Metals With the Highest Thermal Conductivity
Key Findings
About This Dataset
Metals With the Highest Thermal ConductivitySilver conducts heat best of all metals at 429 W/m-K, narrowly ahead of copper (401 W/m-K). Because silver is expensive, copper is the practical choice for most heat sinks and cookware, trading a small performance loss for far lower cost. Gold (318) and aluminium (237) round out the elite group, with aluminium prized for combining good conductivity with light weight. There is then a steady decline through beryllium, tungsten, magnesium and molybdenum. Nickel closes the list at 91 W/m-K, meaning silver conducts heat almost five times better than nickel. Notably, the order of the top four, silver, copper, gold, aluminium, is identical to their ranking for electrical conductivity, reflecting the shared role of free electrons in carrying both heat and charge.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
- Coverage
- 10 entities · 10 observations
- Measure
- Thermal Conductivity (W/m-K)
- Last updated
- 7 July 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
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