If you've got a bucket of worn cutting inserts, old drill bits, or retired machining tooling sitting in a corner of the workshop, you're probably sitting on more money than you think. Carbide scrap isn't priced like steel. It isn't even priced like copper. High-grade carbide inserts and shapes are currently trading at up to $26 per kilogram, and larger bits are reaching as high as $90 per kilogram. In the US, sellers are seeing anywhere from $8 to over $15 a pound depending on volume and quality. That's not a typo, and it's not a niche outlier either, it's simply what happens when a material is genuinely scarce and genuinely in demand at the same time.
Why Carbide Is Worth So Much More Than "Regular" Scrap
Tungsten carbide isn't really one material, it's a composite: hard tungsten carbide grains bound together with cobalt, typically making up somewhere around 6 to 12% of the mix. Both of those ingredients are expensive and genuinely difficult to source at scale. Tungsten is a strategic, supply-constrained metal. Cobalt is the same metal that makes battery manufacturers nervous about supply chains. Put them together in a durable, reusable form, and you've got a material that's worth recovering, not landfilling, every single time.
The highest-value scrap is high-purity: roughly 85% or more tungsten carbide content, clean, and free of contamination from the steel shanks or holders these inserts are often mounted in. Mixed or contaminated loads still have real value, but sorted, clean carbide commands a genuine premium over anything mixed in with other metals.
Why 2026 Specifically Is a Big Year for Carbide Prices
Here's the part that makes this more than a routine price update: China controls more than 80% of global tungsten production, and in January 2026 it activated strict export controls on the metal. That single policy decision has rippled through the entire global carbide market, tightening supply and pushing prices up sharply, with market analysts expecting the pressure to hold through 2026 and into 2027. If you've been sitting on carbide scrap waiting for "a good time" to sell, the case for right now is about as strong as it's been in years.
One Quote Is the Wrong Way to Sell Something Like This
Here's the thing about a material with this much price variation, $26 a kilogram for one grade, $90 for another, and everything depending on purity, form, and current market conditions, a single phone call to a single buyer is a genuinely bad way to find out what your carbide is actually worth. You have no way to know if that number reflects real competition or just what one buyer felt like offering that day.
This is exactly the situation a reverse auction or a live bidding process is built for. When a material's value is uncertain or highly variable, and carbide is about as uncertain as scrap gets, letting multiple qualified buyers compete for it tends to surface a far more accurate price than accepting the first number you're handed. On ScrapTrade, that's not a hypothetical, it's built into how every listing works: run a live auction and let verified buyers bid it up, or if you already know roughly what you'd accept, open a private negotiation and propose your price directly, then counter back and forth until you land somewhere fair. Neither path requires you to guess whether the first offer was a good one.
Where Carbide Fits on ScrapTrade
Worth being straightforward about this: carbide isn't one of the 24 core materials on ScrapTrade's price calculator today, that tool covers ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics, paper, and e-waste specifically, so you won't find a live indicative carbide price sitting there waiting for you. Honestly, that's part of the point above, not a gap in it. A commodity with an obvious posted reference price doesn't need competitive bidding nearly as much as something like carbide does, where the "right" price genuinely depends on who's asking and what they need it for.
You can still list carbide scrap on the marketplace itself, under the Industrial or Other Materials category, the same categories that cover specialty tooling, machinery, and less common recyclables generally. Once it's listed, everything else works exactly the same as it does for any other material: GPS-video verification before the listing goes live, verified buyers who can bid or negotiate, and escrow holding payment until pickup or delivery is confirmed. High value is exactly when that protection matters most, not less.
Getting the Most From a Carbide Sale
A few things move the number in your favour. Sort clean inserts away from anything still attached to a steel shank or holder, mixed loads sell for less than sorted ones every time. If you've got any documentation on the specific grade or cobalt content, include it, buyers pay more for certainty. And don't settle for the first number: with a material this volatile, a genuine bidding process or a direct negotiation is worth far more of your time than it would be on a commodity grade everyone already knows the going rate for.
The Bottom Line
Tungsten carbide scrap is one of the most underpriced opportunities sitting in workshops and machine shops right now, not because it isn't valuable, but because most people are pricing it like ordinary scrap instead of the strategic, supply-constrained material it actually is. With China's export controls keeping pressure on global supply through 2026, there's a real case for listing sooner rather than later, and for letting real buyers compete for it instead of taking the first quote that comes in.