The densification behavior of porous gold films made from commercial circuit paste used in microelectronic packaging applications was studied. Constrained gold circuit films of 60-65μm thick were formed by multiple screen printing of the gold paste on rigid alumina substrates, while freestanding films were obtained by carefully peeling off gold films from the substrates after binder burn-out. Optical techniques were developed to determine the densification kinetics of the constrained and freestanding films at temperatures below 1000°C. The densification kinetics of gold films constrained on rigid substrates were observed to be significantly retarded relative to the free films, at all sintering temperatures between 650°C and 900°C studied. SEM studies revealed the microstructure of the constrained films to be much more porous than its freestanding film counterpart. Considerably higher sintering temperatures were required to obtain densities comparable to those of freestanding films. SEM studies also showed no significant difference in grain size between the sintered freestanding and constrained gold films. Inplane tensile stresses generated during constrained-film sintering, was determined to have a maximum value of 460 KPa at the sintering temperature of 750°C. The negligible difference in grain size between the sintered freestanding and constrained gold films, and the small magnitude of the measured tensile stresses, were both determined to be insufficient to account for the observed retardation in the densification kinetics of the constrained gold films. The activation energies for densification of the porous gold films during isothermal sintering, were found to be 21.54±1.03 Kcal/mole and 45.12​​±1.6 Kcal/mole for freestanding and constrained gold films respectively. These values corresponded very well with the activation energies for grain-boundary diffusion and lattice diffusion respectively, for gold as found in literature. Hence from our results of the activation energies for densification of the constrained and freestanding gold films, coupled with our studies on grain growth and stress, we suggest that the observed retardation in the densification kinetics of the constrained gold films are due to a change in the dominant diffusion mechanism during sintering of the porous gold films constrained on rigid substrates.