Seven retailers. 208,903 listings. E VS1 Round Excellent IGI.

• $295 to $899 for the same 1ct stone, depending on where you buy. That is the published price range for a 1ct E VS1 IGI round this month. The gap is not a quality difference. It's a retailer difference, and this month it's a narrower comparison set than usual (see the Coverage notes below).
• Ritani reversed course: the panel's largest move, this time upward. After two straight months of cuts, Ritani posted +55% at 1ct ($190 to $295 per carat), +39% at 1.5ct ($185 to $258 per carat), and +40% at 2ct ($190 to $266 per carat). July's prices land close to where Ritani started in May, before its June markdown. A retrospective check applying this month's narrower carat window (1.00-1.05ct) to Ritani's own May data reproduces a median of $300 per carat (n=391) against May's published $290 per carat, a $10 (3.4%) gap. That check is a single-month, single-retailer validation, not a proven equivalence between the two collection methods: it is consistent with July's move being a real repricing, but this index cannot fully rule out that the narrower sampling window contributed some portion of the reported change. This month's Ritani 1ct sample (n=302) is thinner than its typical range in past editions: 780 in April, 843 in May, 1,296 in June.
• Clean Origin cleared the 30-listing publication minimum at 1ct for the first time since this index adopted full-inventory collection (n=725, $342 per carat). Its 1.5ct and 2ct cells fell 35% and 25% respectively. Clean Origin's round listing count in this month's collection is far higher than last month's, roughly 3,980 round listings in June against about 17,760 in July, above the previous high of roughly 16,100 tracked since this index began in April. This index does not currently know what drove that jump: it could reflect an undercounted June collection, a genuine inventory expansion by Clean Origin, or a difference in collection methodology between the two cycles. It is flagged as an open item to investigate before the next edition; the June-to-July inventory comparison, though not the July price figures themselves, should be read with that caveat.
• With Clarity is back in all three cells and essentially flat versus June. It is published in all three cells this edition after a supplemental data pull on July 25. The original July 23 collection had narrowed to a single non-benchmark color grade to work within access restrictions on the site, leaving no E-color data; a supplemental E-color, benchmark-band data pull recovered $620 at 1ct (n=660, full capture), $698 at 1.5ct (n=945, a partial capture, about 74% of the band; the full band could not be retrieved, see the Coverage notes below), and $728 at 2ct (n=912, full capture). Versus June: +$2/ct at 1ct, +$11/ct at 1.5ct, +$25/ct at 2ct, none of it a meaningful move.
• Still no blended 1ct Market Median: the panel changed too much month to month to blend meaningfully. With Grown Brilliance and Blue Nile still unable to contribute a published 1ct figure this month, four of the six IGI retailers now have a 1ct figure (Ritani $295, Clean Origin $342, With Clarity $620, Brilliant Earth $899) after With Clarity's top-up. Blending July's four published 1ct figures would show what looks like a 17% drop from June's five-retailer $582 to $481, but that entire apparent drop is an artifact of which retailers cleared the publication minimum each month (Clean Origin newly qualifying, Grown Brilliance and Blue Nile dropping out) rather than a price move, which is exactly why this index does not publish the blended number: the three retailers that actually reported in both months, Ritani, With Clarity, and Brilliant Earth, were essentially flat, $618 to $620 (+0.3%). The four individual figures are shown instead of a blended number. The 1.5ct and 2ct Market Medians now draw on all six IGI retailers: 1.5ct rose 8% while 2ct eased 4%, neither large.
• Brilliant Earth held flat at the panel's premium end. It didn't move this month: -$2/ct at 1ct (basically flat, $901 to $899), unchanged at 1.5ct and 2ct.

Scope. This index tracks listed retail prices (not transaction prices) across major U.S. online lab-grown diamond retailers. The July 2026 edition analyzed 208,903 lab-grown diamond listings across seven retailers. Data was collected on July 23, 2026.

Retailer panel. This edition tracks seven retailers: Ritani, Clean Origin, Grown Brilliance, With Clarity, Blue Nile, Brilliant Earth, and VRAI. The panel is fixed and disclosed for comparability. Any additions, removals, or reclassifications will be explicitly noted in that month's report.

Price inputs. Prices are the publicly visible list price at the time of data collection, including any site-wide or automatic reductions that do not require a membership or promotional code. Excluded: promotional codes, membership discounts, negotiated pricing, strikethrough compare-at prices. All prices in USD, excluding sales tax and shipping.

Benchmark specification. E color, VS1 clarity, round brilliant, Excellent cut, IGI-certified. Three weight cells: 1ct (0.95-1.05ct), 1.5ct (1.45-1.55ct), and 2ct (1.95-2.05ct).

Statistical method. Each published figure is the median total stone price across all qualifying listings within that cell. A minimum of 30 qualifying listings is required for publication. Per-cell sample sizes (n) are visible as tooltips when hovering over any price. Total Stone Price figures in the price table (all cells except VRAI's 1.5ct, corrected in the VRAI note below) are computed as the median price-per-carat for that cell multiplied by the cell's nominal carat weight, not the raw median of actual listing prices; the two typically differ by 0.5-2%. This is a candidate for a deliberate, disclosed methodology change in a future edition, not something being silently recomputed now. Grown Brilliance 1ct (n=1) falls below the threshold and is not published. Blue Nile 1ct (n=18) falls below the threshold and is not published. VRAI 1ct (n=29) falls below the threshold and is not published. VRAI 2ct (n=17) falls below the threshold and is not published.

Coverage this edition: Ritani and Grown Brilliance. Both were scraped within three fixed carat bands (1.00-1.09ct, 1.40-1.59ct, 1.90-2.09ct, all colors) rather than a full-inventory census, adopted this cycle to avoid the multi-hour timeouts and rate-limit hangs both retailers have produced in past months. Because the published 1ct benchmark cell (0.95-1.05ct) only partially overlaps the scraped band (1.00-1.05ct of the scraped 1.00-1.09ct), 1ct sample sizes for these two retailers are thinner than in prior editions: Grown Brilliance's 1ct cell (n=1) falls below the 30-listing minimum and is not published, while Ritani's 1ct cell (n=302) remains above the minimum but is materially smaller than its typical range in past editions (780 in April, 843 in May, 1,296 in June). The 1.5ct and 2ct bands are fully contained within the scraped range for both retailers and are unaffected by this change. The retrospective spot-check described in Key Findings (Ritani's May data re-run under the narrower window) is a single-month, single-retailer validation of this collection change, not a proven method: it supports, but does not prove, that the narrower window leaves reported price levels unaffected, and a sampling-window contribution to this month's reported Ritani moves cannot be fully ruled out.

Coverage this edition: With Clarity. The original July 23 collection used a narrower server-side color filter (G rather than the benchmark's E), a change made to work within access restrictions the site imposes on high-volume data collection, and so collected no E-color data; a supplemental data pull on July 25 covering the benchmark bands in E color closed this. 1ct (n=660) and 2ct (n=912) completed as full captures. The 1.5ct band could not be retrieved in full: repeated independent collection attempts each stopped at the same point, returning the identical 3,920-stone set (verified by certificate number, 100% overlap), indicating a consistent access ceiling for this query rather than a one-off interruption; the cell is published from that 3,920-row / 945-qualifying-stone capture (about 74% of the band), disclosed as a partial capture in the price table.

Coverage this edition: Blue Nile and VRAI. Blue Nile's 1ct cell (n=18) is thin because of genuinely low VS1-clarity inventory in this month's E-color listings (most graded VVS2 instead), not a collection issue; Blue Nile was a full-inventory pull as usual. VRAI's 1ct cell (n=29) falls one listing short of the 30-listing minimum and is not published this month.

Coverage this edition: what is published at 1ct. With Grown Brilliance and Blue Nile unable to contribute a published 1ct figure, four of the six IGI retailers have a 1ct figure this month (up from three before the With Clarity top-up); the 1ct Market Median is not published this edition, see the Market Median entry below. The four published 1ct figures (Ritani, Clean Origin, With Clarity, Brilliant Earth) are shown individually in the price table instead. The 1.5ct and 2ct Market Medians retain all six IGI retailers.

Deduplication. Listings are deduplicated within each retailer by URL. Stones with identical IGI certificate numbers may appear at more than one retailer and are counted as independent listings at each retailer where they appear.

Market Median. Computed as the median of the per-retailer median prices across all IGI-panel retailers with qualifying (published) data in that cell. VRAI is excluded from this computation (non-IGI, non-comparable). The 1ct cell is not published this edition: its panel (now four of six IGI retailers, up from three before With Clarity's July 25 top-up) turns over too much month to month to blend meaningfully. A blended July figure ($481, against June's five-retailer $582, an apparent -17% move) is computed here only to demonstrate why it is not published: the three retailers reporting in both months (Ritani, With Clarity, Brilliant Earth) were essentially flat, +0.3% ($618 to $620), so that -17% is a composition artifact (Clean Origin newly qualifying, Grown Brilliance and Blue Nile dropping out), not a price move. The four published 1ct figures are shown individually in the price table instead of a blended number.

VRAI. VRAI uses Diamond Foundry proprietary grading exclusively and carries no IGI-certified inventory. Included as a non-comparable reference point. Weight windows: 1ct = 1.0-1.09ct (D-F colors); 1.5ct = 1.6-1.9ct (D-G colors); 2ct = 2.1-2.45ct (D-G colors). VRAI's 1ct cell (n=29) and 2ct cell (n=17) both fall below the 30-listing minimum this edition and are not published; only the 1.5ct figure is published this month. Because VRAI's 1.5ct window (1.6-1.9ct, median actual weight 1.72ct) diverges substantially from the nominal 1.5ct label, its published Total Stone Price figure ($1,229) is the true median of actual listing prices for this cell, not median $/ct ($707) x 1.5 (which would understate it by about $168, or 14%).

Comparability. Historical index figures may not be directly comparable when the benchmark specification or retailer panel changes. Such changes are explicitly noted in the relevant month's report. James Allen was retired from the panel in the June 2026 edition following the closure of its independent storefront. This edition's narrower Ritani and Grown Brilliance carat-band collection is a collection-methodology change, not a benchmark-specification change; coverage within the unchanged spec is reduced for these two retailers. With Clarity had the same kind of gap after its original July 23 collection; a supplemental scrape on July 25 closed it, in full for 1ct and 2ct and to about 74% for 1.5ct.

Independence. Rings.com receives no compensation from the retailers included in this index for inclusion or ranking, and no retailer has any editorial control over the methodology or results.