Best 3 Jewelry Weight Calculators Compared

You have a design and a client asking what it will cost. The metal is the largest part of that answer and you cannot weigh a piece that does not exist yet — so you need to get from the design’s volume to a finished weight in the alloy the client has chosen, before you commit anything expensive to a mould.

The established workflow in this trade goes through wax. You cast a wax model, weigh it, and multiply by the specific gravity ratio between wax and your target alloy — which is why nearly every calculator in this category asks for a wax weight. That is a good method when you have a wax in hand. It is no help at all when your design exists as a CAD model with a volume figure and no physical prototype yet.

How to judge a jewelry weight calculator

What input does it want? Wax weight and volume are different starting points, and having the wrong one makes a tool unusable rather than merely inconvenient.

Which alloys does it cover? 14k and 18k yellow are the easy cases; sterling, palladium, platinum, and rose and white golds all differ.

Does it allow for casting loss? Finished weight is not raw weight — sprues, shrinkage, and finishing all take metal.

Is the alloy density stated? Karat golds vary by manufacturer’s recipe, so a calculator’s assumption matters.

The comparison

Facts checked August 2026; plans can change.

Carit metal weight calculator

Carit is the most complete of the three for a working bench. It converts a weighed wax model into casting weight across more than twenty alloys — 9k through 22k gold, sterling silver, platinum, palladium — by multiplying wax weight by the alloy’s specific gravity, and it applies a small casting buffer to account for shrinkage and finishing loss. That buffer is the detail that separates a usable estimate from an optimistic one.

Its input is a wax weight. If your piece is still a CAD file, you cannot use it until you have cut or printed and weighed a model.

United PMR casting weight calculator

United PMR is a precious metal refiner, which gives its conversion figures a certain authority — these are the numbers a company that handles the metal professionally uses. It sits within a suite of free precious metal calculators covering the other arithmetic of the trade.

Like Carit, it starts from wax. And being one tool among a refiner’s suite, it is built for people already fluent in the workflow rather than someone estimating their first piece.

Calculator Academy precious metal weight

Calculator Academy takes the general approach: give it any two of weight, volume, and density and it solves for the third, with unit conversions across grams, kilograms, pounds, ounces, and cubic units. Because it works from volume, it is the only one of the three that fits the CAD-first workflow.

It is generic physics rather than a jewellery tool. There are no alloy presets, so you supply the density yourself — which means knowing that 18k yellow is around 15.6 g/cm³ before you start.

Jewelry Metal Weight Estimator

Ours takes the volume-first route with jewellery alloys built in. Enter a piece’s volume and the metal type and it estimates the finished weight in grams, which is what you need when the design exists as a model rather than a wax. It runs entirely in your browser, so a client’s design volume goes nowhere.

The limitations are worth being direct about. It estimates from volume and a nominal alloy density, and real alloy densities vary between suppliers’ recipes — two 14k yellow golds from different refiners will not weigh identically. It also estimates the metal in the piece, not the metal you will buy: sprues, button, and finishing loss are additional, and any quote built on this number should carry a margin. For a firm figure, weigh the wax.

Which one to pick

• If you have a wax model on the bench, use Carit — the alloy coverage and casting buffer are the most practical.
• If you want a refiner’s own figures, United PMR’s calculator carries that authority.
• If you are comfortable supplying a density yourself, Calculator Academy is the most flexible.
• If you are working from a CAD volume and want a quick jewellery-specific estimate, use ours.

How to do it with Jewelry Metal Weight Estimator

1. Get the volume of your model from your CAD software, in cubic millimetres or centimetres.
2. Open the Jewelry Metal Weight Estimator and enter it.
3. Select the metal type.
4. Add an allowance for sprues and finishing before quoting. More calculators are in the tools directory.

You might also need

• Density Converter — when your alloy’s density is quoted in different units.
• Volume Calculator — for estimating volume on simple geometric forms.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free jewelry weight calculator that doesn’t need an account?

Yes — all three calculators above are free to use, and ours requires no account because the site has no signup at all.

Why does the same design weigh different amounts in different metals?

Because density differs substantially: platinum is far denser than sterling silver, so an identical form can weigh roughly twice as much. NIST’s reference data on material properties covers elemental densities, though alloy figures depend on the specific recipe.

How much extra metal should I allow for casting?

Beyond the piece itself you need metal for sprues and the button, and you lose a little to shrinkage and finishing. Casters commonly work with a modest percentage buffer on top of the piece weight — Carit’s calculator builds one in — but the right figure depends on your setup and is worth establishing from your own results.

Final thought

Estimate from volume when you are quoting and weigh the wax when you are ordering metal. The first is fast enough to give a client an answer; only the second is precise enough to buy against.

Try the free Jewelry Metal Weight Estimator