What It Costs to Explore for Gold

The numbers investors need to judge whether a raise is sized like a discovery engine or a spending plan — benchmarked across the recommended exploration programmes of 433 gold projects.

Every junior gold company that raises money frames it the same way: a budget to advance the project. But how much should a gold exploration programme cost, where should the money go, and what does an efficient drill budget look like? We pulled the recommended programmes from the technical reports of 433 gold projects to build the benchmarks below.

A $25M gold programme is top-decile

The typical recommended programme is $4.7M. Spend climbs fast at the top — only 29% of programmes exceed $10M and just 9% clear $25M.

The shaded band is the middle 50% of programmes ($1.9M–$11.7M). Size a raise against it: a “$50M exploration budget” is a statistical outlier — usually development capital wearing an exploration label.

Exploration is a drilling business

Drilling is the largest named line at 25%, and another 44% sits in mixed, multi-activity programmes that are almost always drill-led. Combined, well over half of every gold exploration dollar chases the drill bit.

A programme light on drilling metres is buying time, not testing a discovery. The share of budget in the ground is the tell.

≈ $200 a metre — the number nobody publishes for juniors

Across gold drill programmes, the median all-in cost is $206 per metre, with the middle 50% running $150–$300/m. Divide any drill budget by its planned metres and compare.

Far above $300/m hints at padding, deep holes or hard ground; below $150/m is often optimistic. It is the fastest reality-check on an exploration raise.

Spend roughly doubles from discovery to definition

Programme size tracks project stage — a readable proxy for how far a story has advanced, from grassroots exploration through to a pre-feasibility study.

A step-change in budget often signals a company crossing from finding ounces to defining them.

The median programme buys 20,000 metres

A typical gold programme budgets ~20,000 m of drilling, with the middle 50% running 7,500–50,000 m. At ~$200/m that is roughly $4.1M — most of a $4.7M programme. The numbers reconcile.

Reverse-engineer any raise: planned metres × unit cost should land near the stated budget. When the three don’t tie out, that’s the question to ask management.