FACETWIREPrice IntelligenceThe $954 Pear: Ritani vs Ada and the Widest Lab Gap Right Now
Tonight's sweep covers 2,149 listings at ten retailers. The widest lab-grown gap in the data is a pear: $954 at Ritani, $5,525 at Ada Diamonds, same specs on paper. It is Ritani's first appearance at the top of our gap board — and four of the five widest lab gaps are pears.
The pair
Lab-grown pear, 2.77 ct, E color, VVS2 clarity, Very Good cut. Ritani lists it at $954. Ada Diamonds lists the matching spec at 2.80 ct for $5,525. The spread is $4,571 — 83% of the higher price, a 5.8x multiple. Per carat it is $344 against $1,973. A buyer could buy the Ritani stone and a setting with the difference and still not reach Ada's price for the stone alone.
This morning, the widest lab gap on the site was another pear: With Clarity at $1,668 versus Ada at $6,025, a $4,357 spread that had led the board since launch. It is still in the table below — but two Ritani pairs have passed it. The board moved because the coverage moved.
The five widest lab gaps right now
Widest first, from tonight's sweep. Prices link to the live listings.
| Stone (lab-grown) | Low | High | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pear 2.77 ct, E, VVS2 | Ritani $954 | Ada Diamonds $5,525 | $4,571 |
| Pear 2.52 ct, D, VVS1 | Ritani $1,358 | Frank Darling $5,796.84 | $4,438.84 |
| Pear 2.79 ct, D, VVS2 | With Clarity $1,668 | Ada Diamonds $6,025 | $4,357 |
| Marquise 2.73 ct, E, VVS1 | With Clarity $2,156 | Frank Darling $6,120.58 | $3,964.58 |
| Pear 2.53 ct, D, VS1 | Ritani $951 | Ada Diamonds $4,875 | $3,924 |
Patterns worth naming: Ritani is the low side of three of the five. Ada is the high side of three of the five. And the shape is not a coincidence — pears account for 215 of tonight's 1,010 matched pairs, and the 2.5–2.8 ct pear band is the most contested spec territory in the lab market: big enough to matter, stocked by everyone.
Why Ritani is suddenly all over the board
Ritani has been in our database from the start — 341 listings tonight — but its tracked sample skewed tiny: this morning its median stone was 0.21 ct, sizes the mainstream stores barely stock, and only 9 of its listings appeared in any matched pair. Today's band-targeted pull went after its 1–3 ct inventory specifically. Its pair involvement jumped to 354 pairs, third-highest of any retailer we track, behind only MiaDonna (447) and With Clarity (427).
What the wider net revealed is aggressive big-pear pricing: three 2.5–2.8 ct VVS pears between $951 and $1,358, each thousands below the matching listing elsewhere. For scale, the tracked median for lab-grown pears is $850 per carat; these stones sit between $344 and $539 per carat. Whether that is a deliberate pricing strategy or a feed that has not caught up with the market, the listings are live and linked above — and our Price Gap Alert watches them nightly.
What a pear buyer should do with this
Never price a pear at one store. The five rows above tell the same story five ways: the first price you see for a 2.5 ct+ lab pear is close to meaningless. On identical specs tonight, the range runs from $951 to $6,120.58. Run your exact spec through live pear search or the lab pear hub before you fall for a listing.
Check the per-carat, then check it again at a second store. A low headline price on a slightly smaller stone can hide a higher per-carat. In tonight's top pair there is no such trick — Ritani wins on both measures by a wide margin — but the check takes ten seconds in the Price Index and it is the difference between a deal and a framing device.
How we match, honestly
Pairs match identical shape, color and clarity across two different retailers, carat within 0.10, lab-grown against lab-grown only. These are spec fingerprints, not proof of the same physical stone. The proof standard is a certificate number listed at two retailers simultaneously — Ritani's pear listings carry their IGI numbers openly (the $954 stone's is LG818657816) — and across 1,454 cert-carrying listings, that same-stone event has not happened yet. It stands at zero; 636 cert-carrying stones already have an identical-spec twin. When the first cert match lands, we will publish it as what it is.
Frequently asked questions
Is the $954 price real?
It is Ritani's listed price captured in tonight's sweep, linked in the table above. Listed prices move — sometimes fast, especially when a price is this far off the market — so treat the pair as tonight's snapshot, not a quote.
Why are pears cheaper per carat than rounds?
Fancy shapes trade below rounds per carat in both lab and natural markets — tracked medians tonight run $850/ct for lab pears against $922/ct for lab rounds — and the 2.5 ct+ pear band is where lab supply is deepest. Pears produced 215 matched pairs in tonight's data, second only to rounds at 369.
Should I just always buy from Ritani, then?
No. Ritani is the low side of the widest gaps, which means its pricing on these specs is the outlier worth checking first — not that it wins everything. In our store-vs-store census it appears in 354 pairs and is not the cheapest in most of them. The rule is boring and undefeated: price your exact spec at three stores, every time.
Keep reading: Natural Diamonds, Compared at Last: the $6,259 Radiant · Frank Darling vs With Clarity vs MiaDonna · Browse diamonds by shape
Data: live retailer listings tracked by Facet Wire (2,149 listings across 10 retailers), captured 2026-10-17 and refreshed nightly. Prices are the retailers' listed prices at capture time. Pairs match identical shape, color and clarity with carat within 0.10 — spec matches, not certificate-verified same-stone matches.