Cheap Mascara vs Cult Mascara: My Blind Test Fooled My Own Sister

Mascara is the category where I trust price the least. It's mostly a brush and a pigment, and you're supposed to throw it out every three months anyway. Paying $29 for something you bin every season feels silly. So I ran a blind test.

How the test worked

Four rounds. Each round, one eye got a cult luxury mascara and the other got a drugstore mascara that people online call a dupe. My sister, who is brutally honest and owns more mascara than me, had to guess which was which and rate both.

She got it wrong in three of the four rounds.

Round by round

**Volume.** The famous luxury volumizing mascara vs a $10 drugstore volumizer with a big bristle brush. She picked the drugstore eye as the expensive one. The drugstore version clumped a bit more on the second coat, so stick to one.

**Length.** A cult tubing mascara vs a drugstore tubing formula. Tubing mascaras wrap each lash in little polymer tubes and come off with warm water instead of scrubbing. Both looked basically identical. The drugstore one was about a third of the price.

**Curl hold.** This was the only round the luxury mascara clearly won. My lashes are stubbornly straight and the expensive one held a curl until evening. The drugstore pick dropped by lunch.

**Waterproof.** Drugstore waterproof mascaras are honestly some of the best formulas on the market. The luxury waterproof one was fine. Not better.

What you're paying for in luxury mascara

Mostly the brush shape and the brand. Formula technology for mascara isn't top secret. The big drugstore brands are owned by the same parent companies that own several luxury brands. Sometimes it's literally the same lab.

When to splurge anyway

• You have straight lashes that won't hold a curl
• You have sensitive eyes and found one formula that doesn't sting
• You love one specific brush shape and nothing else feels right

That's it. Otherwise, the drugstore aisle wins.

Shopping tips

Target and Walmart restock drugstore mascara constantly and often run buy-one-get-one deals. Ulta stocks both drugstore and luxury mascara side by side, which makes comparing easy, and their points program adds up if you buy a lot of beauty basics. Sephora sells luxury minis, which is the smart way to try a cult mascara without paying full price for a tube you'll toss in three months.

Write the open date on the tube with a marker. Old mascara is how eye infections happen.

Verdict

Unless you need serious curl hold, buy drugstore mascara and spend the difference on skincare or a good lash curler. My sister now buys the $10 tubing mascara. She is not happy that I proved her wrong.