Glow Recipe Plum Plump Hyaluronic Acid Serum Dupes

This is the pick if you care about the formula, not the label. SkinSort counts ten ingredients in common with Plum Plump, a 40% ingredient match, and flags it as the most ingredient-similar product on their dedicated dupe page. Read the two INCI lists side by side and you see why: both are fruit-water gels thickened with Chondrus Crispus (carrageenan) and Xanthan Gum, both preserved with Hydroxyacetophenone and Phenoxyethanol, and both stack hyaluronic acid in more than one form, here Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate, Sodium Hyaluronate and a Sodium Hyaluronate Crosspolymer for three effective weights. Where Plum Plump leads with three Australian plum extracts, Lumene leads with Nordic lingonberry juice; where Plump uses an sr-Spider Polypeptide-1 vegan silk, Lumene uses an SH-Polypeptide-121 vegan collagen peptide. Same idea, different berry. The catch is price and geography. The RRP is £24.50 (about $24.90 in the US, where stock is thin), so at list price you save roughly $13 on the $38 original, not a landslide. It earns the top spot on the discount I saw on 2026-08-25, £17.15 at LookFantastic, and on being the only sub-$25 serum that mirrors the hero's whole structure rather than just its hyaluronic acid.

Plum Plump's headline is five weights of hyaluronic acid plus Vitamin B5. This $9.90 serum is the one that actually delivers that sentence. The Ordinary's 2024 ceramides reformulation, confirmed on the brand's own page, uses low-, medium- and high-molecular-weight HA, a hyaluronic acid crosspolymer and hydrolyzed HA, five forms, alongside Panthenol, which is pro-Vitamin B5 (the hero lists Pantothenic Acid, B5's acid form). It also shares a long run of the hero's supporting cast: Sodium Hyaluronate, Pentylene Glycol, Propanediol, Glycerin, Citric Acid, Ethylhexylglycerin, 1,2-Hexanediol, Phenoxyethanol and Caprylyl Glycol. Then it does something Plump does not, adds skin-identical ceramides, which is why it is the better call for dry or compromised skin that wants barrier support, not just water. What you give up is the sensory experience and the plum marketing: no fruit extracts, no vegan silk, and a slightly more utilitarian slip. Reviewers of the reformulation say it is far less tacky than the sticky original, but a few still hit pilling under silicone-heavy SPF or base unless they wait a minute for it to sink in. For a quarter of the price, matching the actual claim, that is an easy trade.

At $5.99 for 30 mL this is the floor, roughly $5.91 an ounce against the hero's $37.48, and it is the alternative SkinSort's community likes most (58%). Do not mistake 'most-liked' for 'most similar': the formula is deliberately bare, sodium hyaluronate in a glycerin-and-propanediol base with Hydroxyacetophenone to preserve it, and that is close to the whole list. It shares the hero's hydration backbone and its glycerin-forward base, but none of the multi-weight HA, the B5, the peptides or the plum antioxidants. That is the point of it. Reviewers repeatedly describe it as light and non-tacky, and in more than one comparison say it feels less sticky than The Ordinary's HA serums while costing a fraction. Buy it if you treat hydration as a plain step you build on with your own vitamin C or retinoid, not as the finished product. If you wanted Plum Plump for the bounce and the plum story, this will feel like exactly what it is, a competent humectant and nothing more.

This is the pick if tacky HA serums put you off and you want a peptide in the mix. At $13 it runs 2% multi-molecular hyaluronic acid in three weights (high, medium, low) plus Matrixyl 3000, the peptide duo Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-7 and Palmitoyl Tripeptide-1. The genuinely distinctive overlap with Plum Plump is small but real: both formulas use Leuconostoc/Radish Root Ferment Filtrate, a fermented radish-root preservative that most drugstore HA serums skip, and both share water, propanediol, glycerin, sodium hyaluronate and phenoxyethanol. Where the hero leans on an sr-Spider Polypeptide-1 vegan silk, this leans on Matrixyl, a different firming story rather than a plumping-silk one, and there is no B5 or plum here at all. The finish is the selling point: it is a thin, non-tacky gel that sits well under makeup and suits oily or combination skin that finds the hero too cushiony. The honest limit is strength. Two percent total HA is a lighter hydration load than Plum Plump delivers, and the peptide is a bonus rather than a headline dose, so treat it as a smart everyday layer, not a like-for-like swap.

If your reason for wanting Plum Plump was the multi-weight hyaluronic acid specifically, this $17 serum out-specs it on paper: four molecular weights (very low, low, medium, high) at a combined 5%, the deepest HA stack of anything here. Naturium also answers the hero's antioxidant angle in its own way, with Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, an oil-soluble stable Vitamin C, standing in for Plum Plump's plum polyphenols, and it shares the glycerin-and-propanediol humectant base. The difference is texture and intent. Where the hero is a bouncy gel, this is cushioned with apricot-kernel esters, soybean sterols and tocopheryl acetate, so it reads richer and more nourishing, better for normal-to-dry skin than for oily complexions that want a weightless layer. There is no Vitamin B5, no peptide and no plum fruit extract, so it is not trying to be the same product, just the same job done with more HA and a Vitamin C bonus. At roughly $16.77 an ounce it undercuts the hero by more than half while arguably giving you a more serious hydration engine; the trade is a heavier finish that can feel tacky in humidity until you seal it with moisturizer.