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Lithium Reference Rate — 10-Day Trend
All prices in ₹ per gram · daily rate, updated once per day
Two "Battery Metals" That Behave Nothing Alike
Lithium and cobalt get lumped together constantly as "battery metals," but their price behavior over the past year shows just how different their underlying markets actually are. Cobalt roughly doubled in price through 2025, driven by a single country's export policy. Lithium, priced today at ₹1.75 per gram on September 21, 2026, moved through 2025 on a far calmer path shaped by genuinely diversified global supply.
- Cobalt (late 2025/early 2026): roughly $48,000-56,000 per tonne
- Lithium carbonate (2025 US annual average): roughly $9,000 per tonne
- Rough ratio: cobalt trading at around five to six times lithium's tonne price
Lithium Reference Rate by Weight
Today's Lithium rate is Two Rupees per gram. At this rate, 10 grams of Lithium costs Eighteen Rupees.
| Unit | Weight | Price (INR) | Price in Words |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Gram | 1.0000 g | ₹1.75 | Two Rupees |
| 8 Grams | 8.0000 g | ₹14.03 | Fourteen Rupees |
| 10 Grams | 10.0000 g | ₹17.54 | Eighteen Rupees |
| 100 Grams | 100.0000 g | ₹175.36 | One Hundred and Seventy Five Rupees |
| 1 Kilogram | 1,000.0000 g | ₹1,753.60 | One Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Four Rupees |
| 1 Ounce (oz) | 28.3495 g | ₹49.71 | Fifty Rupees |
| 1 Troy Ounce | 31.1035 g | ₹54.54 | Fifty Five Rupees |
| 1 Metric Ton | 1,000,000.0000 g | ₹1,753,604.00 | Seventeen Lakh Fifty Three Thousand Six Hundred and Four Rupees |
Why Cobalt Doubled While Lithium Stayed Comparatively Calm
The Democratic Republic of Congo supplies around 70% of the world's mined cobalt, an extraordinary concentration for any major industrial metal. When the DRC imposed an export ban in February 2025, later replaced with strict quotas, it removed a huge share of a genuinely thin, tightly held market's supply in one stroke. Cobalt went from lows near $21,500 a tonne to roughly $48,500 by October 2025, and has traded in the $48,000-56,000 range since — a near-textbook example of what happens when one country controls the overwhelming majority of a commodity's supply.
Lithium's more distributed supply base
Lithium's reserve picture, according to the US Geological Survey's 2026 Mineral Commodity Summaries, looks nothing like cobalt's. Chile holds the largest reserves at roughly 9.2 million tonnes, but Australia (8.4 million tonnes), China (4.6 million), Argentina and the United States (4.4 million each) all hold meaningful shares too — no single country approaches the kind of dominance the DRC has over cobalt. That spread is a structural reason lithium hasn't experienced a shock on the scale of cobalt's 2025 export-control episode.
| Trait | Lithium | Cobalt |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-2026 price range (per tonne) | ~$9,000-11,200 | ~$21,500-56,000 |
| Top reserve holder | Chile (~9.2M tonnes) | DRC (dominant, ~70% of production) |
| Supply concentration | Spread across 8+ countries | Heavily concentrated in one country |
| Main battery role | Present in nearly all Li-ion chemistries | Key in NMC/NCA; absent from LFP |
Lithium Reference Rate — Last 10 Days
The most recent Lithium price on record (2026-09-21) is Two Rupees per gram.
| Date | Price (INR/g) | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-21 | ₹1.75 | 0.00 |
| 2026-09-20 | ₹1.75 | 0.00 |
| 2026-09-19 | ₹1.75 | 0.00 |
| 2026-09-18 | ₹1.75 | +0.02 |
| 2026-09-17 | ₹1.73 | +0.01 |
| 2026-09-16 | ₹1.72 | -0.05 |
| 2026-09-15 | ₹1.77 | -0.03 |
| 2026-09-14 | ₹1.80 | -0.04 |
| 2026-09-13 | ₹1.85 | +0.00 |
| 2026-09-12 | ₹1.85 | — |
What This Means for Battery Chemistry Choices
Cobalt's price volatility is a big reason battery makers have pushed so hard toward LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) chemistry, which uses no cobalt at all, over NMC and NCA chemistries that depend on it. Lithium, by contrast, shows up in virtually every lithium-ion battery regardless of which cathode chemistry wins out — a structural demand floor cobalt doesn't share to the same degree. That asymmetry is part of why the two metals, despite sharing a battery-metal label, deserve to be tracked as genuinely separate markets rather than a single "battery metals" story.
The comparison table and 10-day history above track lithium's own price trend. For a longer view, the site's own lithium price history page holds real recorded data.
Lithium vs Cobalt — FAQs
Cobalt, by a wide margin. Cobalt has traded in the range of roughly $48,000-56,000 per tonne in late 2025 and early 2026, while battery-grade lithium carbonate's annual average US contract price was about $9,000 per tonne in 2025 — cobalt trading at somewhere around five to six times lithium's price on a per-tonne basis.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies around 70% of the world's mined cobalt, imposed an export ban in February 2025 that was later replaced with strict export quotas. That single policy decision pushed cobalt from lows near $21,500 a tonne to roughly $48,500 a tonne by October 2025 — a dramatic illustration of how concentrated cobalt supply is in one country's hands.
Lithium is mined across a genuinely diversified set of countries — Chile, Australia, China, Argentina, the United States, Canada and others all hold significant reserves, according to the US Geological Survey, with no single country close to cobalt-level dominance. That geographic spread is a major reason lithium hasn't seen a supply shock comparable to the DRC's cobalt export controls.
Often, yes, but not always. Lithium is present in essentially every lithium-ion battery chemistry. Cobalt is a key ingredient in NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) and NCA battery chemistries, but LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) batteries, an increasingly popular chemistry for EVs, use no cobalt at all — one reason cobalt demand growth hasn't tracked EV sales growth as tightly as lithium demand has.
Not directly. The two metals are mined through completely different supply chains -- lithium mostly from dedicated brine and spodumene operations, cobalt largely as a byproduct of DRC copper mining -- so a cobalt-specific shock like the 2025 export controls has little direct mechanical effect on lithium's own price. The connection is indirect, through battery-chemistry choices: a sustained high cobalt price gives battery makers more incentive to shift toward cobalt-free chemistries like LFP, which affects cobalt demand more than lithium demand.
