Rapaport Price List
Rapaport Price List
The weekly wholesale benchmark by which the round-brilliant diamond trade quotes prices
The Rapaport Price List is the weekly wholesale price grid for round-brilliant diamonds published by Rapaport USA Inc., issued every Friday and serving as the de facto reference for wholesale diamond pricing globally since 1978. The list provides asking prices in US dollars per carat for round-brilliant diamonds across all colour grades from D to M and clarity grades from Internally Flawless (IF) through Included 3 (I3), organised in size-band grids from 0.01 carat to 10.00 carats and above. The trade quotes prices in terms of percentage discount to Rap, a convention so deeply embedded in industry practice that it functions as the standard pricing language of the wholesale round-brilliant business.
Origin and structure
Martin Rapaport launched the price list in 1978 as a printed weekly grid, transforming what had been an opaque pricing environment characterised by bilateral negotiation and limited price comparability into one with a publicly stated reference. The list was initially controversial within the trade — long-established dealers viewed it as an intrusion into private commercial relationships — and that controversy has resurfaced periodically since, but the list's adoption became near-universal within a decade of launch.
The structure of the list is a series of grids, one for each size band (0.01 to 0.03, 0.04 to 0.07, 0.08 to 0.14, 0.18 to 0.22, and so on, scaling up through the carat sizes). Within each grid, rows are colour grades and columns are clarity grades. Each cell holds a price-per-carat figure in hundreds of US dollars (commonly cited in the trade as "high" and "low" estimates that bracket dealer asking prices). The list is published as a PDF and through the firm's online subscription, with the asking-price grid accompanied by additional pricing for fancy shapes (princess, emerald, oval, pear, marquise) and for some specialised categories.
The discount-to-Rap convention
Trade transactions are quoted as percentages off (or, less often, on top of) the relevant Rap list price. A diamond offered at "-15% back of Rap" is being offered at fifteen per cent below the list price for its size, colour, and clarity. The convention permits efficient negotiation: rather than agreeing an absolute number, the parties agree a discount and the absolute number follows from the current week's list. Common discount ranges run from about minus five to minus thirty per cent for ordinary commercial goods, with the more sought-after combinations (top colour, high clarity, well-cut) trading at smaller discounts and less sought-after combinations at larger ones.
Premium prices — quoted as plus-percentages — are uncommon for round brilliants but appear from time to time for particularly desirable categories, such as exceptional colour-clarity combinations or stones with desirable cut and proportion characteristics outside the indexed average. For fancy coloured diamonds and fancy shapes, the list serves as a less direct reference and the trade quotes more often in absolute prices.
What the list does and does not represent
The list is explicitly an asking-price reference rather than a transaction-price index. The trade is open about the gap: actual transactions clear at percentages below the list, with the magnitude of the discount serving as the variable in negotiation. The list is updated weekly to reflect Rapaport's reading of wholesale market conditions, and significant movements in the list — particularly downward revisions during weak-market periods — sometimes provoke complaint from dealers whose inventory loses notional value when the reference moves.
The list covers round-brilliant diamonds in the D to M colour, IF to I3 clarity, and 0.01 to 10.00+ carat ranges. Diamonds outside this matrix — fancy coloured diamonds, fancy shapes (with separate Rapaport listings), low-colour or heavily included goods, very small melée — are priced by other references or by direct negotiation.
Subscriptions and access
The price list is available by subscription through Rapaport. Access tiers determine whether the subscriber receives the weekly grid only, the historical archive, the RapNet trading platform, RAPI index data, or the full Rapaport service. Subscription is a routine cost of doing business for any wholesale diamond dealer, and the list is the single most widely-held diamond reference document in the global trade.
Position relative to other indices
Other diamond pricing references compete with the Rapaport list at the margins. The IDEX Diamond Price List, Polished Prices, and HRD's index suite each offer alternatives with different methodologies and editorial perspectives. None has displaced the Rapaport list from its central position in the trade. The market's familiarity with discount-to-Rap quotation, the comprehensiveness of the Rapaport grid, and the integration of the list with RapNet trading and the RAPI indices have together secured the list's continuing dominance.
In the trade
For dealers and buyers, the list is a daily working reference. Quotations from suppliers, requests-for-quote to manufacturers, and inventory pricing on RapNet all use the list as the structural reference. Reading the list well is a basic skill of the wholesale diamond trade: understanding which size bands move together, which colour-clarity combinations are robust to market weakness, and how the list's published asking prices relate to clearing prices in the current market environment.