I have spent fourteen years fixing jewelry, and the most common question I get is not "can you fix this?" It is "should I?" People bring me a ring in a zip bag, having already decided it is broken, and want permission to give up on it. Half the time the honest answer is that it is a $35 repair. The other half, the piece is genuinely finished, and the kind thing is to say so rather than take the money and hand back something that will fail again in a year.
This article is about how to tell those two cases apart. It is written from the bench, with 2026 prices, and it does not assume you are made of money or that you owe any particular jeweler your loyalty.
If the problem is dirt rather than damage, this is the wrong article. Cleaning is a separate job and I have covered it in how to clean jewelry.
What repairs actually cost in 2026
Prices vary by city, by metal and by how much of the work is hand-finished. These are the ranges I would expect to see from a competent independent jeweler in a major Western market in 2026.
| Repair |
Typical cost |
What drives the price |
| Prong retipping |
$25–$60 per prong |
Metal type, whether the stone must come out, laser vs torch |
| Prong tightening |
$15–$30 per stone |
Access, number of prongs, whether the setting is intact |
| Chain soldering |
$20–$50 per joint |
Chain fineness, gold colour match, whether links are hollow |
| Clasp replacement |
$30–$120 |
Clasp type. Lobster $30–$60, box $50–$90, pearl clasp $70–$120 |
| Ring resizing |
$50–$200 |
Metal, number of sizes, whether stones sit in the shank |
| Shank replacement, half |
$150–$300 |
Metal, weight, whether the piece is cast or fabricated |
| Shank replacement, full |
$250–$450 |
Metal, width, hand-fabrication time |
| Rhodium replating |
$30–$80 |
Number of pieces, whether polishing is included |
| New head or setting |
$120–$600 |
Setting style, whether it is hand-built or a stock casting |
| Stone replacement, melee |
$20–$75 per stone |
Stone size, colour match to the existing stones |
| Stone replacement, 1ct natural diamond |
$3,000–$8,000 |
The Four Cs and the market that week |
| Stone replacement, 1ct lab-grown |
$300–$1,200 |
Same, but a fraction of the natural price |
| Chain replacement, fine cable |
$80–$300 |
Metal, length, whether the clasp is reused |
| Laser welding, per joint |
$40–$90 |
The reason to use it is heat control, not strength |
| Watch-style bracelet link repair |
$60–$200 |
Pin, screw or friction construction |
Two things stand out from that table. First, the small jobs are cheap and the big jobs are not, and the gap between them is wider than most people expect. Second, the single largest driver of cost is not the metal, it is the labour, and the labour is driven by how much the jeweler has to take apart to do the job properly.
What actually drives the price
Whether the stone has to come out. A prong that can be retipped in place takes ten minutes. The same prong next to a fragile emerald that must be unset and reset takes an hour, plus the risk of damaging the stone, and the price reflects it.
The metal. Platinum costs roughly 30% to 50% more to work than gold because it is stiffer, it welds at around 3,000°F rather than the 1,400°F at which a gold solder flows, and it cannot be soldered with the same easy technique. A platinum resize that would be $80 in gold is often $150.
Heat sensitivity. This is where laser welders earn their keep. A laser delivers heat to a spot a fraction of a millimetre across, so you can retip a prong on a ring set with emerald, opal or pearl without cooking the stone. A torch would destroy it. The laser costs the shop $15,000 to $40,000, and some of that comes back to you as a higher hourly rate.
Access. A hidden hinge, a screw-back earring, a box clasp with a spring inside, a bracelet with a safety chain and three soldered joints: each added element is another thing that can be done wrong and must be done slowly.
Colour match. A repair on yellow gold needs a solder of the same karat and colour, and a repair on white gold needs either a matching solder or a laser weld and replating. A mismatched solder joint shows as a dark line within a year as the two alloys tarnish differently. Good shops keep a dozen solder alloys on the bench for this reason.
The repair-or-replace framework
Here is the framework I use when a client asks whether to fix something. It is not complicated, but it forces the right questions in the right order.
Step one: is the piece structurally sound beyond the fault? If the shank is worn thin all the way round, fixing the one prong that snapped is treating a symptom. If the metal is solid and the fault is local, repair is usually sensible.
Step two: is the repair a defined fix or the start of a sequence? A clasp replacement is a defined fix. "The stones keep falling out" is a sequence, and it usually means the setting is worn beyond saving.
Step three: what is the repair as a percentage of replacement? Under about 40%, repair almost always wins. Between 40% and 70%, it depends on sentimental value and how long you expect to keep wearing it. Above 70%, you are paying new-piece money for an old piece.
Step four: what is the replacement? A repair estimate should always be weighed against the cost of a comparable new piece, not against what you originally paid. If you bought a ring for $900 in 2015 and the same ring is $1,600 in 2026, a $400 shank replacement is 25% of replacement, not 44% of purchase.
Step five: how do you feel about it? I will never talk someone out of repairing a piece with sentimental weight, and I will never pretend a repair is economically rational when it is not. Both things can be true. The client should decide with full information, not with a salesperson's encouragement.
From the bench
The repairs that fail are rarely the ones that were difficult. They are the ones that were done cheaply on a piece that was already at the end of its life. I would rather turn down a job than hand back something I know will break.
Repairs that are almost always worth it
These are the jobs where the money is well spent, because the fix is bounded, the piece is otherwise sound, and the alternative is losing something that still has decades in it.
Prong tightening and retipping. At $15 to $60 per prong, this is the cheapest insurance in jewelry. A prong that has worn thin will let go, and a lost 1-carat diamond costs thousands. If a stone moves when you press it, stop wearing the piece and get it tightened.
Clasp replacement. A worn lobster claw is a necklace on the floor. Replacing it costs $30 to $60 and preserves everything else. If the chain itself is sound, this is a straightforward yes.
Chain soldering at a single break. A clean break in a solid gold chain is a $20 to $50 fix and the joint will outlast the chain. The exception is hollow chain, which I will come to below.
Ring resizing within the piece's limits. For a plain band or a ring with a simple setting, sizing down one or two sizes is routine and the result is invisible. I have covered the limits in detail in ring resizing explained.
Rhodium replating. If the piece is white gold and the plating has worn to reveal the warmer alloy underneath, $30 to $80 restores it for another 12 to 24 months. It is maintenance, not damage.
Replacing a single melee stone. A $20 to $75 stone and a few minutes of setting time keeps a pavé band looking right. Waiting is what turns one missing stone into a damaged setting.
Restringing pearls. At $50 to $120, this is cheaper than replacing a strand and it is the difference between a necklace that scatters across a floor and one that does not.
Repairs that usually are not worth it
This is the section most jewelers will not write, because these are the jobs that pay the bills.
A shank that has worn below about 1mm. You can replace the shank, and I will do it if you ask, but on a ring that has already been sized twice, the answer is usually a new ring. The old one has given you thirty years. Let it go.
The fourth repair on the same piece. If a ring has been resized, retipped, had two stones replaced and now has a crack at the solder joint, the metal has been through the torch too many times. Each heating cycle grows the grain structure of the alloy and makes it more brittle. Past a certain point you are not repairing a ring, you are maintaining a habit.
Hollow or cast-light construction. Hollow rope chains, hollow bangles and lightweight cast rings are made to look like more metal than they contain. They cannot be soldered reliably because the wall is too thin to take heat without collapsing. When they break, they usually break again next to the repair. Replacing a hollow chain with a solid one is the honest recommendation.
Gold-plated and gold-filled pieces with worn plating. Replating a $60 fashion piece costs more than the piece. If the plating has worn through at the contact points, the base metal is exposed and will keep showing. Replace it.
Tension-set rings with a damaged setting. Tension settings rely on the spring of the metal to hold the stone. Once that is compromised by damage or a bad resize, restoring the tension is a specialist job that often costs more than the ring. Many shops will not touch them.
Eternity bands with a worn channel. A channel-set eternity band has stones all the way round, so there is no plain metal to work with. Rebuilding a channel is hand work at $200 to $500 and the result may not match the original. Sometimes it is worth it. Often it is not.
Anything where the jeweler says "I can try." "Try" means "I do not know if this will work and I am not warranting it." That is honest, and it is also a signal to get a second opinion.
The truth about lifetime warranties
Lifetime warranty plans are sold at the point of purchase, usually for 10% to 25% of the item price, so $100 to $300 on a typical engagement ring. Here is how they actually work.
They cover manufacturing defects, not damage. A prong that was cast too thin and snapped is a defect. A prong you caught on a car door is wear, and it is excluded. In practice, almost everything that happens to a ring after purchase is classified as wear.
They require servicing to stay valid. Most plans require you to bring the piece in every six or twelve months for inspection and cleaning, and they require you to keep the documentation. Miss two visits and the plan is void, which is how the economics work: the provider is betting you will forget.
You pay shipping. If the plan is administered by a third party rather than the store, you ship the piece at your cost, insured, both ways. That is $30 to $60 per round trip. Two claims and you have spent the price of the plan again in postage.
The exclusions are wide. Loss, theft, accidental damage, damage from cleaning products, damage from a third-party repair, and damage to stones are typically excluded. Read the exclusions page, not the features page.
The covered repairs are the cheap ones. Prong tightening and cleaning are what most claims amount to, and those cost $15 to $30 at any independent bench. You could simply pay for them.
There is a version of this that is worth it: a plan sold directly by a jeweler with a real bench, where the servicing is free, the turnaround is local, and the exclusions are narrow. Those exist. Ask who administers the plan and where the work is done before you pay.
How to find a competent jeweler
The trade has two kinds of shop, and the difference matters more than the sign above the door.
A bench jeweler does the work on the premises. You can usually tell because there is a workshop visible or behind a door, the turnaround is days rather than weeks, and the person at the counter can answer technical questions without phoning someone.
A storefront that sends work out takes your piece, ships it to a trade shop, and marks up the result. This is not automatically bad, and some of the best trade shops in the world work this way. But you lose the ability to talk to the person doing the work, and you pay a margin for the middle step.
Five questions worth asking before you hand anything over.
Who does the work, and is it done in-house? A straight answer tells you a lot. Evasiveness tells you more.
Do you have a laser welder? If the piece has heat-sensitive stones, this determines whether the job is safe at all. A shop without one will either remove the stones or use a torch and hope.
Do you have a Graduate Gemologist on staff, or access to one? For anything involving stone identification, replacement matching or appraisal, this matters.
Can I see before and after photographs? Good shops photograph repairs as a matter of course, partly for their own protection. A shop that does this is a shop that expects to be held to its work.
What is the warranty on the repair? A bench that stands behind its work will warrant the repair itself for a period, typically 90 days to a year. A shop that will not warrant its own solder joint is telling you something.
Repairs you should never attempt at home
I understand the urge. Most of these will cost you more than the repair would have.
Soldering with a plumber's torch. A hardware-store torch burns at well over 3,000°F. A 14K yellow gold ring melts around 1,600°F. You will not solder the joint, you will turn the ring into a puddle and possibly set fire to the bench.
Superglue on a loose stone. Cyanoacrylate wicks into the setting by capillary action, hardens, and then has to be cut out with a graver before the stone can be properly set. It also discolours under some stones and can stain porous ones permanently. It is the single most expensive home repair I see.
Straightening prongs with pliers. Prongs are work-hardened where they have been bent before. Straightening one with pliers usually snaps it off, and now you have a broken prong instead of a bent one.
Polishing with a rotary tool. A Dremel with a polishing wheel removes metal fast and rounds off the crisp edges that give a piece its definition. You cannot put metal back. Use a cloth, or pay the $30 to $60 for a professional polish.
Filing or sanding a ring to make it fit. You will take metal off unevenly and the ring will still not fit. Sizing is a soldering job, not a sanding job.
Replacing a battery or a movement in a watch you care about. This is a different trade, and a jeweler who is not a watchmaker should not be doing it either.
The one exception: replacing a spring ring clasp on a cheap chain, or tightening a screw-back earring, is genuinely fine to do at home. Those are the only two.
The repair that voids your insurance
This one catches people out every year.
If you have scheduled jewelry on an insurance rider and the piece is damaged, most policies require you to notify the insurer before repairing it. The insurer wants to see the piece in its damaged state, obtain its own estimate, or approve the repairer. If you take a damaged ring straight to a jeweler and have it fixed, you may have destroyed the evidence the insurer needs, and the claim can be reduced or denied.
The same applies to loss. If a stone is missing, do not have the setting rebuilt before you file. Photograph everything first.
A second insurance issue: an unqualified or undocumented repair can reduce the value of a piece at claim time. If a claim arises later, an adjuster may ask for the repair records. Keep every receipt.
And a third: some policies exclude damage that occurs during repair. If your jeweler breaks a stone while setting it, that may be your jeweler's liability, not your insurer's, and you need the jeweler's own insurance to be real. Ask whether they carry jewelers block coverage. Most reputable shops do.
When a repair goes wrong
It happens. A prong is retipped and the stone chips. A resize leaves a visible seam. A bracelet comes back with the clasp on backwards.
Here is the sequence that works.
Stop and document immediately. Photograph the piece from several angles in good light before you discuss anything. Note the date you collected it and who handed it to you.
Put it in writing. Email or letter, not a phone call. State what you asked for, what you received, and what you want: a redo, a refund, or compensation. Attach your photographs and your original estimate.
Ask for the old parts back. If a stone was replaced, you are entitled to the original. If a shank was cut off, ask for it. This is standard practice and it prevents the "we already disposed of it" conversation.
Give them one chance to make it right. Most shops will. A good jeweler is more embarrassed about a bad repair than you are angry about it.
Escalate in writing if they will not. If you paid by credit card and the shop misrepresented the work, a chargeback is a real option. Trade associations and, in some jurisdictions, consumer protection bodies take jewelry complaints. Small claims court handles amounts up to a few thousand dollars in most places and does not require a lawyer.
Do not accept a verbal-only resolution. "Bring it back next week and we will sort it" is not a resolution until it is in writing with a date.
Where repair advice fails
Some honest caveats, because the repair trade is not as clean as the price list suggests.
Some repairs are cosmetic and will fail again. Soldering a crack in a shank that is worn thin all the way round closes the crack and leaves the cause. It will crack again, usually within a year, usually next to the repair. I will do it if a client insists, but I tell them what to expect.
Not every jeweler is equally good, and the price does not tell you which is which. A $25 retip and a $60 retip may be the same work, or the cheap one may be a blob of solder that fails in six months. Ask what the price includes: polishing, rhodium plating, stone tightening, a warranty. That is usually where the difference lives.
Laser welds are not magic. A laser weld is strong and heat-controlled, but it is not stronger than the parent metal, and on some alloys and some geometries it is not appropriate at all. A shop that recommends laser welding for everything is selling a machine, not a repair.
Cast pieces have porosity, and porosity is where repairs fail. A casting can contain microscopic gas bubbles, especially in thick sections and near where the sprue was cut. A solder joint over a porous area will not hold, and neither will a laser weld. This is not the jeweler's fault and it is not something you can see before the repair. It is the main reason a repair sometimes fails for no obvious reason.
And sometimes the honest answer is that the piece is finished. A ring resized four times, a hollow chain repaired three times, a plated pendant with the plating worn to the base metal: these are not repair problems, they are end-of-life problems. A jeweler who tells you so is doing you a favour, even though it costs them the job. If you are hearing "yes" from every shop you visit, get one more opinion.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to repair jewelry in 2026?
Prong retipping runs $25 to $60 per prong, chain soldering $20 to $50, clasp replacement $30 to $120, ring resizing $50 to $200, and a full shank replacement $150 to $450. Laser welding costs more than torch work but is often the only safe option near heat-sensitive stones. A written estimate before work starts is standard and you should always ask for one.
Is it worth repairing a ring or should I replace it?
Repair if the piece is structurally sound, the repair is a defined fix and the cost is under about 40% of replacement value. Replace if the shank is worn below 1mm, the piece has already been repaired repeatedly, it is hollow or plated base metal, or the setting is a tension or channel design that cannot be rebuilt at reasonable cost.
Are lifetime jewelry warranties worth it?
Usually not. Most cover only manufacturing defects, exclude accidental damage and wear, require annual paid servicing to stay valid, and make you pay shipping both ways at $30 to $60 a trip. Over five years a $150 plan often costs more than the repairs you would actually claim, and the repairs it does cover are the cheapest ones.
Can I repair jewelry at home?
No for anything involving heat, solder, prongs or stones. A plumber's torch runs far hotter than the metal and will melt a ring. Superglue wicks into the setting and has to be cut out by a jeweler. Polishing with a rotary tool removes metal and flattens detail. Cleaning, tightening a screw-back earring and replacing a spring ring clasp are the only sensible home jobs.
What should I do if a jeweler damages my jewelry during a repair?
Stop, document and put it in writing. Photograph the piece, request the written estimate and any before photographs, and ask for the damaged parts back. Ask the shop to make it right or compensate at replacement value. If they refuse, escalate in writing, then to your card issuer or a trade association, and keep every message. Never accept a verbal-only resolution.
The bottom line
Get a written estimate, and judge every repair against the cost of replacing the piece rather than what you originally paid. Spend the money on the small, bounded jobs, because prong tightening and clasp replacement are the cheapest insurance in the box. Say no to the fourth repair on the same ring and to hollow chains that will only break again.
And find a bench jeweler who does the work on site, answers technical questions plainly, and will tell you when the honest answer is no. That relationship will save you more over a lifetime of jewelry than any warranty plan ever sold at a counter.
