Tungsten costs roughly nine times what it did at the start of 2025. The international benchmark price for ammonium paratungstate, which is the traded form most tungsten passes through, went from about $331 per metric tonne unit at the beginning of 2025 to between $2,900 and $3,275 on 17 August 2026. It is one of the sharpest moves in any industrial metal in the last two years. That explains why tungsten cubes, cutting tools and anything else made of the stuff have been getting more expensive all year.
How expensive is tungsten right now?
European ammonium paratungstate sat between $2,900 and $3,275 per metric tonne unit on 17 August 2026, up about 236 percent since the start of this year and down only slightly from a peak around $3,140 in May. Tungsten is not quoted as a plain price per kilogram the way copper is. It trades as an intermediate chemical, and one metric tonne unit contains 7.93 kilograms of tungsten, which works out at roughly $366 to $413 per kilogram of contained metal.
Here is the move with the dates attached, because a price like this ages fast.
| When | European APT, per mtu | What was going on |
|---|---|---|
| Start of 2025 | about $331 | Before the export controls |
| End of 2025 | about $675 | First full year of Chinese licensing |
| January 2026 | roughly $900 to $1,100 | Record highs, and assessments differ |
| May 2026 | about $3,140 | The peak so far |
| 17 August 2026 | $2,900 to $3,275 | Down 1.7 percent from the peak |
Why did the tungsten price spike?
China restricted tungsten exports, and on 4 February 2025 the Chinese commerce ministry published export controls covering tungsten along with tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium. It is a licensing regime rather than a ban, so exporters have to apply for a permit and file end-user statements showing the material is not going to a military buyer, and that paperwork slowed trade to a crawl.
The scale of the slowdown is easier to see in shipping volumes than in prices. No Chinese exports of ammonium paratungstate were recorded at all in April 2026, and the year-to-date figure at the end of May stood at two tonnes, from a country that mines about four fifths of the world's tungsten.
On top of that, Chinese mining quotas have been cut by roughly 6 percent in each of the last three years, and defense, aerospace and semiconductor buyers have been competing hard for whatever leaves the country, with several governments building strategic stockpiles at the same time. Tungsten has almost no substitute in its main industrial uses, so buyers who need it pay whatever it costs.
Why is there more than one tungsten price?
There are now two tungsten prices and they are about three times apart. On 17 August 2026 Chinese domestic ammonium paratungstate was down about 60 percent from its own peak and down 9 percent on the year, while the European price was down under 2 percent from its peak and up 236 percent on the year. The shortage eased inside China and not outside it.
Price reporting agencies treated the two as one market for years, and in August 2026 Fastmarkets launched a separate assessment for Chinese domestic material specifically because the two had come apart. Anyone quoting "the tungsten price" without saying which one is quoting a number that could be off by a factor of three.
It also decides who feels the squeeze. A cutting-tool maker in Ohio buys at the international price. A ring factory in Guangdong buys Chinese carbide powder at the domestic price, which on 21 August 2026 was around 880 renminbi per kilogram, or roughly $130.
Is the world actually running out of tungsten?
No, world mine production went up over the period the price multiplied, from about 82,000 tonnes in 2024 to about 85,000 tonnes in 2025. The Boguty deposit in Kazakhstan started from nothing and produced 2,400 tonnes in its first year. Mines in Australia, Spain and South Korea are expanding.
So this is a trade-policy shock rather than a geological one. What changed is who is allowed to sell the metal across a border, and how long the paperwork takes. Any article blaming mine closures for the 2026 tungsten price has not checked the production figures.
China holds about 79 percent of world mine production and around half of known reserves, according to the US Geological Survey's 2026 summary. That concentration is the underlying condition, and the export controls are what turned it into a price event.
Why are tungsten cubes so expensive?
A tungsten cube costs what it costs because you are buying a lot of metal in a small package, and because the metal is difficult to turn into a cube. Tungsten's density is about 19.25 grams per cubic centimeter, so a two-inch cube weighs roughly 2.36 kilograms. The same cube in aluminum weighs about 354 grams. You are paying for nearly seven times the mass for the same object on your desk.
Then there is the making of it. Tungsten melts at 3,422 degrees Celsius, the highest of any metal, and no practical mold or crucible survives that, so you cannot melt it and pour it into a shape. Tungsten products are pressed from powder and consolidated with heat instead, which is slower and costlier than casting.
Most desk cubes are also not pure tungsten. They are a tungsten heavy alloy, typically 90 to 97 percent tungsten with a nickel-based binder, because pure tungsten is brittle at room temperature and hard to machine into a polished block economically. You can see it in the sellers' own numbers: a one centimeter cube is usually listed around 18 grams, where pure tungsten of that volume would be 19.25 grams. The missing gram is binder.
How much tungsten is actually in a wedding ring?
About two dollars' worth of metal. A men's band weighs very roughly 12 to 20 grams. It is tungsten carbide rather than pure tungsten. Tungsten carbide is 93.9 percent tungsten by weight, and the carbide itself makes up somewhere around 85 to 94 percent of the ring with a metallic binder holding it together.
Run that through at Chinese domestic prices, which is what a ring factory actually pays, and the carbide powder in a 16 gram band comes to a little under two dollars. Price the same metal at the international benchmark instead and you get about five dollars. Before the spike, at the start of 2025, the same content was worth around 56 cents.
Our guide to tungsten carbide against pure tungsten covers where the two part company on density, hardness and everything else.
Does any of this change what a tungsten ring costs?
Not in any way you would notice at the counter. The raw metal is roughly 2 percent of what a tungsten ring sells for, so a spike that roughly tripled the input at the price a ring factory actually pays moved a couple of dollars on a product that costs a hundred. The rest of the price is pressing, grinding, polishing, inlay work, quality control, packaging, freight, returns and the cost of finding a customer.
Compare that with a carbide cutting tool, where the raw material is often the largest single line on the bill. Same metal, opposite economics, and it is why tooling makers have been issuing price-adjustment notices through 2026 while ring prices have sat still. We have not seen evidence of consumer tungsten ring prices moving on the back of this, and we are not going to claim it either way without it.
What the spike does change is the argument for buying a ring as an object rather than as metal. If you want the numbers on that, our tungsten ring price guide works through what a fair price looks like, and what a tungsten ring is actually worth deals with resale and the metal-value question directly.
Our own bands run on manufacturing rather than on the commodity. Ingot is the plain silver matte version and Monolith is the same profile in black matte, both in 6mm and 8mm at $150, and the whole tungsten rings collection sits in the same band regardless of what Rotterdam is quoting this week.
Common questions about tungsten prices
How much does tungsten cost per kilogram?
At the August 2026 international benchmark, tungsten works out at roughly $366 to $413 per kilogram of contained metal. It is quoted as ammonium paratungstate per metric tonne unit rather than per kilogram, and one metric tonne unit holds 7.93 kilograms of tungsten.
Why is tungsten so expensive right now compared to a few years ago?
China restricted tungsten exports in February 2025 with a licensing regime that slowed shipments to almost nothing, and China mines about 79 percent of the world's supply. Mining quota cuts and defense demand pushed it further.
Is a tungsten cube pure tungsten?
Usually not, since most desk cubes are a tungsten heavy alloy of roughly 90 to 97 percent tungsten with a nickel-based binder, which is why a one centimeter cube weighs about 18 grams rather than the 19.25 grams pure tungsten would weigh.
Has the tungsten price made wedding rings more expensive?
There is no evidence that it has. The raw metal is around 2 percent of a tungsten ring's retail price, so even a tripling of the metal price is a couple of dollars on a ring that sells for a hundred.
Will the tungsten price come back down?
The Chinese domestic price already has, falling about 60 percent from its peak by August 2026, while the international price has barely moved off its high. New mine supply outside China is years away, so the gap between the two is likely to persist.
Is tungsten worth more than gold?
No, and it is not close. Tungsten runs a few hundred dollars per kilogram at the 2026 benchmark, while gold is worth hundreds of times more by weight. Tungsten is expensive for an industrial metal, not for a precious one.
Tungsten is now expensive by the standards of industrial metals and still cheap by the standards of anything you wear. If you are weighing a band, weigh it on the finish, the width and how it wears, and start with the men's wedding bands that suit the way you actually use your hands.
