Our Methodology

    Exactly where our numbers come from, how often they update, and the formulas we apply — written plainly so you can judge the data for yourself.

    Why We Publish This Page

    Most currency and gold-rate websites ask you to trust a number without explaining where it came from. We take the opposite view: a financial data site is only as credible as the methodology behind it. This page documents our actual data pipeline — the real providers, the real refresh intervals, and the exact arithmetic we apply to turn a raw market quote into the per-tola, per-gram, and per-city figures you see across this site. If something here doesn't match what you observe, we want to hear about it through our Contact Us page.

    Exchange Rate Data

    Currency exchange rates on PKRtoSAR.com — including every PKR-SAR, INR-SAR, PHP-SAR, USD-SAR, and QAR-SAR conversion page — are sourced from a commercial foreign-exchange rate API (exchangerate-api.com). We fetch using the Saudi Riyal (SAR) as the base currencyand derive every other pair from that base. This is a deliberate choice: SAR is the anchor currency for this site's primary audience, so basing the data on SAR minimises the rounding error introduced when chaining conversions through an intermediate currency.

    The rates we display are mid-market (interbank) reference rates. As we explain in detail on our Disclaimer and on the live-rate page, this is the wholesale rate banks use among themselves, not the retail rate you receive at a bank counter, exchange company, or remittance app. We do not mark the rate up or down. We display the reference rate and explain the spread separately so you can judge any retail quote against a clean benchmark.

    Exchange-rate data is fetched when the application loads and cached for the session. Because the Saudi Riyal is pegged to the US Dollar at a fixed 3.75 SAR per USD (unchanged since 1986), the SAR side of our pairs is structurally stable; virtually all observed movement in the PKR-SAR rate originates from the Pakistani Rupee, not the Riyal. For day-to-day and most remittance purposes, a reference rate refreshed per session is sufficient. For minute-by-minute precision — relevant only to active traders — a broker terminal, not any public website, is the correct tool, and we say so plainly rather than overstating what we provide.

    Gold Price Data

    Pakistani gold prices use a layered sourcing strategy with an explicit fallback chain, so that a single source outage degrades accuracy gracefully rather than breaking the page:

    • Primary source: Sarmaaya.pk, a Pakistani financial data platform, for the prevailing 24-karat per-tola rate in the local market.
    • Secondary source: livepriceofgold.com (Pakistan gold price page), used when the primary source is unavailable or returns an implausible value.
    • Static fallback: a bundled JSON snapshot of recent rates, served only when both live sources fail, so the calculator and rate pages remain usable offline rather than showing an error. Figures served from the static fallback are the least current of the three tiers and should be treated as indicative.

    Live gold data is held in a short-lived in-memory cache for five minutes to avoid hammering the upstream sources. The browser separately re-checks for staleness on a fifteen-minute basis, and the application runs a full background refresh cycle every thirty minutes. You can also force an immediate refresh using the refresh button present on every gold-rate page. The "Live / Cached / Offline" badge shown on those pages reflects which tier of the chain above produced the figure you are currently looking at — we surface this rather than hide it.

    How We Derive Karat Rates

    We source one anchor figure — the 24-karat (99.9% pure) per-tola rate — and derive the lower karats from it using their fixed gold-content ratios, rather than scraping each karat independently. This keeps the karats internally consistent with each other and with the 24K anchor. The exact factors we apply are:

    • 24K — 99.9% gold content (the anchor rate, used directly)
    • 22K — 91.7% of the 24K rate (factor 0.917)
    • 21K — 87.5% of the 24K rate (factor 0.875)
    • 18K — 75.0% of the 24K rate (factor 0.750)

    Per-gram and per-10-gram figures are derived from the per-tola rate using the standard South Asian conversion of 1 tola = 11.667 grams. These derived figures are indicative of the metal value only. They deliberately do not include a jeweller's making charge (banwai), wastage, GST, or dealer margin — those vary by shop and design, and we explain their real-world impact on the individual karat pages rather than baking an assumed markup into the headline number.

    City Premiums

    Local gold rates differ slightly between Pakistani cities because of transport, local association conventions, and demand. We treat Karachi as the base market and apply a fixed per-tola premium for other cities, applied transparently on top of the sourced base rate:

    • Karachi — base rate, no premium applied
    • Lahore — base rate plus PKR 200 per tola
    • Islamabad — base rate plus PKR 500 per tola

    These premiums are deliberately simple, fixed offsets rather than separately scraped per-city feeds. We consider them a reasonable approximation of the typical inter-city spread, not a precise quote for any specific jeweller on any specific day. Local prices at the counter can and do differ; always confirm with your dealer before transacting.

    What We Deliberately Do Not Do

    In the interest of full transparency, here is what our methodology explicitly does not include:

    • We do not add a hidden margin to exchange rates or gold prices to influence any commercial outcome.
    • We do not present retail or remittance-provider rates as if they were market rates.
    • We do not claim tick-by-tick real-time precision; our intervals are documented above honestly.
    • We do not provide financial, investment, or tax advice — see our Disclaimer.
    • We do not factor in jeweller making charges, wastage, taxes, or dealer margins in headline gold figures.

    Known Limitations

    No public rate site is a substitute for a live quote from the institution you actually transact with. Our figures are reference data: accurate enough for planning, comparison, and education, but always subject to the spread, fees, and timing of your chosen bank, exchange company, or jeweller. Weekend and public-holiday figures reflect the last available trading session because no genuine price discovery occurs while markets are closed. Static-fallback figures are the least current tier and are labelled as such in the page badge. We would rather state these limitations openly than imply a precision we do not have.

    Corrections and Feedback

    If you spot a figure that looks wrong, a source that has changed, or a formula you believe we should revisit, please tell us via the Contact Us page. We treat data-accuracy reports as a priority, because the entire value of this site depends on the numbers being trustworthy and the methodology behind them being honest.

    Last reviewed: May 2026