<p>Small-scale copper mining is highly sensitive to short-term price fluctuations due to limited financial resilience and restricted access to risk management instruments. In Chile, a price variability compensation mechanism has been implemented in copper purchase transactions to partially absorb price volatility through bounded, counter-cyclical adjustments. This study evaluates the impact of this mechanism on cut-off grade determination and economic extractability in small-scale copper mining. The analysis integrates historical and projected copper prices, institutional tariff calculations, exchange rate variability, and mine cost scenarios to compare compensated and non-compensated price conditions, with and without royalty payments. Cut-off grades were calculated over a wide range of copper prices and mining costs using a break-even approach. The results show that compensated prices lower cut-off grades under low-price scenarios and increase them under high-price scenarios, reflecting the counter-cyclical nature of the mechanism. Across all analyzed conditions, cut-off grades vary between approximately 0.7% and 3.1% Cu and exhibit a linear relationship with mining costs. The findings indicate that price variability compensation does not eliminate price risk but redistributes economic viability across price regimes, stabilizing extractability during adverse market conditions while moderating gains during favorable periods.</p>