Silver Data Provider · Head-to-head
iShares Silver Trust (SLV) Daily Holdings vs Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics
Which silver data provider data fits your job: iShares Silver Trust Daily Holdings, or Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
iShares Silver Trust (SLV) Daily Holdings
Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| iShares Silver Trust Daily Holdings | Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics | |
|---|---|---|
| Documented fields | 15 | 6 |
| Dictionary status | Verified against live structure in Datadory's August 21, 2026 research pass | Inferred from the printed table structure; the Institute publishes no formal data dictionary |
| Field types | Date stamps, numeric fund vitals (ounces, tonnes, NAV, net assets, shares, price, premium/discount, fee), an ex-dividend flag, and bar-list strings and integers | String enums for supply and demand categories, numeric volumes and percentage changes, string row labels, a numeric market balance |
| Signature fields | `Ounces in Trust` (491,121,753.00); `NAV per Share` (60.31); `Premium/Discount` (2.25%); `Vault` (JPM New York (VLN)); `Assay` (9990) | `supply_category` (Mine production); `demand_category` (Industrial fabrication); `volume_moz` (819.7); `yoy_change_pct` (0.9); `market_balance_moz` (-150) |
| Shared concepts | Period stamp, measured quantity in troy ounces, silver as subject | Period stamp, measured quantity in troy ounces, silver as subject |
What each does better
iShares Silver Trust Daily Holdings
Daily grain against annual grain. One fund-level row per trading day back to inception on April 21, 2006 - roughly 5,100 historical rows of NAV per share and shares outstanding. Daily cadence is rare in this catalog: only 395 of the 1,744 datasets Datadory tracks carry any daily dimension at all.
Bar-level depth nothing else in the slice matches. The custodian's inventory enumerates 503,633 individually numbered bars - refinery brand, stamped serial number, assay fineness, fine ounces and the vault holding each: JPM London B with 430,706 bars totalling 417,952,654.600 fine ounces against JPM New York with 72,927 bars totalling 73,169,112.100. No other silver source in the catalog resolves to serial numbers.
In the reviewed snapshot the $61.66 close against the $60.31 NAV put the trust 2.25 percent over bullion value.
Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics
Whole-market frame. Even at roughly 491 million ounces, the trust is one investment vehicle - a single contributor to one line item, physical investment, on the Institute's ledger. The Institute counts every ounce the market produced and consumed: 819.7 million mined, 193.9 million recycled, 1.16 billion demanded in 2024.
Demand decomposition SLV cannot attempt. Fabrication splits by end use - industrial with its photovoltaic component, jewelry at 208.7 million ounces, silverware at 54.2 million, photography, bars and coins - each carrying its year-over-year change on the same row. Anyone weighting a demand model by application needs exactly these buckets.
Producer concentration. Two ranking tables name the top 20 producing countries and companies, with Mexico, China, Peru, Bolivia and Chile leading the country list. SLV names one holder of silver: itself.
The balance row. market_balance_moz states total supply minus total demand, negative in deficit years - the number most structural silver theses are argued from. SLV publishes no market-wide balance anywhere in its fifteen fields.
Where they're equivalent
Both track physical silver above ground in troy ounces - one as a stock of vaulted bars counted bar by bar, the other as annual flows of mined and recycled metal. Neither touches paper claims or futures open interest.
Both are single-publisher records with named compilers. SLV's figures come from iShares / BlackRock product disclosures, with the bar-level inventory produced under the trust's custodian arrangement (JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. acting for The Bank of New York Mellon). The Institute's figures are compiled by the Silver Institute with Metals Focus and adapted from the World Silver Survey 2025 - attribution that travels with the rows.
Both are global in scope with named geography. SLV's metal vaults in London and New York, reported per vault; the Institute reports world totals with country rankings beneath.
Neither observes a transaction. Both publish aggregates - ounces held, ounces produced, ounces fabricated.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - divided by question, not by quality alone.
Accept a single-trust frame. That shape fits the investors and quants use cases.
Take Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics if your unit of analysis is the market: sizing the structural deficit, weighting demand models by fabrication end use, tracking producer concentration through the top-20 tables, or citing fundamentals the industry itself treats as canonical. Accept one survey year of statistics per cycle. That shape fits the market researchers use cases.
Rule of thumb: if the question begins "where is the metal tonight", take SLV; if it begins "how big was the deficit", take the Institute. Both live in the silver data hub.
Sample both, pick by fit. See iShares Silver Trust Daily Holdings · See Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics
Or take both in one feed
Yes - their axes barely intersect, which is why they stack. A defensible loop: observe investment demand directly, day by day, from changes in ounces-in-trust (see the ETF daily holdings definition); place that observed series inside the Institute's physical-investment bucket beside 819.7 million ounces mined and 193.9 million recycled; then let the balance row tell you how much above-ground stock had to fill the gap. The supply-demand balance concept gets an observed daily input instead of a residual.
Two cautions straight from the records. First, there is no join key: As Of trade dates on one side, survey-year labels on the other, so the bridge is a calendar mapping you own - most teams forward-fill the annual row across its year before attaching intraday series. Second, keep your bases straight: the trust's webpage fund facts report trade-date activity while the custodian's bar list runs on accounting data, so the two ounce totals differ slightly by construction; and the Institute's totals publish rounded, so components need not sum - reconcile at the total row, never the parts.
Datadory ships either record alone or both merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is iShares Silver Trust (SLV) Daily Holdings better than Silver Institute - Silver Supply & Demand statistics?
Better at different jobs, scored 8/10 versus 7/10 on Datadory's rubric. SLV wins when the question names a position or a flow: daily ounces-in-trust, NAV and premium/discount, plus 503,633 individually numbered bars across London and New York. The Institute wins when the question names the market: 819.7 million ounces mined, 193.9 million recycled and 1.16 billion demanded for 2024, split by application with a balance row.
Do the two datasets cover the same ground anywhere?
Only structurally. Both reduce to a period stamp, a quantity in troy ounces and silver itself as the subject - the trust counts a stock of vaulted bars while the survey sums annual flows of mined and recycled metal. Beyond that they diverge: fifteen instrument-level fields versus six categorical ones, two vault cities versus world totals with top-20 rankings, and no shared entities between a bar serial number and a demand category.
Which dataset moves faster?
Judge by the shape of their time axes. SLV carries one fund-level row per trading day back to April 21, 2006 - roughly 5,100 rows - which puts it among the 395 of 1,744 cataloged datasets with any daily dimension. The Institute advances one survey year per cycle, reporting the prior calendar year: calendar 2024 arrived in the 2025 cycle of the World Silver Survey. Datadory delivers either on the cadence you choose.
Which reaches further back in time?
Different kinds of depth. SLV's history is continuous but young: daily rows from inception on April 21, 2006, opening at a $12.185 NAV on 1.5 million shares. The Institute's statistics run one survey year deep per edition - 2024 in the current tables - while its accompanying narrative traces silver back thousands of years. For a time series, SLV; for a canonical base year, the Institute.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes. Either record arrives alone or merged onto one delivery calendar, normalized so units stop colliding - fine ounces per bar and ounces in trust on one side, volumes in millions of ounces on the other - with the survey-year label preserved so a 2024 figure never masquerades as a live reading. Name the cut when you request the sample and it ships pre-mapped; ongoing feeds land daily, weekly, or hourly.