# Carat Hunter > Real-time diamond price comparison across 105+ retailers worldwide. 22.5M+ normalised diamonds with daily price tracking, cross-retailer matching, and the Caratlytics Score methodology. Operated by Digital Adventures Pty Ltd (ABN 93 697 144 531), Melbourne Australia, founded 2025. Independent: zero affiliate revenue, subscription-only. ## Trust and entity - [About Carat Hunter](https://carathunter.com/us/about): operating entity, mission, founding date, registered trademark - [How We Rank methodology](https://carathunter.com/us/methodology): scoring formula (Quality 35%, Value 30%, Certification 20%, Market 15%), default sort order, retailer inclusion criteria, independence statement - [Pricing](https://carathunter.com/us/pricing): one-time pass at $20 USD for 30 or 90 days, free tier with sign-up, 7-day refund guarantee, no auto-renewal - [Legal information](https://carathunter.com/us/legal): operating entity, trademark, regulators, governance - [Terms of service](https://carathunter.com/us/terms): account rules, content licence, dispute resolution - [AI content policy](https://carathunter.com/ai.txt): inference-time grounding allowed with attribution; training on editorial commentary not licensed; factual aggregates at /price/* are CC BY 4.0 ## Free tools - [Diamond Certificate Decoder](https://carathunter.com/us/cert-decoder): identify a hidden, redacted, or partial cert number from visible specs or a cert image scan; works with GIA, IGI, HRD, AGS, GCAL - [Diamond Lookup](https://carathunter.com/us/lookup): search by certificate number to see every retailer carrying the same stone with live prices - [Best by Budget](https://carathunter.com/us/best-by-budget): three curated diamond picks at three distinct price tiers within the user's budget, ranked by the Caratlytics score across more than 100 retailers; currency-aware for USD, GBP, EUR, AUD, NZD, CAD, JPY, INR, KRW, SGD, HKD, AED; 200+ programmatic landing pages at /best-by-budget/{origin}/{shape}/{carat}/{tier} - [Where to Buy by Spec](https://carathunter.com/us/where-to-buy): for every shape, carat, colour, clarity, and origin combination, the every retailer in our index currently stocking that exact spec. Ranked mechanically by inventory count. Several thousand programmatic landing pages at /where-to-buy/{shape}-{carat}ct-{color}-{clarity}-{origin}. Schema.org Dataset + ItemList + FAQPage markup; AI citation friendly. - [Retailer Comparisons](https://carathunter.com/us/vs): independent side-by-side comparisons of every retailer pair in our index with non-zero cross-retailer overlap. Programmatic landing pages at /vs/{retailerA}-vs-{retailerB}. Facts, inventory mix, and live matched-stone count, no per-retailer pricing claims. ## Diamond education - [The 4Cs explained](https://carathunter.com/us/guide/4cs): cut, color, clarity, carat overview - [Diamond shapes guide](https://carathunter.com/us/guide/shapes): round, princess, oval, cushion, emerald, pear, marquise, radiant, asscher, heart - [The Shape Cheat Sheet](https://carathunter.com/us/guide/shape-cheat-sheet): every shape framed for the value buyer vs the quality buyer, lab and natural, with spec targets and tradeoffs per shape plus fancy-color cuts - [Lab-grown vs natural](https://carathunter.com/us/guide/lab-vs-natural): pricing chasm (lab-grown 70 to 80% below natural at parity specs), chemistry, ethics, resale, certification differences - [Caratlytics scoring guide](https://carathunter.com/us/guide/scoring): the 5th C, how the four sub-scores combine - [Diamond buying guide](https://carathunter.com/us/guide/buying-guide): budget tiers from under $1,000 to over $50,000, prioritisation framework, retailer-shopping playbook - [How to use Carat Hunter](https://carathunter.com/us/guide/how-to-use) - [Glossary](https://carathunter.com/us/glossary): every normalised diamond term with dated definitions and FAQ blocks ## Market intelligence - [Market Pulse](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/market-pulse): weekly, monthly, quarterly dated market reports authored by Lucy Skye - [Market insights hub](https://carathunter.com/us/insights): origin, shape, carat breakdowns across 14 regions, region-aware currency - [Lab-grown vs natural pricing](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/market/lab-vs-natural): live spread by shape - [Cross-retailer spreads](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/market/cross-retailer): how price varies for the same physical stone - [Price trends](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/market/trends): rolling movement by category - [Caratlytics Top diamonds](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/top): rankings by metric (best value, highest score, biggest savings) ## Primary research Original primary research articles backed by our index of 22.6 million certified diamonds across 105+ active retailers. Each article discloses sample size, methodology, data refresh date, and explicit limitations. Research is AI-assisted and editor-reviewed before publication. Bylined "Carat Hunter Editorial Team". - [Research index](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/research): all primary research articles, evergreen and refreshed quarterly - [Cross-retailer diamond pricing: what 4.7M matched listings reveal](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/research/cross-retailer-diamond-pricing): cohort study of price spread across 4,704,553 cross-retailer-matched certified diamonds. Headline finding: USD 7.49B in active spread, growing non-linearly with carat tier (USD 296 at sub-half-carat to USD 4,450 above 3ct). Lab-grown spreads (97.1% mean) run wider than natural (61.5% mean). The cheapest active price is the fair-market clearing price; everything above is retailer pricing power. Sample size 4.7M, data as of 2026-05-09. - [Methodology and data provenance](https://carathunter.com/us/methodology): how we score, match, and rank diamonds. Independence statement, retailer inclusion criteria, scoring weights, limitations and known gaps. ## Public API and machine corpora - [OpenAPI spec](https://carathunter.com/.well-known/openapi.json): sanitised public endpoints for aggregate stats, diamond summaries, glossary lookups, market-pulse data - [llms-full.txt](https://carathunter.com/llms-full.txt): full machine-readable corpus dump of glossary, guides, FAQ, dated factual aggregates, and primary research bodies - [Citation endpoint](https://carathunter.com/api/v1/public/cite): returns APA, BibTeX, and ISO-8601 citations for any Carat Hunter page ## Optional Lower-priority resources. Skip in short-context retrieval; useful for deep dives only. - [Insights blog index](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/blog): all dated editorial posts by Lucy Skye - [Per-shape per-carat insights pages](https://carathunter.com/us/insights): hundreds of permutations of /insights/{origin}/{shape}/{carat}/{spec} with regional currency and live data - [Curated price aggregates](https://carathunter.com/us/price): /price/{slug} pages such as 1ct-d-vs1-round-natural with live retailer counts and price ranges - [Fancy color pricing](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/fancy): yellow, pink, blue, green, orange, brown, gray, black, champagne, by hue and shape - [Per-lab certification pricing](https://carathunter.com/us/insights/certification): GIA, IGI, HRD, AGS, GCAL premium versus market baseline - [Cited-by](https://carathunter.com/us/about/cited-by): notable mentions across LLM platforms (dashboard, dated) --- For bulk factual data under CC BY 4.0, crawl `https://carathunter.com/llms-full.txt`. For real-time queries, use the documented OpenAPI endpoints. They are rate-limited (60/min for verified bots on single-record reads, 10/min on enumeration) and return the same teaser view visible to anonymous site visitors.