The Grading School · What it costs
Compare itper gram.
Saffron is sold in jars from half a gram upwards, so the price on the shelf tells you almost nothing. Divide by the net weight and the market becomes readable in about ten seconds.
Chapter 01 · The only honest comparison
How should you compare two saffron prices?
Price divided by net weight. Nothing else. Saffron is the one spice where the pack size is almost never round, and that is not an accident: a 0.5 g tin at a comfortable-looking price can cost twice per gram what a 5 g jar does, and the shelf makes the small one look like the cautious choice.
Two things to check before you divide. Net weight, not gross, because the figure on the label is the saffron and the jar is not included. And the grade, because a gram of whole red stigma and a gram of threads with the pale style left on are not the same purchase, even when the number per gram matches.
Chapter 02 · Ours, in full
What Pure Red Gold charges, per gram
One grade, Super Negin, in two sizes. We publish the per-gram figure as well as the shelf price, because a page about how to compare saffron prices would be a poor one if it made you do the arithmetic on ours.
Prices reviewed 29 October 2026. They move when the harvest moves, and this page is updated when they do.
Chapter 03 · The four savings
Why is some saffron so much cheaper?
A gram of saffron is roughly a hundred and fifty flowers, each one opened by hand. That labour does not get quietly cheaper, so a gram priced far below the rest of the shelf has saved the money somewhere. There are only four somewheres.
Broken Sargol sold as whole stigma. Real saffron, real value, wrong price, and the hardest of the four to see, because fragments all look alike.
The common oneThe pale base of the thread weighs something and colours nothing. Leave it attached and every gram contains less of what you are buying it for.
Legal, and still a markdownMoisture, sugar syrup or oil sprayed on to add grams. The threads feel damp or sticky and clump rather than whisper against the glass.
You are buying waterDyed safflower, corn silk, coconut fibre. At this point price has stopped being the question.
The glass of water finds itChapter 04 · The number nobody quotes
What does saffron cost per dish?
Fifteen to twenty threads serve four people, and a gram holds roughly four hundred and fifty threads. So the useful figure is not the price of the jar. It is what the jar does.
A 5 g jar is around two thousand two hundred threads, which is about a hundred and ten to a hundred and fifty servings for four. At AED 175 that works out between roughly AED 1.15 and AED 1.60 a dish. Saffron looks expensive on the shelf and is modest on the plate, and the gap between those two facts is where most of the trade's bad behaviour lives.
- Threads per gram
- Roughly 450, fewer when they are thick and whole
- A dish for four
- 15 to 20 threads
- A 5 g jar
- About 110 to 150 dishes for four
- Cost per dish
- Roughly AED 1.15 to 1.60 at our 5 g price
- Using more
- Does not improve the dish, it turns it bitter
Chapter 05 · Paying more
What are you buying at the top of the market?
Not a better flower. A narrower selection, and the evidence that the selection happened. Saffron at the top of the market is the same species grown in the same way; what separates it is how much was rejected before it reached the jar, and whether the seller will show you the measurement rather than assert it.
That is the whole of the premium, and it is worth saying plainly: if a house charges more and cannot show you a grade, a harvest year and a laboratory report, it is charging more for packaging. The questions to ask are the same at every price.
- A named grade
- Not "premium" and not "A++", but a grade a lab can check
- A harvest year
- Because colour fades with age, and a best-before date hides that
- A laboratory report
- Published per lot, not described in a FAQ
- Clear glass
- So the grade is visible before you pay, not after
- A test you can run
- Spare threads and a water-test card in the box
Do the division