Refills are usually cheaper. Burberry Hero shows why usually is not always
We compared 39 refill and bottle pairs at matching concentrations. 28 refills came out cheaper per millilitre, some by more than half. Nine were dearer, including one on the same fragrance line as the biggest saving.
Burberry Hero parfum costs 48p a millilitre as a 200 ml refill and £1.06 as a 150 ml bottle. The refill saves you more than half.
Live price check: see the current best price and full recorded history.
Live price check: see the current best price and full recorded history.
Burberry Hero eau de parfum goes the other way. The 200 ml refill works out at 76p a millilitre and the 150 ml bottle at 55p, so the refill costs 37% more for the same liquid.
Live price check: see the current best price and full recorded history.
Live price check: see the current best price and full recorded history.
Same brand, same fragrance name, two concentrations, opposite answers. There is no rule to learn here, which is the whole point of checking.
What we found across the catalogue
We track 39 cases where a refill and a normal bottle of the same fragrance exist at the same concentration. Comparing each refill against the best per millilitre price of any bottle size in that concentration:
- 28 refills were cheaper per millilitre.
- 2 came out identical.
- 9 were dearer.
So the refill wins about seven times in ten. That is a good bet, not a certainty, and the losses are not small.
Where the saving is real
The wins cluster at the top end, where the refill is large and the bottle is not.
Armani Acqua di Gio parfum is 59p a millilitre in the 150 ml refill against 95p in the 100 ml bottle.
Live price check: see the current best price and full recorded history.
Hugo Boss Bottled Beyond does the same thing: 53p in the 200 ml refill, 84p in the 150 ml bottle.
Live price check: see the current best price and full recorded history.
The largest gap we have on record is Paco Rabanne Fame parfum, where the 200 ml refill is 53p a millilitre and the 80 ml bottle is £1.23. That is the same fragrance at less than half price, and it comes up again in our guide to buying Fame.
Where it goes wrong
Two things cause a losing refill.
The first is size. A refill is only a bargain when it holds more than the bottle. Le Labo Santal 33 sells a 30 ml refill at £4.60 a millilitre while the 100 ml bottle is £2.20, but that is not a refill problem.
Live price check: see the current best price and full recorded history.
A 30 ml container of anything prices like a 30 ml container, which is the pattern we set out in the small bottle is usually the expensive one.
The second is discounting. Retailers cut bottles far more often than refills, because the bottle is the thing people search for. When a 150 ml bottle is heavily marked down and the refill is sitting at list price, the refill loses. That is what happened to Burberry Hero eau de parfum above.
The catch
A refill assumes you kept the original bottle and that it opens. Not every flacon is designed to be reopened, and a refill with no way to decant is an expensive mistake. Check the brand sells the refill for the bottle you own, not just for the fragrance.
Refills also tend to sit at fewer retailers than bottles, so there is less competition holding the price down and the number moves less often. That cuts both ways: less chance of a bargain, less chance of missing one.
What to actually do
Look at the refill price before you reorder, and convert both to a per millilitre figure before deciding. It takes ten seconds and it is right about seven times in ten.
Then check it again next time. On the evidence above, the answer changes between concentrations of the same fragrance, so it will certainly change between months.
Every number here comes from our own reads of retailer product pages and updates as those prices move.