent prices as far as we can tell, but it offers a lot more, including providing personalized assistance to customers looking to open gold IRAs. They say they help with most of the paperwork and help customers even after the purchase – for as long as an account is open.
It is interesting that this company was chosen by Joe Montana (the former hall of famer, who is worth about $150 million) and his own financial people after checking out gold IRA companies in the U.S. We watched a video where talk about him signing up for the company’s web conference without telling the presenters it was him! Once he got to know them, he liked what he heard so much that he not only told them it was him, but he bought gold from them and eventually became a paid endorser of the company. This helped convince us that the company is genuinely good to work with. Other companies do it backwards: they go find a celebrity to help them create a good reputation, then they pay them for endorsements.
Augusta Precious Metals has unique selling points that seem to us to pretty clearly give them an edge over other gold companies in the market – these are the elements we considered to name them our first pick as gold IRA company:
▶ Customer service
On their website, Augusta explains how the company approaches service to customers. They say they offer a number of services to help people use physical gold and silver to protect their savings. Among them:
- The most unique service is a one-on-one web conference designed by their “on-staff Harvard-trained economic analyst” to help you learn about the economy and gold and silver. No other gold IRA company has this.
- We found out that, unlike competitors, they have a no-pressure sales style, so salespeople don’t feel pressured to pressure customers and this adds to their credibility.
- They give you a personally assigned agent to answer questions and guide you through the process—and many customer reviews say the process is low pressure, quick and easy.
- Augusta claims to have the most competitive, transparent pricing in the industry.
- All Augusta customers receive account lifetime support, unlike some other companies whose service stops after the transaction.
But all of that just scratches the surface of the total Augusta customer service experience. Augusta is structurally set up to provide premium, streamlined customer service. The company is organized using specialized departments that seamlessly manage each step of the account-opening and service process.
▶ Helping customers understand the brass tacks of gold IRA investments
Augusta Precious Metals says it focuses on building long-term relationships with customers. You could, therefore, expect consistency of excellent service and personalized attention. They obviously also are really focused on providing a depth of details associated with buying gold and silver for an IRA and with precious metals investing in general.
There is, of course, their one-on-one web conference for learning about the economy and gold and silver. They also have a lot of information on their website, including a video library. If you want to know more fast, they encourage you to sign up for a free gold IRA investment guide that can be downloaded instantly by clicking the image below.
▶ Each customer is assigned an account manager and gets personal service
Augusta Precious Metals assigns a personal agent to each of their customers to help guide them through the account opening process. It is nice to know you have one person who is your main point of contact. Later you are introduced to specialists who are highly trained in precious metals and the general economic condition of the country so you can ask any questions you want to.
One of the best things about Augusta – and something else that seems to set apart the company from competitors – is its commitment to educating retirement investors about precious metals. It’s their mission: “To help educate and empower Americans to protect their retirement by diversifying with physical gold and silver.”
They have a full-time director of education, Devlyn Steele, an on-staff Harvard-trained economic analyst and nationally known precious metals authority.
Mr. Steele designed the company’s free one-of-a-kind, personal educational web conference. If you look at Augusta reviews everywhere, people really seem to like it and say there is no pressure to buy and it is helpful to them.
This focus on personal service is one of the reasons Joe Montana says he likes working with Augusta, which is good confirmation that he still trusts them even after working with them for a while. A person who is worth about $150 million doesn’t just work with any financial company on their investments.
But you don’t have to be a legendary athlete or big-time celebrity to get something out of Augusta’s educational services. You only need to be a retirement investor who wants to use a gold IRA to diversify and to protect your financial future.
▶ It’s a family run business with deep history
Augusta Precious Metals is owned and run by the Nuriani family that has been in business for more than 40 years. There is always some sense of assurance when dealing with a family operated a business. Further assurance is from the many years they have been dealing in physical gold and self-directed IRAs.
The Augusta Website
The company makes a significant effort to educate their customers. But they work just as hard to help educate and empower even those they haven’t worked with yet on how gold IRAs work, the economy and even ways to avoid some of the gimmicks and high-pressure tactics used by some other gold IRA companies. The Augusta Precious Metals official website is a library of information that can go a long way to making a newbie gold investor as knowledgeable and prepared as experienced gold buyers.
The Gold and Silver IRA section: This part of the site delves into the importance of investing in gold for your IRA account. Here you will also find information on self-directed IRA accounts – the type of IRA that allows owners to invest in alternative assets like gold and silver. They also describe the process of buying IRA gold and silver with them in this section. The fact that Augusta has always been 100% focused on gold and silver, especially in IRAs means you can trust the info you find here.
Gold and Silver IRA FAQ: This section tackles most of the questions you might have about the gold and silver IRA and the process of buying, shipping, storage, and liquidation.
IRA-Eligible Coins: Not just any precious metal coin is eligible for inclusion in an IRA. IRA-eligible coins must meet minimum standards of purity, or fineness. For gold coins and bars, that minimum purity level is 99.5% (although there’s an exception for popular American Gold Eagle coins). For silver, it’s 99.9%. This section of the Augusta website is a great resource where you can learn about IRA-eligible metals and see some examples of the IRA-eligible coins Augusta offers. That is undoubtedly a sign of higher transparency compared to other companies that don’t list these products upfront.
Physical Gold and Silver Products
Augusta agents claim to be highly knowledgeable about precious metals IRAs. One of the ways they make life easier for retirement investors who want to start buying gold and silver is by pre-selecting products, so you don’t have to go through all the overwhelming choices. They say they usually suggest the most common metals products at very competitive prices.
Actual inventory might vary at any given time, but the precious metals products listed below are representative of those typically available from Augusta. The company deals in many types of metals, including gold and silver coins and bullion. Not all of them are acceptable in an IRA account.
These products are listed on their site and include:
▶ Common Gold Bullion:
- Gold American Eagle
- Gold American Buffalo
- Gold Canadian Maple Leaf
- Austrian Philharmonic Gold
- South African Gold
- Gold bars
▶ Common Silver Bullion:
- American Silver Eagle
- Canadian Silver Maple Leaf
- Austrian Philharmonic Silver
- America the Beautiful coins
- Canadian Silver Blessings
- Silver bars
▶ Premium Gold:
- Royal Canadian Mint Gold Eagle
- Canadian Gold Gyrfalcon
- Canadian Gold White Falcon
- American Gold Eagle Proof
- American Gold Buffalo Proof
- Certified American Eagle
- Certified American Buffalo
▶ Premium Silver:
- Ben Franklin half a Dollar
- Royal Canadian Silver Eagle with Nest
- Canadian Silver Gyrfalcon
- Canadian Silver White Falcon
- 1964 JFK a half dollar
- John Kennedy Half Dollar
- Morgan Silver
- Walking Half Dollar Liberty
- Peace Dollar
- Silver Mercury dime
▶ IRA Eligible Coins:
- 2017 Royal Canadian Mint 1/4-oz Gold Eagle
- 2016 1/4-oz British £25 Gold Standard
- Gold American Eagle
- American Eagles and American Eagle Proofs
- American Buffalo
- Canadian Maple Leaf
- 2018 Royal Canadian Mint 1.25oz Silver Eagle with Nest
- 2016 Royal Canadian Mint 1/2 oz Silver Eagle
- Gold IRA Eligible American Eagle
- American Eagle and American Eagle Proofs
- Gold IRA Eligible Canadian Maple Leaf
- Canadian Maple Leaf
IRA Custodians
Augusta Precious Metals works with many custodians that administer your IRA precious metals account, as required by the law. IRS rules say you have to have a custodian. The custodians are key to facilitating plans – and transfers from other retirement accounts – to self-directed gold and silver IRA accounts. They can also help you any time you need to take a distribution from your gold IRA.
Augusta works with these IRA custodians
- Equity Trust
- Goldstar Trust
- Kingdom Trust
Precious Metals Storage
Part of buying precious metals for your IRA account is deciding on storage. Where do you safely store your wealth? Augusta Precious Metals offers highly secure compliant storage solutions to its customers. These include the renowned Delaware Depository (their preferred facility) and other highly reputable, non-government storage facilities in several US cities.
Working with Augusta makes communication with your storage facility easy. Their account lifetime support includes answering your questions and reaching out to the facility on your behalf if needed. (Storage facilities aren’t equipped to take your investment questions.) When you are ready to liquidate the physical gold and silver in your IRA (when you are ready to retire or after), Augusta can go through the process with you to make it easy and quick.
Transparency in All Things Gold and Silver
Unlike most other precious metal dealers, Augusta Precious Metals lists prices for all their products (and it’s easy to see their prices are competitive – only about 5% over cost). They were voted “Most-Trusted in the U.S.” and TrustLink has made them a “Best of” company for at least the last five years.
They do other things to make it clear they are committed to transparency. For example, they have a separate compliance department, unlike other gold IRA companies, that oversees all documents and materials to help ensure that what you read about them is true. It seems like the no-pressure nature of their sales department (also an outlier in this industry) probably helps with this, too.
Transparency is one of the things Joe Montana says he liked about Augusta when he was first getting to know them – he says he felt he could trust them, there was no sales pressure, and they knew a lot about gold and silver IRAs.
The company also has Market News and video library sections on their site. From there, you can learn more about gold IRAs and stay up to date with the economy and issues that affect the price of precious metals.
Augusta Ratings on Consumer Review Sites
If you want to know which gold IRA company is best – and see why we decided to put Augusta Precious Metals at the top of our list, one of the best pieces of evidence you can look at is the historical reviews left by customers. And when it comes to ratings and reviews of companies in the precious metals industry, Augusta Precious Metals seems to be without equal.
To begin with, we know Augusta has ZERO complaints at either the Better Business Bureau or Business Consumer Alliance since their inception – and it looks like thousands of 5-star reviews on multiple consumer ratings sites!
Below are some of the consumer ratings platforms where we found almost ALL complimentary reviews of Augusta Precious Metals written by actual customers:
As you can see, Augusta Precious Metals has an A+ rating on Better Business Bureau, 5 Stars on TrustLink and AAA on Consumer Alliance. These high ratings on the business review sites are a clear sign of the company’s transparency and quality services. Add to that the fact that they did not have single complaint so far with BBC and BCA in all the years they have been in business — remarkable!
The Bottom Line
Our assessment after looking at all of these elements is that Augusta Precious Metals is clearly a trustworthy and reliable gold company for IRA account investors. Their exceptional transparency, stellar reputation and unmatched gold IRA knowledge make this company a great choice and we enthusiastically recommend their services over all other gold IRA companies.
When you work with Augusta, we think you will appreciate:
- They have 0 complaints on the BBB and BCA since they started out in 2012 – unlike almost all other gold IRA companies.
- They are the ONLY gold IRA company we found that declares it has a no-pressure salesfloor, which means they are focused on you, not how much money they can make.
- You have free access to their on-staff, Harvard-trained economic analyst and their really helpful one-on-one web conference to learn about the economy and precious metals.
- Joe Montana asked his own people to find the best gold IRA company in the country, and they found Augusta—he anonymously signed up for the web conference and loved it so much, he became a customer and now he endorses them.
- It looks like they have the most competitive, most transparent pricing, and they cover your fees (or custodian and storage) for up to 10 years
- You get ongoing support for the lifetime of your account with them.
- We couldn’t find any bad reviews out of hundreds, and they probably have thousands of top ratings on review sites.
- They don’t do anything but self-directed precious metals IRAs, unlike other companies that delve into things like cryptocurrency.
Website: www.augustapreciousmetals.com
Phone: 855-661-4281
More Gold IRA Companies Reviewed:
Augusta Precious Metals
$50,000Pros
- Zero complaints with BBB & BCA
- No-commission salespeople, unlike other companies
- Endorsed by Joe Montana & his own financial advisors
- Free one-on-one educational web conference
- Most competitive, transparent pricing
- Voted most-trusted gold IRA company in U.S.
- Best reputation of all companies - thousands of top ratings
Cons
- No way to sign up online
- Fairly high minimum of $50,000