This page provides a record of the silver price over the past five years. The chart on this page allows you to examine the prices since January 2020.

Silver doesn’t get the headlines that gold does, but its ebbs and flows are no less important. If anything, it is critical for silver investors to keep a closer eye on their investments due to the greater volatility associated with the price of silver.

At the end of the day, silver doesn’t trade nearly as often as gold, so major purchases or sales can cause big movements. Even though the result of five years of trading has resulted in a gain of more than $10/oz, there have been notable periods of decline where it would have been better not to own it.

The chart on this page can help illuminate some of the factors surrounding the fluctuations in silver’s price. Understanding the various drivers of supply and demand that influence the price of silver can help you make more informed investment decisions in the future.

Note: As 2025 is ongoing, we are not including it in the chart. However, we discuss the current year’s performance in the section below.

The past year or so has witnessed a notable rise in the price of silver. Beginning in April 2024, the price rose from the mid-$20s to hover around $30 an ounce for more than a year.

However, 2025 has proven to be a banner year for those who hold stores of the white metal. It now appears likely that the 13-year-old record high price from April 2011 ($48.46/oz) will fall, as silver has risen above $48 for the first time since then in October 2025.

With all those things in mind, here are some key terms that will help you understand the table above a bit better.

• Year Open: Although dates are somewhat arbitrary, it is nonetheless easy to begin a study of silver prices on the first day of the year. So, the figures above are the closing prices on January 1 of their respective years or as close to January 1 as we could get.
• Year High: The highest silver price during the 365 days of the year in question. Although many spikes are fleeting, it is instructive to understand the magnitude of change the price underwent.
• Year Low: Of course, you also need the nadir of the year to complete your understanding of the price’s volatility. So, the low mark for the year finishes the full picture and, in a way, identifies the investors who had the biggest “win” when they bought at that point.
• Year Close: The end of the year concludes on December 31 or however close to New Year’s Eve trading took place. Thus, the price is the last closing price achieved during the calendar year.
• Annual Percentage Change: The measure of how the price of silver varied from the beginning of the year until the end. This metric doesn’t provide any information about the volatility experienced during the year, but it does offer insight into how well silver performed (or not) during the calendar year.

More: Today’s Silver Price – 1 Year Silver Price Chart – 5 Year Silver Chart – 10 Year Silver Chart – 30 Year Silver Chart

Key Dates

The past 5 years have had several key dates that have proven to be high points and low points for silver’s price performance. Here are some of those big spots, along with the likely causes behind them.

• March 19, 2020 – $12.12: The lowest price of the period came at an unusual time in history. Coincident with the nadir was the official onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which largely halted the world economy in its tracks and significantly reduced industrial demand that supports silver’s value.
• August 6, 2020 – $29.78: Only five months after the March 2020 low, silver soared almost to $30/oz for the first time since 2013. This high, which occurred on the same day as a new all-time record for gold, represented the depth of the COVID pandemic and the resulting investor rush to precious metals.
• September 1, 2022 – $17.83: As the fears over the pandemic receded, the price of silver drifted back downward and actually dipped beneath $20/oz between July 2022 and September 2022. The extra swoon resulted from rising interest prices and a strengthening US dollar and suggested that consumer confidence had recovered from COVID-19.
• May 17, 2024 – $31.51: Silver jumped over $30/oz (and $31/oz, for that matter) and blew past the previous 5-year record set in August 2020. Perhaps most surprising is that silver had closed the previous day’s trading at $29.68, meaning that the price jumped 6% overnight. The increase came as industrial demand for silver spiked, particularly within the solar industry, which relies on silver’s reflectivity and conductivity as integral parts of solar panels’ photovoltaic cells.
• June 17, 2025 – $37.12: The price of silver shot to a 13-year high and the highest levels since the Great Recession due to a couple of factors. For one thing, industrial demand did nothing but increase since the previous date. The other element is the ongoing shortage of available silver, which has been present for several years running.

Historical Context of 5-Year Silver Charts

• Long-term perspective: If you only watched silver’s performance for 2025 year-to-date, you’d see a chronicle of a 27% increase in price in six months. However, you’d miss the fact that silver hovered beneath $30/oz for most of the last 5 years and even drifted below $20/oz at times. A person who purchased silver in March 2020 at $12.12/oz would report that their investment value has tripled. Even buyers in April 2025 have seen each ounce they bought increase in value by $7.
• Performance evaluation: Silver’s price is quite volatile – much more so than gold’s price. It is critical to understand that silver’s price is not a consistent trajectory. Consider the period between August 4, 2024 and December 31, 2024 – the price began at $26.61 and ended with a modest gain to $28.92. However, during that same period, silver’s price rose as high as $34.85 (in October), but had dwindled down beneath $29/oz before the year was out.
• Correlation with economic factors: Although silver’s correlation with economic factors is not as strong as gold’s correlation, it is possible to see interactions between silver and various economic factors. For instance, the price spike on August 6, 2020 correlated with a similar spike in gold’s price and charted the economic panic generated by the COVID-19 shutdowns. More specifically, the growing demand for green energy has led to a growing demand for solar power, which requires a significant amount of silver to function efficiently and played a substantial role in the two spikes mentioned above in May 2024 and June 2025.
• Monetary policy impact: As is the case with gold, monetary policy can play a role in the price of silver at any given time. Increases in interest rates tend to strengthen the US dollar and push investors away from precious metals, while decreases have the opposite effect. The silver price drop in 2022 occurred, in no small part, due to the Federal Reserve’s increase of the fed rate and a strong dollar.
• Global economic health: If it wasn’t clear from the movements of silver’s price during COVID-19, global economic health can dramatically and inversely affect the price of silver, though for different reasons than gold. In silver’s case, economic downturns pull down industrial demand and reduce the price of silver significantly. However, once investors begin turning to silver as a safe-haven asset, the price of silver tends to escalate.