Erbium Price per kg (United States)

In the past year the monthly price has moved between $52.60 and $52.60.

Measured over the past year, erbium is +7.0%.

Erbium (Er) has a property the internet depends on: erbium ions amplify light at exactly the wavelength used in long-distance fibre optics. Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers boost signals along undersea cables and terrestrial networks without converting them back to electricity, which makes erbium quietly central to global data traffic. It is also used in lasers for dentistry and skin treatment.

Other uses

• Pink colouring for glass and ceramics
• Burnable absorber in nuclear fuel
• Vanadium and other metal alloys
• Infrared-absorbing glass

Erbium is produced in small volumes alongside other heavy rare earths, mainly from Chinese and Myanmar ionic clays. Demand comes from fibre amplifiers, lasers and glass colouring, and it is steady rather than fast-growing. Because no producer mines for erbium alone, supply follows the economics of the more valuable magnet rare earths.

What moves the price

• Heavy rare earth output and Chinese policy
• Fibre-optic network investment
• Laser and medical device demand
• Separation capacity outside China

Erbium's price has followed the wider heavy rare earth cycle: a spike in 2011, a long decline and periods of tightness when Chinese policy changes. Its specialised demand from fibre amplifiers has kept the market steady rather than volatile.

As of October 2026, the Stockatomics benchmark price is $52.60 per kg contained.

Erbium is produced with the other heavy rare earths, mostly from the ionic clay deposits of southern China and Myanmar, where rare earths are leached from weathered granite rather than mined from hard rock. Separation into individual oxides happens almost entirely in China, which leaves little erbium supply outside its control.

Erbium is on the US critical minerals list, and the heavy rare earths, erbium among them, are on the EU critical raw materials list. Fibre amplifiers that carry long-distance data traffic have no drop-in substitute, and separated supply is concentrated in China.

Stockatomics publishes a US benchmark price for erbium in US dollars per kg contained, reading as of October 2026. The price is quoted per kg of oxide, not for doped fibre. US trade in erbium is thin, so its price moves less often than those of the higher-volume minerals.

Converting the price

• Erbium oxide contains about 87% erbium