We read both stores on the same day - 79 Myntra women's kurta and kurta-set listings and 152 Nykaa Fashion women's listings on 23 August 2026, each from the store's own product feed - and compared how they build the numbers they show you. Myntra publishes a rating on effectively every listing but pools the counts across a brand's catalogue in several cases we identified by name, and shares one stated MRP across garments: Rs. 4,345 appears on six listings from two brands, Rs. 2,999 on eight. Its badges run 43 to 84 per cent. Nykaa Fashion publishes no rating on any of its 152 listings, and its badges run 5 to 81 per cent - with the smallest belonging to brands that sell through their own shops and to its house label, Twenty Dresses, which cuts a flat 30 to 35 per cent on 14 of 15 listings. Both shelves inflate choice with colourways. On neither store is the percentage worth reading.

We read Myntra's own listing data across women-tops and a women's T-shirt search on 22 August 2026, which returned 68 listings carrying a live price and a stated MRP, and seated 22 of them - one per brand, all under Rs. 1,000. Those 68 listings carry 53 distinct selling prices and only 22 distinct MRPs: Rs. 999 is stated behind fourteen of them, Rs. 1,499 behind six, Rs. 899 behind six and Rs. 1,199 behind five. The price field is doing real work; the MRP field is a short menu of round numbers reused across unrelated sellers. The second finding is who refuses to join in. Fifty-eight of the 66 discounted listings are 60 per cent off or more, and the exceptions are almost all one brand: H&M publishes a 26 per cent badge on one T-shirt and no discount at all on another, while Marks & Spencer states Rs. 799 against a price of Rs. 799. The two biggest badges - 87 and 85 per cent - sit on ordinary prices of Rs. 316 and Rs. 376.

We read 41 sarees from Nykaa Fashion's own ethnic listings on 19 August 2026, priced from Rs. 700 to Rs. 3,015. Two listings thirty-five rupees apart explain the whole shelf: an Akhilam chiffon designer saree at Rs. 1,530 states an MRP of Rs. 8,999 and shows 83% off, while an Nyri bandhani georgette at Rs. 1,495 states Rs. 2,299 and shows 35%. The stated MRPs across the shelf run from Rs. 1,369 to Rs. 9,999 while the selling prices sit in a much narrower band, so the badge is measuring the seller's list price rather than your saving. Thirteen sarees are under Rs. 1,500. Thirty-nine of the 41 arrive with an unstitched blouse piece - fabric, not a garment - which is a tailoring bill the listing price does not cover, and three include no blouse fabric at all. Nykaa Fashion published no rating or rating count on any of the 41, so there is no crowd to check these against.

We read AJIO's own catalogue across three queries - kurta, kurta set and kurti - on 18 August 2026, took the 189 unique listings that came back with a price and an MRP, and seated 23 under Rs. 1,000. The prices are real and they range ten-fold, from a Rs. 90 floral kurta to a Rs. 927 embroidered set. The MRPs range thirty-fold and describe nothing at all. Seven listings state exactly Rs. 4,345 - and they belong to three unrelated labels, GOSRIKI, SVARAA and AAGHNYA FASHION. Six more state exactly Rs. 4,596, across two brands. Seven state Rs. 1,999, across six. Against that, the chains price like shops: V-MART's cotton kurta is Rs. 191 at four per cent off Rs. 199, MAX runs 10 to 20 per cent off Rs. 499 to Rs. 699, and Reliance's AVAASA and YOUSTA sit at 20 to 49 per cent off Rs. 399 to Rs. 599. Both systems deliver garments between Rs. 300 and Rs. 950. The only genuine price step we could find is the garment count: about Rs. 80 to Rs. 150 for each extra piece.

Libas' Independence Day Sale was live on the brand's own site when we read it on 18 August 2026, and we pulled every item in the collection: 157 products, all of them discounted, priced from Rs. 349 for a Gerua printed kurti to Rs. 6,429 for a Libas Art embroidered georgette Anarkali suit, at badges of 41 to 84 per cent. The collection is weighted towards the cheaper end - 72 of the 157 items are under Rs. 1,000 and 131 are under Rs. 2,000 - and it mixes three labels in distinct price bands. Gerua, the value line, is 81 items with a median price of Rs. 899; the main Libas line is 60 items at a median of Rs. 1,269; Libas Art, the premium embroidered line, is 16 items at a median of Rs. 4,294 with nothing below Rs. 2,459. All three lines show badges between 41 and 84 per cent, so the percentage tells you which label you are looking at rather than how good the deal is. Libas publishes no end date.

We read both marketplaces' kurta catalogues on 18 August 2026 - 68 listings at Myntra, 189 at AJIO - and they are not selling the same shelf. AJIO is cheaper at every point except the top: its cheapest kurta is Rs. 90 against Myntra's Rs. 332, its median listing Rs. 564 against Rs. 734, and it carries 84 listings under Rs. 500 to Myntra's 15. Above Rs. 1,500 the position reverses, with Myntra showing five listings to AJIO's one. Two structural differences matter more than the prices. First, across all 257 listings not a single brand appears on both sites - Myntra's shelf is led by Sangria, KKOUTFITS and PERVAS, AJIO's by Nyrika, SVARAA and Reliance's own AVAASA and YOUSTA labels - so there is no common item to price-match. Second, Myntra publishes a rating count on 48 of its 68 listings, one of them with 43,311 ratings, while AJIO returned no rating on any of its 189 rows. The choice is between a cheaper shelf you cannot check and a dearer one you can.

We read 129 Nykaa Fashion ethnic listings on August 11, 2026 from the retailer's own listing data and seated 20. Fifteen of those sarees sell at exactly Rs. 1,260 - and they carry two different stated MRPs. Twelve claim Rs. 2,999 and are badged 58 per cent off; three claim Rs. 6,999 and are badged 82. The price you pay is identical and the twenty-four point gap between them comes entirely from which figure the seller typed into the MRP field. A further nine sarees sit at exactly Rs. 1,380, all against Rs. 2,999, all badged 54 per cent, across two different sellers. At the other end, a plain unembellished tissue saree claims Rs. 7,999 and carries the same 82 per cent badge as an embroidered chiffon one. The labels that price near their own list - Suta at 5 per cent, Koskii and Sutra Attire at 15 - are the most expensive sarees here and carry the smallest badges. No listing in the read has a rating. Twenty picks, Rs. 719 to Rs. 3,780.

We read 166 AJIO nightwear, pyjama and loungewear listings on August 11, 2026 from the retailer's own listing data across three searches, and seated 24. The garments on this wall all cost about the same; only the claim about what they used to cost varies. A hundred and twenty-nine of the 166 rows - 78 per cent - sell between Rs. 300 and Rs. 800, at a median of Rs. 496. The stated MRPs those prices are discounted from run from Rs. 249 to Rs. 6,560, a spread of twenty-six times, and the highest of those claims is nearly three times the dearest price anyone in the category actually charges. Three printed nightwear sets here sell at Rs. 390, Rs. 454 and Rs. 496 and carry badges of 87, 92 and 29 per cent. Against that, one brand filed 32 of the 166 rows all badged at exactly 29 per cent, on a ladder of believable MRPs. Not one of the 166 listings carries a rating. Twenty-four picks, Rs. 150 to Rs. 2,229.

We read 113 AJIO saree listings on August 9, 2026 from AJIO's own catalogue and seated 22. Twenty-one of them are discounted between 65 and 81 per cent. The twenty-second is 15 per cent off, and it is the most expensive listing on the page - a SOCH Chanderi at Rs. 2,973 against a stated Rs. 3,498, a Rs. 525 gap that is the smallest here by a factor of eleven. SOCH runs its own stores and has a shelf price to defend; the other twenty-one sellers do not. What that looks like from the inside: four listings from three different sellers all claim exactly Rs. 2,999 while selling between Rs. 690 and Rs. 900, one seller has two different sarees at an identical Rs. 870 against an identical Rs. 2,999, and another has three sarees whose prices climb Rs. 110 while their claims climb Rs. 500. The deepest badge, 81 per cent, sits on a Rs. 1,387 Mysore silk claiming Rs. 7,299. AJIO publishes no ratings here, so there is not one rating pill on this page. Twenty-two picks, Rs. 240 to Rs. 2,973.

We read 129 Nykaa Fashion listings on August 9, 2026 from the retailer's own catalogue API and seated 22 women's pieces. The discount column here tracks how much of a price a brand has to defend elsewhere. The three smallest badges on the page - 30, 32 and 40 per cent - belong to two denim labels and to Nykd, Nykaa's own basics line, all of which sell at prices they have to honour in more than one place. The three deepest - 75, 71 and 70 - belong to sellers that exist only on marketplaces. The deepest of all sits on Twenty Dresses, Nykaa Fashion's other house label, whose MRP is set entirely in-house. Where two garments meet at the same money, only the claim moves: two tops sell one rupee apart at Rs. 799 and Rs. 800 and show 50 and 60 per cent; two more sell at exactly Rs. 1,020 and show 66 and 49. Nykaa Fashion publishes no ratings at all, so there is not one rating pill on this page. Twenty-two picks, Rs. 323 to Rs. 2,067.

We read all 129 in-stock listings on Libas's own site on July 31, 2026 — five weeks before Raksha Bandhan opens the festive season — and found a store that prices in tiers and lets the MRPs do the theatre. Seven silk-blend suits sell at exactly Rs. 2,619, declaring MRPs from Rs. 5,299 to Rs. 9,149, so their badges run 51% to 71% on identical money. Five printed suits share Rs. 1,649, four declaring an identical Rs. 4,499 — the store's only perfectly uniform shelf. The Gerua sub-brand runs its own tiers at Rs. 1,299 and Rs. 1,399, putting three complete festive suits under Rs. 4,200. And the categories discount by their clearance pressure, not their badges: suits at a median near 60%, sarees at 40% because the six-yard format neither sizes nor dates, and the Libas Art occasion line at 16-47% — the Rs. 12,599 net lehenga, the priciest item in the read, gets 16%. July is when this shelf is stocked, sized and quiet; from mid-August it will not be.

On August 5, 2026 we pulled twenty pages of Libas's own product feed - 5,000 entries - and kept the 913 listings that were in stock, carried an image and published both a selling price and a compare-at price. One hundred and thirty-five of them are named Plus Size; 778 are not. Twenty-seven of the 135 plus-size listings carry no discount at all, which is 20.0 per cent, against 30 of 778 on the main rail, which is 3.9 per cent - a five-fold difference in how often a shopper meets a full-price listing. The median plus-size badge is 53 per cent against 64 for the main rail, and the median plus-size price is Rs. 1,559 against Rs. 1,959. This is a difference of distribution rather than a rule: plus-size discounts reach 79 per cent at their deepest, and six discounted plus-size listings are seated here alongside the full-price ones. The likeliest ordinary explanation - newer stock is not marked down - cannot be tested from a feed, and we say so rather than assume it away. Nineteen picks.

We pulled Libas's own Shopify product feed on August 3, 2026 - 1,000 listings, of which 889 have no size available at all, leaving 111 a shopper can actually buy. Splitting those 111 by discount produced a result with no exceptions in it. All 47 discounted listings are missing part of their size run and 33 are down to a single size. All 64 listings at full price have their complete size run available, every one. So the badge at Libas measures how long a garment has been sitting there, not how good the deal is, and the only question that matters on a 79 per cent listing is whether the one size left is yours. Twenty-six picks from Rs. 299 to Rs. 11,499, including the fourteen discounted listings that still have every size, the twenty listings sharing one Rs. 3,299 MRP, and the twenty-six plus-size listings of which not one is discounted. Libas publishes no ratings, so nothing here carries a rating pill.

We read Nykaa Fashion's own men's category feed on August 3, 2026 - ten pages, 251 distinct in-stock listings - and instead of counting discounts we counted what the shelf is made of. Only 137 of the 251 are garments. The other 114 are 63 pairs of footwear, 30 bags, wallets and caps, 6 watches, 5 pairs of eyewear, 5 innerwear multipacks, compression socks, shoe-bite pads, a silver pendant, a Rs. 16,736 fountain pen and a ten-gram gold bar at Rs. 154,598. Fifty-five brands appear, but Puma alone supplies 47 listings - 21 shoes, 19 bags and caps, 7 garments. On the clothing side, CAHOOT and The Indian Garage Co supply 41 of the 137 garments and 22 of the 52 shirts. Shoes, bags and shirts are racks with real choice in them. Thirteen pairs of jeans is not a rack. Twenty-five picks from Rs. 232 to Rs. 154,598, and no rating pills, because no listing in this feed carries a rating.

We read 382 in-stock listings from Nykaa Fashion's own category feed on July 31, 2026 — 81 westernwear dresses, 86 co-ord sets, 74 heels, 77 flats and 64 sandals — and sorted the discounts by label rather than by product. The badges stopped looking like bargains and started looking like policy. ELLE's twenty-one listings carried exactly five discount values across three categories: 40, 45, 50, 55 and 60 per cent, and no other number. Mabish By Sonal Jain's nine dresses were all 59% or 60%. PIMU priced six different dresses at an identical Rs. 1,000 off an identical Rs. 3,999. Bata's were 2-5%. The shallow badges clustered on brands with mall stores and high streets; the deep ones on labels that exist mainly as listings. Read in rupees the ranking inverts: the cheapest heel among seventy-four is a Rs. 391 Bata at two per cent off, and a 72%-off sandal costs Rs. 317 more than a 3%-off one. Eighteen picks, priced by what you pay.