Palladium Price in the 2020s

Palladium entered the decade at the top of a historic bull run. The 2020 annual average was $2,193 per troy ounce, with a February spike near $2,875 before COVID-era demand fears triggered a brief dip and a rapid rebound. Scarcity intensified in 2021, when the average climbed to a record $2,398 as an acute market deficit collided with a global semiconductor shortage that constrained the auto production palladium feeds. The peak drama came in 2022: on 7 March, prices touched an all-time high near $3,440 per ounce as traders feared sanctions on Russia, source of roughly 40 percent of world supply, would choke shipments after the invasion of Ukraine.

The spike did not hold. Once it became clear that palladium flows would keep moving, the 2022 average settled at $2,112, and the real reversal followed. In 2023 the annual average dropped sharply to $1,337 as electric-vehicle adoption and a wave of platinum-for-palladium substitution ate into gasoline-catalyst demand. The slide continued into 2024, with the average falling to $984 on softer auto-catalyst buying, dipping palladium below platinum for the first time since 2018. In 2025 the metal rebounded off an April low near $866 to roughly $1,660 by year-end, lifting the annual average to $1,150, still far below where the decade began.

Palladium is an industrial precious metal, not a monetary one, so its price tracks the automobile more than the vault. Roughly 80 percent of demand comes from gasoline-engine catalytic converters, and supply is concentrated in Russia (Norilsk Nickel, about 40 percent) and South Africa (about 35 percent). That combination made the metal explosively volatile at the start of the decade: a structural auto-catalyst deficit had pushed prices to records by 2020 and 2021, and the 2022 sanctions scare added a geopolitical premium on top. But the same auto dependence that lifted palladium also set the trap for its fall.

As electric vehicles took market share, the internal-combustion fleet that requires palladium began to shrink at the margin, softening the demand outlook. Manufacturers also moved to reduce reliance on Russian metal by substituting cheaper platinum where the chemistry allowed. Industry estimates put substitution at roughly 620,000 ounces in 2023, up from about 385,000 ounces in 2022, and that erosion, combined with large above-ground stockpiles that cushioned deficits, drove the average from $1,337 in 2023 to $984 in 2024. The 2025 recovery to a $1,150 average showed the metal was not finished, buoyed by supply-deficit forecasts from major producers, but it left palladium roughly 47.6 percent below its 2020 opening level, a striking retreat for a metal that had recently traded above $3,000.