Are Lab Grown Diamonds Worth It? An Honest Answer From People Who Sell Them
Yes if you want a diamond to wear, no if you hope to sell it later. The catch first, then where lab grown diamonds make the most sense — with current market numbers.
Yes, if you want a diamond to wear. No, if you hope to sell it later. We only sell lab grown diamonds, so here's the catch first, and then the case for them.
A lab grown diamond is a diamond. It's the same carbon crystal, with the same hardness and sparkle as a mined one, and it's graded by the same labs. What you give up is value after you buy it. What you gain is size and quality for your budget, and that gain grows the bigger you go.
The catch: they're worth little once you've bought them
Lab grown diamond prices have fallen fast. Statista puts the retail price of a 1-carat lab grown diamond almost 76% lower in 2025 than in 2018. Bain & Company tracked the gap to mined stones in the years before that: a 1-carat lab grown diamond cost about 65% of a comparable mined one in 2017, and about 35% by 2020.
When new stones keep getting cheaper, a used one is worth little on the resale market. So buy a lab grown diamond to wear, not to sell, and don't treat it as an investment. If the price keeps falling after you buy, that's the trade-off you accepted for paying less up front.
They're diamonds, just not mined ones
The US Federal Trade Commission defines a diamond by what it is, not where it came from: pure carbon, crystallized in a particular structure, with a hardness of 10. Lab grown diamonds meet that definition. FTC guidance also says a lab grown stone must be clearly described as lab grown, and every stone we sell comes with an IGI or GIA report that says so.
Day to day, you won't see a difference. With the same hardness, a lab grown diamond scratches no more easily than a mined one. The difference is origin, and what that origin does to price.
Where lab grown wins: bigger stones
With diamonds, size gets expensive fast. GIA notes that a 2-carat diamond costs significantly more than twice a 1-carat one, because large diamonds are rare. That's true for lab grown diamonds too, but far less steeply.
We compared round diamonds of the same grade, lab grown against mined, listed for sale online in the US:
| Size | Lab grown, vs its 1 carat price | Mined, vs its 1 carat price | Lab grown as a share of mined |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 carat | 1× | 1× | about 9% |
| 1.5 carats | 2.0× | 2.2× | about 8% |
| 2 carats | 3.0× | 5.1× | about 5% |
| 3 carats | 5.6× | 11.7× * | about 4% * |
What we checked
- When: 28 September 2026, one day's listings
- Stones: 8,334 round diamonds, 7,637 lab grown and 697 mined
- Held the same: F color, VS1 clarity, a GIA or IGI report
- Sizes: 1.00–1.09, 1.50–1.59, 2.00–2.09 and 3.00–3.09 carats
- Figure used: the median asking price at each size, the stone halfway down the list from cheapest to dearest
- Limits: asking prices, not what buyers finally paid. Mined stones get scarce as size goes up, 76 at 2 carats and only 19 at 3 carats, so treat the 3-carat row as a rough guide
Going from 1 to 2 carats roughly tripled the price of a lab grown diamond, but multiplied a mined one by about five. So the bigger the stone, the wider the gap. At 2 carats, the lab grown diamond cost about a twentieth of the mined one. You can browse by size in our 2 carat lab grown diamonds or go further up to the 5 carat lab grown diamonds.
Are they more ethical?
A lab grown diamond isn't mined, so it avoids the harms that come with mining. Beyond that, be careful. Growing a diamond takes energy, and how clean that is depends on where the lab gets its power, which varies by producer. Treat broad "eco-friendly" claims with caution, including any you see from us.
Who should buy a mined diamond instead
Choose mined if any of these matter most to you:
- You want it to hold value, or you see the stone as something to sell or pass on as an asset.
- Natural origin is the point. For some people, a stone formed in the earth over millions of years is the whole meaning, and nothing grown in a lab replaces that.
- Tradition in your family, where a mined stone is expected.
For everyone else who simply wants a beautiful diamond to wear every day, lab grown gives you more stone for your budget. Start with our lab grown diamonds and compare sizes and grades side by side.
Common questions
No. Lab grown diamond prices have fallen sharply in recent years and may keep falling, so a stone you buy today is likely to be worth much less if you try to sell it. Buy one because you love wearing it. If holding value matters most to you, look at mined diamonds instead.
Not by eye, and not with the simple testers many jewelers use, because both are diamond. Grading labs such as GIA and IGI can tell them apart with specialist equipment, and their reports say whether a stone is lab grown. That report is the reliable way to know what you're buying. We go through which tests work, and which don't, in how to tell if a diamond is real.
They last as long as mined diamonds. A lab grown diamond has the same hardness, 10 on the scale used for gems, so it resists scratches just as well. Like any diamond, it can still chip from a hard knock on an edge or point, so a protective setting and a little everyday care matter.
Because they can be made to order, and quickly. A lab can grow a diamond in days or weeks, while mined diamonds depend on what comes out of the ground. As production grew fast, mostly in China and India, the cost of making them fell, and prices fell with it.
Yes, but not the way it grades mined ones. Since October 1, 2025, GIA no longer gives lab grown diamonds exact color and clarity grades. It sorts colorless and near-colorless stones into two groups, Premium and Standard, and inscribes "Laboratory-Grown" on the stone's edge. GIA reports issued before that are still valid, and IGI still grades lab grown diamonds on the full color and clarity scales.
Yes, they can. The growing process leaves its own marks. Diamonds grown under high pressure and heat can hold tiny dark bits of the metal used to grow them, and diamonds grown from gas can contain small dark specks of graphite. IGI grades them on the same clarity scale as mined diamonds, so a lab grown stone can land anywhere from flawless to heavily included.
