In this guide
- Why nobody can publish a brand's making charge
- First, find out which unit you are being quoted in
- Why the same necklace differs from counter to counter
- What a bigger number sometimes genuinely buys
- Two quotes on the same necklace
- Reducing any two quotes to one number
- What to ask at any counter
- Questions we are asked
The question arrives at our counter in the same shape every week. Someone has seen a piece at a large showroom, written the price on the back of a receipt, and wants to know whether the making charge on it is fair. Sometimes they have three quotes on their phone and cannot work out which one is actually the cheapest.
They are usually comparing the wrong thing. The percentage is the number everyone looks at, and on its own it tells you very little — because two shops can quote the same percentage and mean two different amounts of money.
This guide is about the comparison, not the definition. If you want the mechanics of how the charge is arrived at in the first place, our guide to gold making charges per gram covers that ground properly. Here we are dealing with the harder question. You have two quotes, or one quote and a suspicion. What now?
Why nobody can publish a brand's making charge
A jeweller does not have a making charge. Each piece does. The figure is set design by design — by how long the piece takes at the bench, whether it is cast or hand-built, how much of the weight is stone or finding rather than gold, and how much metal is genuinely lost in the making. The same shop's plain drawn chain and its bridal haaram — the long temple-work necklace worn at a wedding — carry numbers that are nowhere near each other.
That is as true of a national chain as it is of us, and you can check it yourself in any large showroom. Find two pieces of the same purity and the same weight and compare the tags. The metal in them costs the shop the same. Whatever separates the two prices is the work.
So when a page prints a single percentage against a brand name, one of three things has happened. It has taken one product's figure on one day and presented it as a house rate. It has averaged a handful of listings into a number that describes nothing in particular. Or somebody invented it. We are not going to print a competitor's number, and you should be wary of any page that does. What we can give you instead is the part that does not go stale — how the quote is assembled, and what makes one bigger than another.
First, find out which unit you are being quoted in
Before you compare two numbers, check that they are the same kind of number. There are several units in common use in Indian jewellery retail, and a conversation can slide between them without anyone noticing.
| Unit the quote is in | What it actually means | What it does when the gold rate rises |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage of gold value | A share of the metal cost of that piece | Rises rupee for rupee, without anyone changing the percentage |
| Rupees per gram | A flat labour rate applied to weight | Does not move |
| Rupees per pavan (8 grams) | The same thing in the local unit | Does not move, but must be divided by eight before you compare |
| A flat charge for the piece | One figure for the whole design, common on small or heavily worked items | Does not move, and only compares if the two pieces weigh the same |
| Wastage quoted separately | Extra grams added to the weight you are billed for | Rises with the rate, and is the easiest line to miss |
The wastage line is where most comparisons quietly break. Some shops fold wastage into a single value-addition figure printed on the tag. Others quote a lower making charge and then add wastage as extra grams of gold. A quoted 10% that already contains the wastage and a quoted 10% that does not are not the same 10%, and the gap between them is not small.
In Tamil Nadu you will also hear weights and charges discussed in pavan, the eight-gram sovereign our grandmothers counted in. Nothing wrong with it — it is how families here think about gold — but divide by eight before you set that figure beside a per-gram one.
The unit rule
Never compare two making charges until you have asked, in these words: is that a percentage or a per-gram figure, and does it include wastage? Two quotes in different units are not two quotes. They are two questions.
Why the same necklace differs from counter to counter
Set the brand names aside and there are four real reasons the figure differs, and only one of them is margin.
1. Hand work against machine work
A cast, machine-finished chain and a hand-built one are not the same object, even when the photographs look alike. Drawing wire, filing, soldering link by link, setting kemp stones — the red temple stones used in South Indian bridal work — and hand-polishing are hours at a bench, and hours are the largest single input into a making charge. A piece that took a goldsmith three weeks cannot be priced like one that came off a machine in an afternoon.
2. The wastage convention the shop follows
Two equally honest shops quote differently because one prints a single all-in value addition and the other splits it out. Neither practice is wrong; they simply produce different-looking numbers for identical work.
3. What the price has to carry
Every business recovers its fixed costs somewhere on the bill, and on a jewellery bill there are not many places to put them. The gold rate is the one line a buyer can check against the open market in ten seconds, so it is the line with the least room in it. Showroom rent and fit-out, advertising, staffing, and a large display stock sitting unsold for months are all real costs, and they cannot be recovered from the metal. They land on the work component.
This is not an accusation. It is arithmetic, and it applies to us as much as to anyone with a shutter to raise every morning. What differs between shops is the size of the overhead, not whether it exists.
4. Stone and finding weight
A stone-set piece has a gross weight and a net gold weight, and they are not the same number. If stones, enamel or clasps are billed as gold, a making charge is being applied to metal that is not in the piece. Ask for both weights. On any ornament with stones, that single question changes the bill more often than the percentage does.
What a bigger number sometimes genuinely buys
We are one shop on Officers Line, and we will still say it plainly: a higher making charge is not automatically a worse deal. There are things a large network can do that we cannot, and it is dishonest to pretend otherwise.
- Exchange that travels. Where a jeweller has counters in many cities, a piece bought in one can normally be taken back at another. A single shop cannot offer that. If your family moves every few years, or your daughter will live somewhere else after the wedding, that portability is worth real money.
- Range you can see in one afternoon. A wide display stock means fifty variations of the same design in front of you at once. A small shop shows you what it holds and makes the rest to order, which is slower.
- Policy written down and uniform. Standardised exchange and buyback terms, printed and applied the same way at every branch, are genuinely reassuring. Ask a family jeweller for their terms in writing too — and if any jeweller will not put buyback terms in writing, that is worth knowing before you pay, not after.
What a local counter has instead is proximity to the bench. The person quoting the making charge on a custom piece is often the person who will hand the drawing to the goldsmith. A change costs a conversation rather than an order form, repairs and re-polishing do not have to travel, and the number on the tag can be explained by whoever set it. Neither model is better in the abstract. They are different things to buy, and you should know which one you are paying for.
Two quotes on the same necklace
Both quotes below are for the same thing: a 20-gram 22K necklace with no stones. 22K gold is per gram in Vellore today () and we post the rate every morning, but the example freezes an illustrative ₹13,255 per gram so the arithmetic stays checkable next week. The two making-charge structures are chosen to make the point; they are not any shop's rate, ours included. The only difference between the quotes is how each shop has built its charge.
| Line item | Quote A | Quote B |
|---|---|---|
| Making charge as quoted | 12% of gold value, wastage included | 8% of gold value, plus 6% wastage as extra weight |
| Gold billed | 20 g | 21.2 g |
| Gold value at ₹13,255/g | ₹2,65,100 | ₹2,81,006 |
| Making charge | ₹31,812 | ₹22,480 |
| Subtotal | ₹2,96,912 | ₹3,03,486 |
| GST at 3% | ₹8,907 | ₹9,105 |
| Total payable | ₹3,05,819 | ₹3,12,591 |
| All-in cost per gram of gold you take home | ₹15,291 | ₹15,630 |
Quote B advertises a making charge a third lower than Quote A, and costs ₹6,772 more. The buyer who chose on the headline percentage chose the dearer necklace and felt clever doing it.
Nothing dishonest has happened in Quote B. The wastage was disclosed. It was simply disclosed in grams while the headline was in percent, and grams and percent do not compare in your head at a counter with three people waiting behind you.
Rates on this page are indicative. The figure that applies to your purchase is confirmed at the time of billing at the showroom.
The comparison rule
Compare the final rupee total for the same net weight of gold, never the percentage. If you want a single number to carry between shops, divide that total by the grams you actually take home.
Reducing any two quotes to one number
This is the whole method, and it works at any counter in India regardless of whose name is above the door.
- Fix the specification first. Same purity, same net gold weight, same stone weight. Two quotes on two different necklaces are not a comparison, however similar the photographs look.
- Get the net gold weight, separately from the gross weight. On a stone-set piece these are different numbers and only one of them is gold.
- Get the total gold actually billed, including any wastage grams added on top of the net weight.
- Ask for the making charge in rupees, not in percent. This is the step that collapses every unit problem in this guide at once.
- Add GST at 3% on gold value and making charges combined, with hallmarking charges included before the tax is applied.
- Divide the total by the net gold weight. Compare those two figures. That is your answer.
Written out it looks laborious. In practice it is the four questions in the next section and the calculator on your phone. And if a counter cannot give you the making charge as a rupee figure on the spot, that is itself a useful piece of information.
One structural saving is worth knowing about before you compare anything: advance purchase plans commonly waive part of the value addition, which changes the arithmetic more than haggling ever will. Our own plan waives up to 11% value addition as per tag. It is a planned purchase, not an investment product, and it carries no promise of returns — but on the making-charge line it is the largest lever most families have.
What to ask at any counter
Four questions, and they are the four that settle a comparison. Ask them at a chain showroom and at a family shop, and the answers will tell you more than the percentages did.
- Is that a percentage or a per-gram figure — and does it include wastage?
- What is the net gold weight, and what is the gross weight?
- How many grams am I actually billed for, once wastage is added?
- What is the making charge on this piece in rupees?
The wider pre-purchase checklist — whether the value addition is printed on the tag, whether the piece is BIS hallmarked and what the buyback deducts — sits in the making charges guide and in what 916 and BIS hallmarking actually mean. Those questions matter, but they do not decide which of two quotes is cheaper. These four do.
You are allowed to ask all four out loud, in front of other customers, without apologising for it. Nobody minds. At our counter on Officers Line we print the breakup on every bill and walk through each line before payment — a habit we have kept for five generations, and one we would rather exercise before the bill than after. If it is easier to ask before you travel, our showroom details and timings are a page away.
Questions we are asked
Do national chains always charge more than a local jeweller?
No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Making charges are set design by design, so a plain machine-made chain at a large showroom can carry a smaller figure than an elaborate hand-built piece anywhere else. What is reliably true is that a bigger overhead has to be recovered somewhere on the bill, and the work component is where it lands. Compare the final total on a like-for-like piece rather than assuming either way.
Is a lower making charge percentage always the cheaper piece?
No. A percentage that excludes wastage sits on top of extra grams of gold you are also billed for, so a quote with the lower headline percentage can produce the larger final bill. Ask whether wastage is inside the quoted figure, then compare rupee totals for the same net gold weight.
Can making charges be negotiated?
It depends on the piece and on who set the number. Where the price is fixed centrally for a whole chain, the person in front of you may have no authority to change it; where the maker set it, they can at least explain what is inside it. What you can always ask for is the breakup, with the gold weight, the making charge in rupees and the GST as separate lines. A jeweller confident in the price has no reason to withhold it.
Why will you not print a table of chain making charges?
Because it would be wrong within a month and quite possibly wrong on the day it was published. Making charges are per-design numbers that move with collections, seasons and metal prices, and no jeweller publishes a house-wide rate card that anyone could honestly quote. A table we could not stand behind would be worth less to you than the method on this page, which does not go out of date.
Send us the quote before you decide
If you are holding a written quote from any counter — ours or anyone else's — photograph it and send it to us on WhatsApp. We will tell you which unit it is in, what it works out to per gram all-in, and what to ask next. There is no obligation to buy anything from us.