The film opens with Bond in Latin America dismantling a drug cartel, before he heads to Miami for what he thinks will be a vacation. Once he arrives in Miami, however, his associate, Felix Leiter, tells him that he has a new job spying on a gold bullion dealer, Auric Goldfinger, who is staying at the hotel in Miami.
Bond goes to Goldfinger's room, where he finds a beautiful woman, Jill Masterson, spying on Goldfinger's game of gin rummy on the patio and feeding him hints through a speaker. Bond gets on the speaker and tells Goldfinger to lose, before running off with his new friend Jill to his room for a night of lovemaking.
When Bond goes to get a cold bottle of champagne from the fridge, Goldfinger's assistant Oddjob comes up behind him and knocks him unconscious. When Bond awakens, he finds Jill dead on the bed, covered in gold paint, which suffocated her.
Back in London, Bond's boss, M., clarifies with Bond that he wants him to investigate just exactly how Goldfinger is smuggling gold, and a member of the British Board of Finance supplies Bond with a brick of gold smelted in Nazi Germany with which to lure Goldfinger into his acquaintance. Bond meets Goldfinger at a golf club and they bet on a game of golf, with the brick of Nazi gold as the stakes. When Bond wins the game, even after Goldfinger cheats, Goldfinger goes to Switzerland, and Bond follows close behind.
In Switzerland, Bond meets Jill Masterson's sister, Tilly, who has come to Geneva with a rifle to avenge the murder of her sister. When Bond and Tilly go to Goldfinger's plant in the middle of the night, Bond discovers that Goldfinger melts down gold and puts it in his cars, and also hears about some kind of plan of Goldfinger's called "Operation Grand Slam." When Tilly and Bond are discovered in the woods behind the plant, Oddjob kills Tilly with his blade-brimmed bowler hat and captures Bond, bringing him into the plant and strapping him to a table.
Goldfinger threatens to kill Bond by cutting him into pieces with a giant laser, but Bond tells him he knows about Operation Grand Slam and has told other agents, suggesting that Goldfinger ought to keep him around.
Goldfinger has Bond brought to his stud farm near Fort Knox, Kentucky, where the United States gold depository is. The pilot of the plane that brings Bond to Kentucky is Pussy Galore, an industrious and tough woman who tells Bond that she's "immune" to his charms (implying she is not attracted to men). At the farm, Bond is locked in a cell, but manages to escape and eavesdrop on a meeting between Goldfinger and a group of mobsters. While eavesdropping, he learns that Operation Grand Slam is a plan to steal gold from Fort Knox by releasing Delta 9 nerve gas over the entirety of Fort Knox. After detailing his plan, Goldfinger kills the mobsters using the nerve gas.
When Pussy Galore finds Bond and takes him to Goldfinger, Bond tells Goldfinger that his plan will not work, that transporting that much gold would take too much time. Goldfinger then reveals that his plan is actually to detonate a nuclear bomb on the premises at Fort Knox, which will render the gold there radioactive and destabilize the entire Western economy. Bond and Pussy go for a walk, and Bond seduces Pussy, despite her protestations.
The next morning, Pussy Galore's fleet of all female pilots drop the nerve gas over Fort Knox and Goldfinger and his men set up the nuclear bomb within the depository, with Bond handcuffed to the bomb's container. What Goldfinger doesn't know, however, is that Pussy got in touch with the American officials and switched out the nerve gas. The military personnel on the ground are only faking being knocked out, and once Goldfinger has infiltrated the depository, they get up and begin fighting Goldfinger's men.
Locked in the depository with the bomb and the deadly Oddjob, Bond manages to unlock his handcuffs. After a struggle, Bond kills Oddjob by electrocuting him. With only 7 seconds to go, an official from the CIA comes into the depository and switches off the bomb.
Bond is put on a plane to the White House to meet with the president, but on the way, Goldfinger emerges from the back of the plane holding a gold pistol. The two men fight, when suddenly the pistol shoots through a window, spiking the air pressure in the cabin and sucking Goldfinger out the window to his death. Pussy, who is piloting, crashes the plane, but she and Bond survive, and the film ends with them embracing under a parachute in a clearing.
