Comparison sites are meant to help you. You put in a few details, and an independent service shows you who pays the most, so you don't have to trawl the whole market yourself.
That's the promise made by goldpricecomparison.co.uk. It calls itself an instant comparison tool that finds "the best place to sell gold in the UK".
We deal with gold every day, so we took a closer look. What we found raised enough questions that we think anyone thinking of selling their gold should read this first.
Before we start, we want to be upfront. We are a gold buyer ourselves, so we have a commercial interest in this market. This is not about attacking a rival. It is about honesty in an industry where sellers are often trusting a stranger with something valuable.
What the site claims to be
goldpricecomparison.co.uk presents itself as a neutral tool. It shows a table of gold buyers, ranks them, and tells you which one pays the most on the day.
It uses the language of independence throughout. It talks about live prices, real-time comparisons, and finding you the best deal.
For most people, that framing does the job. If a site looks like an impartial referee, you tend to trust the result.
Every road leads to the same buyer
Here's the first thing we noticed. No matter how you look at the site, it always points to one company.
One buyer, GoldSell (goldsell.co.uk), is ranked top. The main buttons, the pop-up form, and the "best place to sell gold today" links all send you to GoldSell. GoldSell is a trading name of GS Metals Ltd.
An honest comparison can, of course, have a winner. But when every single route through a "comparison" tool leads to the same company, it is fair to ask whether it is really comparing anything at all.
Who actually runs it?
This is where it gets harder to answer, and we want to be careful about what we say.
goldpricecomparison.co.uk doesn't tell you who owns or runs it. There's no company name, no company number, and no address anywhere on the site. Its privacy policy and terms name no business at all.
We're not able to say who owns it, and we're not claiming that the comparison site and GoldSell are the same business. We simply cannot prove that, so we'll not say it.
What we can tell you is that we're not the only ones who could not find the owner. When we contacted the Plain English Campaign about the site (more on that below), their manager told us they couldn't trace the owner either, and that the whole thing seemed "very suspicious" to them.
In our view, if a site is asking you to trust its verdict before you post off something valuable, you deserve to know who is behind it.
The "endorsement" logos that were never given
This is the part that concerned us most.
An older version of goldpricecomparison.co.uk, captured in March 2025, displayed a row of trust logos under the heading "trusted by industry leaders". Among them were an "Endorsed by MoneySupermarket" logo and an "Endorsed by Which?" logo. The current site displays a "Website approved by Plain English Campaign" logo and an Ofgem logo.
An archived March 2025 copy of the site, showing the "Endorsed by MoneySupermarket" and "Endorsed by Which?" logos. Both organisations have since told us these were never given.
The current footer, showing a Plain English Campaign "Website approved" logo and an Ofgem logo. The Plain English Campaign has told us the site is not accredited by them in any way.
These are some of the most trusted names in the country. Seeing their logos on a website tells you, in an instant, that serious organisations stand behind it.
So we asked those organisations directly. Their answers were clear.
MoneySupermarket confirmed in writing that they never carried out any such test or endorsement. In their own words, they "haven't undertaken any such test". Their legal team is now looking into it.
Which? told us they have "never done any research into gold-selling/purchasing websites or dealers", and confirmed they did not give permission for any of their logos to be used. They said they will keep an eye on the site and take action if the logo reappears.
The Plain English Campaign told us the site "is not accredited by us in any way", and that their own attempts to contact the site to have the logo removed simply bounced back.
We haven't contacted Ofgem, the energy regulator, whose logo also appears on the current site. Ofgem has no connection to gold buying, so it's difficult to see why its logo would belong there at all.
To be clear about what this means: three separate organisations have now told us that their brands were used on this site without their permission. Those are their words, not ours.
A Trustpilot score that Trustpilot doesn't recognise
The site also leans on Trustpilot, the well-known review platform. Its homepage displays a Trustpilot score of 4.8 out of 5, based on what it says are 1,876 reviews.
That sounds reassuring. A high score from thousands of reviewers is exactly the kind of proof most people look for before they part with something valuable.
So we checked it at the source. Trustpilot's own page for goldpricecomparison.co.uk tells a very different story. It shows no reviews at all, a score of 0.0, and an unclaimed profile. Trustpilot even invites you to "be the first to review" the site.
You can see it for yourself on Trustpilot's page for goldpricecomparison.co.uk.
In plain terms, the glowing Trustpilot rating shown on the site is not one that Trustpilot recognises. The review platform it points to has not received a single review for this website.
Why the "highest payer" claim doesn't stand up
The whole point of the site is to tell you that GoldSell pays the most. So it's worth explaining why we don't think that claim can be relied upon.
First, the comparison isn't clearly independent. It is run by a party that will not identify itself, and every result points to the same buyer. A verdict produced by an undisclosed source that only ever recommends one company is not an impartial finding.
Second, it doesn't compare the whole market. The site ranks GoldSell against a small, hand-picked list of buyers. Many established UK gold buyers, ourselves included, are simply not in the table. You cannot honestly crown one company "the highest payer in the UK" while leaving most of the market out.
Third, the figures in the table are unverified. Nobody independent has checked what any of these buyers actually pay. When we tested the top-ranked buyer ourselves, the real offer was 53.7% of spot, not the 95% implied.
And fourth, a site that has displayed endorsement logos which the named organisations say were never given has not earned the benefit of the doubt on its other claims. If the trust badges were not what they seemed, there is little reason to take the pricing table on trust either.
We put the "95%" claim to the test
There's one figure on the site we were able to check directly. For GoldSell, it states, "This buyer pays an average 95% of spot value for gold."
So we tested it. On 20 June 2026, as part of our ongoing gold buyer comparison, we sent GoldSell 15.2 grams of 9ct gold. We recorded the first offer, with no negotiation, because the first offer is what most sellers actually accept.
The offer was £293.17. At the live spot price that day, the same gold was worth £547.17. That works out at 53.7% of spot value, around £254 below the market rate for that gold.
That's one test on one day, not a claim about every transaction. But a real first offer of 53.7% is very hard to square with an advertised "average" of 95%. You can see the full test, the method we used, and how other buyers compared, on our gold buyer comparison page.
As a general guide, any seller should be aiming for at least 90% of spot value. An offer at little more than half of spot falls a long way short of that.
This is the heart of the problem. In an unregulated market, a website can advertise "95% of spot" while the real first offer is barely half that, and nothing in law requires the buyer to state a genuine, checkable price before you part with your gold.
How to protect yourself when selling gold
None of this means you can't sell gold safely online. It just means you should judge any buyer, including us, on evidence rather than badges.
Here are a few simple checks that put you in control:
- Find out who you're dealing with. A genuine buyer will tell you their company name, number, and address without you having to dig for it.
- Ask for the actual price per gram. A live spot price on a screen is not the same as the rate you will be paid. Ask what you will actually receive per gram for your purity, in writing, before you send anything.
- Be careful with "we pay the most" claims. If a claim cannot be checked against a published, like-for-like rate, treat it with caution.
- Check that logos are real. If a site displays an endorsement, you are entitled to ask the named organisation whether it is genuine. We did, and the answers were revealing.
At Gold Traders, we publish both the live market price and the actual rates we pay, so you can make an informed decision before you visit or post anything. We were also the first precious metals company in the UK to be accredited by Trading Standards through the national Buy With Confidence scheme. You don't have to take our word for who we are, and you shouldn't have to take anyone else's.
This is exactly why we're campaigning for regulation
We didn't go looking for a fight. We went looking because this is the sort of thing that happens in a market with no rules.
The UK's precious metals buying market is currently unregulated. There's no legal requirement for a gold buyer to tell you, plainly and in advance, the actual rate they will pay. That gap is what allows misleading trust signals and one-sided "comparisons" to flourish.
That's why we're leading a campaign calling on Parliament to introduce basic consumer protection for this market. Two of our proposals speak directly to what we have described here:
- Mandatory price transparency before any transaction. Any buyer should have to publish the rate they genuinely pay, as a price per gram for the purity in question, before a deal begins. A genuine "highest payer" claim would then be something you could actually check.
- Regulation of postal buying services. Any postal gold buyer should have to give you a specific, realistic written indication of what you will be paid before you are asked to send anything, and must return your items free of charge if you decline. Showing a live spot price without stating the real rate paid should not count as telling you the price.
These proposals are deliberately modest. They ask bad actors to do only what honest, well-run businesses already do every day.
Jon White, Founder of Gold Traders, said:
People trust these sites because they look independent and carry logos from names they recognise. When those logos turn out never to have been given, and the comparison only ever points one way, ordinary sellers are the ones who lose out. That's not a fair market, and it's exactly why we are asking Parliament to bring in some basic rules.
The bottom line
We cannot tell you who runs goldpricecomparison.co.uk, and we're not going to pretend we can. What we can tell you is that it's not the neutral, independent comparison it appears to be, and that three respected organisations have told us their trust logos were used on it without permission.
If you're selling gold, look past the badges. Ask who you are dealing with, ask for the real rate per gram, and choose a buyer who is happy to tell you both.
If you would like to know how our own rates work, you can see the live gold price and the rate we pay on our website, or visit us in person in Royal Wootton Bassett or Bodmin.
