Gallium Price History: Annual Data, Event Annotations, and Era Analysis 2000-2026

What is the complete gallium price history by year?

From 2010 to June 2023, gallium (China ex-works primary, USGS basis) ranged from $124/kg to $1,000/kg, with the 2011 spike the dominant multi-year outlier. From August 2023 onward, the China domestic price stayed in the $230-280/kg range while Western import prices (Rotterdam basis) rose to an all-time high of approximately $2,100/kg in early 2026, driven by export licensing and then the December 2024 US export ban.

What caused the 2011 gallium price spike to $1,000/kg?

Gallium prices rose from approximately $250-300/kg in 2010 to a peak of roughly $1,000/kg in early 2011, a more than 3x move driven by a simultaneous demand surge from two sectors: smartphone manufacturers scaling GaAs RF chip production for the first iPhone/Android wave, and government-mandated LED efficiency programs in Japan, the US, and EU creating sudden demand for GaN-on-sapphire LED wafers. Supply, built for research and modest commercial volumes, could not respond fast enough.

The 2011 spike is gallium's equivalent of the 2010-2011 rare earth element price surge that drove dysprosium to $2,000+/kg. Both were triggered by China-concentrated supply meeting sudden Western demand acceleration. However, unlike the REE bubble - which was partly state-directed - the 2011 gallium spike was a market response to genuine demand growth. When refiners expanded capacity (China roughly doubled gallium refining output between 2011 and 2014), prices corrected sharply.

Several factors made the 2011 supply response slow. Primary gallium recovery is embedded in alumina refinery economics - gallium producers are aluminum companies, and investment in gallium recovery circuits follows alumina expansion cycles, not gallium price signals. The 12-18 month lag between the price spike and expanded output availability meant buyers faced $800-1,000/kg prices for multiple quarters before relief came.

The 2012-2015 correction was severe: from the $1,000/kg peak in early 2011 to approximately $250-300/kg by 2015, a 70-75% decline over four years, as expanded refinery capacity flooded a market where demand growth was real but not sufficient to absorb the supply surge. This correction drove the USGS-reported primary gallium price to its historical low of $124/kg in 2018 - the floor that formed the baseline before COVID-era demand recovery began.

What caused the 2016-2018 primary-versus-refined price divergence?

USGS data shows a striking split in 2016-2018: primary gallium (approximately 3N-4N purity, China ex-works) fell to $124-188/kg, while refined gallium (5N-7N, US import basis) traded at $317-690/kg. The 2017 refined price of $690/kg represented a 5.5x premium over the concurrent $125/kg primary price. This split reflects two parallel markets with different supply and demand structures.

The 2017 refined spike to $690/kg occurred because Western high-purity refining capacity (needed to upgrade 3N-4N primary gallium to 5N-7N semiconductor grade) was constrained at a time when GaAs wafer demand from the LTE-to-5G transition was beginning to build. China's primary gallium was abundant and cheap, but the refining steps to make it usable for compound semiconductor production were bottlenecked outside China. The downstream supply chain between primary and refined was not elastic: you cannot quickly build zone-refining capacity in Western Europe or North America.

This primary-refined price split in 2016-2018 is the precursor to the China domestic-Rotterdam split seen from 2023 onward. In both cases, gallium was cheap at the source and expensive at the point of Western industrial use. The mechanism changed - in 2016-2018 it was refining capacity; from 2023 it is export controls - but the structural outcome is the same.

What drove the 2020-2022 gallium price cycle?

From January 2020 ($140/kg) to June 2022 ($510/kg), gallium prices rose 264% in 30 months, driven by COVID-era supply disruption followed by sustained demand growth from 5G infrastructure deployment and electric vehicle adoption. The 2020 supply shock was a bauxite processing disruption in China; the 2021-2022 demand pull was the strongest period of compound semiconductor demand growth since the 2010-2011 smartphone era.

What happened to gallium prices after China's August 2023 export controls?

China's export licensing requirement, effective August 1, 2023, caused the single sharpest price move in gallium's modern market history. From the June 2023 pre-announcement low of $240/kg (China ex-works), prices spiked 56% to $375/kg by October 2023 within three months. Monthly Chinese gallium exports collapsed from 6,876 kg in July 2023 to approximately 227 kg by October 2023 - a 97% reduction in three months. The Western import price began diverging from the China domestic price as Rotterdam warehouse inventory became the only immediately accessible supply for buyers outside China.

The export collapse was not a ban - it was a licensing regime that initially approved very few shipments. The Ministry of Commerce required export license applications to include end-user verification, intended use documentation, and quantity justification for each shipment. Processing times extended to months; some applications were denied entirely for US-bound shipments.

The China domestic price actually increased alongside the export price, reaching $375/kg in October 2023 from $240/kg in June - a 56% rise in domestic prices despite China having 99% of world supply. This reflects both genuine compound semiconductor demand domestically and the signaling effect of export restrictions on domestic market expectations.

Why did the China domestic and Western gallium prices diverge so sharply after 2023?

Before August 2023, the China ex-works price and the Rotterdam in-warehouse price tracked within approximately $50-100/kg of each other - the difference being logistics cost (ocean freight, insurance, warehousing). After August 2023, export licensing created a structural wedge. The December 2024 US export ban widened this wedge to over $1,200/kg. By early 2026, the Rotterdam price of ~$2,101/kg was approximately 8x the China domestic price of ~$247/kg.

The spread is composed of four separable components. First, the logistics cost ($30-80/kg in freight, insurance, and warehousing under normal conditions). Second, the refining premium - Rotterdam stock is 4N refined material while China domestic primary is approximately 3N; the refining cost adds $50-150/kg. Third, the export license premium - obtaining a Chinese government export license for gallium to Western destinations carries risk, delay, and rejection probability that buyers price into bids. Fourth, the scarcity premium - Western warehouse inventory is finite and not being replenished at the same rate it is consumed, creating a physical availability premium above all other factors.

The November 2025 ban suspension reduced the scarcity premium component but did not eliminate the license premium or refining premium. The structural China-Rotterdam spread, even under normalized trade, is unlikely to return to the pre-2023 $50-100/kg range because Western buyers now price China supply risk into long-term procurement - see gallium price forecast for the long-term equilibrium analysis.

What is gallium's all-time high price and when was it set?

Gallium has two distinct all-time highs depending on the market reference. The China ex-works primary gallium price peaked at approximately $1,000/kg in early 2011, driven by the smartphone and LED demand surge. The Western import (Rotterdam in-warehouse) 4N gallium price reached approximately $2,101/kg in early 2026, following the December 2024 US export ban - the highest recorded price for standard purity gallium in any market.

For context on scale: gallium's January 2020 to March 2026 price trajectory on the Western basis ($140/kg to $2,101/kg) represents a 15-fold increase over six years. The 2010-2011 cycle was a 3-4x move from pre-spike levels to the $1,000/kg peak. The current Western market price level is unprecedented in gallium's commercial history and reflects supply chain fracture rather than demand-driven appreciation - China domestic prices have not reached anywhere near these levels.

How does gallium's price history compare to germanium and indium?

Gallium, germanium, and indium are the three byproduct metals most important to compound semiconductor production, all with China-concentrated supply. Their price histories parallel each other through major market events because they share supply chain structure - all three are byproduct metals from Chinese alumina or zinc refining - but diverge in magnitude based on relative supply concentration and end-use demand composition.

Germanium's price trajectory tracked gallium's almost exactly from July 2023 because China applied export licensing to both simultaneously on July 3, 2023, and the December 2024 ban covered both metals. Germanium's smaller supply concentration (approximately 60% Chinese vs. 99% for gallium) provided some buffer, but the directional movement was identical.

Indium, used in ITO (indium tin oxide) for flat panel displays and in InGaN LED structures, did not face Chinese export controls as of early 2026 and maintained more stable pricing through 2023-2025. This contrast illustrates that gallium's extreme post-2023 price behavior is policy-specific, not a general compound semiconductor material market condition.

What are the key data sources for gallium price history?

Five data sources cover gallium price history, each with different time coverage, geographic basis, purity grade, and update frequency. No single source covers the full 2000-2026 period with consistent methodology.

The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries are the most authoritative free source for pre-2020 data, but they report annual averages only and do not distinguish between the China domestic and Western import price on a consistent basis. They also report the primary-versus-refined grade split inconsistently across years (the 2016-2018 split data is unusually detailed for the USGS series).

For price history purposes, the data before August 2023 should be read as China ex-works primary gallium (USGS basis), with the understanding that the Western import price tracked approximately $50-100/kg above this level. From August 2023 onward, the two series must be tracked separately.

GalliumPrice.com compiles available public data and publishes current 4N and 6N price references. See gallium price today for current assessed prices and gallium price chart for the interactive visualization with event annotations.

Gallium price history: decade summary