Skincare and makeup prices in Pakistan
Why does the same branded lipstick cost noticeably different amounts in two Pakistani stores?
Written from Dhundo’s own price data. Reviewed 2026-08-08; figures from the 2026-08-08 data snapshot.
Beauty is the category where cross-store comparison works best in this corpus, and the reason is structural: cosmetics carry brand names, product names and shade codes, so two stores selling the same item usually describe it almost identically. That makes the price gaps measurable - and they are larger than you might expect. This guide rests on 1,733 listings from 17 stores.
What beauty costs here
Across a sample of 610 listings the midpoint is Rs 5,570, with eight in ten between Rs 999 and Rs 50,199. The lower end is single items - a cleanser, one lipstick - and the upper end is imported skincare and gift sets.
The extreme top of the raw data in this category runs into the tens of millions of rupees, which is not a product; it is a bulk or wholesale listing that a scraper read as a unit price. That is precisely why this guide quotes a band rather than a maximum, and why every category page on Dhundo does the same.
The gap is real and it is large
19 items in the sample appeared in more than one store under matching titles - the highest count of any category measured here - with a typical gap of 33.3%.
The widest gap on a match specific enough to be certain about was 50.1%: MAC MINI LADY DANGER 607 MATTE LIPSTICK at Rs 4,995 on Al-Fatah against Rs 7,499 on Shopon. A named product with a shade code, two stores, half again in price.
Why beauty specifically? Because the products are small, light and identical between stores, so the differences that explain gaps in other categories - delivery weight, warranty, installation, variant confusion - barely apply. What is left is the retailer's margin and how recently they repriced.
Authenticity is the thing price cannot tell you
In a category where the same item genuinely does cost half again more in one shop than another, the cheap listing is not automatically the smart buy, and it would be irresponsible for a price page to imply otherwise.
What Dhundo can show you is the store. The retailer's name sits next to every price, and for cosmetics that is the most important field on the page - more important than the number beside it. An unfamiliar storefront at a price far below a tight cluster is a listing to research, not a saving to grab.
What Dhundo cannot do is verify authenticity, and it does not try. There is no field for it in a scraped listing and inventing one would be worse than useless.
Shade codes and sizes
Two listings for the same lipstick in different shades are the same product at the same price, so a shade mismatch is harmless for price comparison and fatal for buying the right thing. Read the code, not just the name.
Size is the opposite: a 30 ml and a 100 ml bottle of the same serum are different products, and a price gap between them is not a gap. Where a comparison looks too good, the volume in the title is the first place to look.
Why beauty prices move more often than other categories
Imported cosmetics are priced against a landed cost that moves with the exchange rate and with whichever consignment a retailer is currently selling. Two shops working from consignments bought months apart will show two prices for the same item and neither of them is wrong.
That is the most likely explanation for the size of the gaps measured here, and it has a practical consequence: in this category a price read weeks ago is less reliable than the same age of price in, say, homeware. Every figure on this page carries the date it was computed for exactly that reason, and the store page carries the only price that is current.
Beauty on Dhundo, in numbers
Computed from stored listings. Snapshot taken 2026-08-08; newest listing in the sample read 2026-06-19.
- Listings classified here
- 1,733
- Stores in the sample
- 17
- Midpoint price
- Rs 5,570over 610 listings
- Eight in ten sit between
- Rs 999 and Rs 50,199
- Found under the same name in more than one store
- 19 itemstypical gap 33.3%
Every figure above is recomputed on the Beauty category page each time it is served, so that page is always the fresher of the two.
What this guide cannot tell you
It cannot tell you whether a product is genuine. That is the central risk in this category and there is nothing in a price feed that speaks to it.
It cannot account for shade or size differences automatically. Title matching pairs listings that share leading words; the volume or shade code often sits later in the title, so read it before treating a gap as a saving.
It cannot tell you today's prices. These figures were computed from listings last read 2026-06-19.
Common questions
- Why is the cross-store price gap larger for cosmetics than for phones?
- Because the usual explanations for a gap do not apply. Cosmetics are small, identical between stores and carry no warranty or installation difference, so what remains is retailer margin and repricing lag - and in this sample that came to a typical gap of 33.3% against 9.4% for phones.
- Should I always buy the cheapest listing for a branded cosmetic?
- No. In this category the store matters at least as much as the price. Dhundo shows the retailer beside every figure so you can weigh both; a price far below a tight cluster of others is worth investigating rather than trusting.
- Do these prices include delivery?
- No. They are listing prices as each store showed them. Cosmetics are light, so delivery rarely reverses a comparison, but it is still applied at the store's checkout rather than here.