Authenticate a designer handbag in two passes. First, a physical check you do yourself: stitching, hardware, heat stamps, lining, and the date code, serial or microchip for the house in question - this screens out the obvious fakes and costs nothing. Second, for anything you will sell or take on consignment, a paid opinion from an independent service: Real Authentication charges $30 per item for a 24-hour photo-based determination, LegitGrails from $15 (12 hours) for most luxury brands and $25 for Chanel or Hermès, and Entrupy sells AI-microscopy subscriptions from $139 a month. No brand will authenticate a bag for you. Whatever you use, save the result against the item, because the certificate is the document that settles the dispute six months later.

The services compared

Prices as of August 2026, from each vendor's own pricing page.

Service Method Price Turnaround Output Best for
Entrupy Handheld microscope camera plus app; AI compares against its database Subscription: Petit $139/mo (25 tokens), Moyen $599/mo (125), Grand $1,049/mo (250), 10% off annually. A bag costs 2 to 20 tokens by tier, so roughly $11 to $112 per bag on Petit "Typically in under 5 minutes"; some items return "unidentified" Certificate; "financial guarantee" if it passes a fake Shops and consignors doing volume, in-store
Real Authentication Human experts review your photos $30 basic (24 hours). Add-ons: $30 for 1-hour, $20 for 12-hour, $10 certificate/written statement, $10 physical authenticity card, $20 fair market valuation, $25 age estimate 24 hours standard; 1 hour 10am to 8pm PST Electronic result; optional COA "sufficient for SNAD claim" Occasional use, any brand, marketplace disputes
LegitGrails Human experts supported by AI, photos Luxury bags $15 (12h), $20 (6h), $25 (2h), $35 (30 min). Chanel or Hermès $25/$35/$45/$75. High-end watches $50 to $105. Credits in USD, up to 32% bonus on top-ups 30 minutes to 12 hours, 24/7 Certificate with verification link; refund guarantee on error Cheapest per item at volume; fast
Bababebi One specialist, photos Not published; quoted by email, paid in US dollars 4 business days or less; same day at double the fee by arrangement PDF certificate of opinion with QR code Hermès only
Zekos Authentication One specialist, photos Certificate shown to us at €69.95, detailed analysis €104.95, B2B pack "50 authentications for $2000" (site displayed euros to a UK visitor) "Within 24 business hours" PDF certificate, "lifetime warranty on authenticity" Chanel only
eBay Authenticity Guarantee eBay's own UK facility inspects the physical bag in transit Free to seller and buyer on eligible brands sold for £200 or more; £20 buyer add-on under £200 since end April 2026 Inspected within two business days of receipt Authenticity Guarantee card travels with the bag Bags you sell on eBay.co.uk; not a stand-alone service
Vinted Item Verification Vinted hub inspects physical item £10, paid by the buyer, optional In transit Verified tag Vinted sales only
Vestiaire Collective In-house authentication of listed items Inside the 12% + 3% seller fees Before dispatch to buyer Vestiaire's own guarantee Vestiaire sales only
The brands themselves - Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermès, Gucci and Dior do not authenticate third-party items - - Not available

Two observations. Entrupy is the only option that examines the bag under magnification in your own hands, in minutes, and the only one that backs the opinion with a guarantee; it is also the only one with a fixed monthly cost. The photo-based services are cheaper and need no hardware but are only as good as your photographs, and their certificates are opinions, explicitly. Bababebi and Zekos are single specialists in a single house and are what the trade uses when an Hermès or Chanel piece is worth more than the fee by a factor of a hundred.

What do you check before you pay anyone?

Counterfeits now replicate every one of the checks below. The point of the physical pass is to reject the bad fakes quickly and to gather the photographs a service will ask for anyway.

Stitching. Even length, even tension, consistent angle. Luxury houses stitch to a count - Chanel quilting and Hermès saddle stitching are the classic examples - and a fake usually gets the count, the thread colour or the angle wrong. Loose threads, glue at the seams and stitching that changes density around a corner are all wrong.

Hardware. Weight, plating, engraving. Zips on most houses are branded (Lampo, Riri, YKK on some Chanel and Gucci, Eclair on vintage Hermès); the engraving on zip pulls, feet, clasps and D-rings should be crisp, correctly spaced and in the house's font. Plated hardware on a fake is often lighter and the engraving is shallow or "painted".

Heat stamps. The maker's mark pressed into leather - "LOUIS VUITTON PARIS made in France", "HERMÈS PARIS MADE IN FRANCE", "CHANEL MADE IN ITALY" and so on. Check letter shapes, spacing and depth against a known-genuine reference of the same era. Foil that flakes, letters that sit on the surface rather than in it, and accents in the wrong place are all common tells.

Materials and construction. Canvas pattern alignment across seams (Louis Vuitton Monogram and Damier, Gucci GG, Dior Oblique are all placed deliberately), leather that smells of leather, edge paint applied evenly, linings in the correct material and colour for the model and year. Glazing on Hermès edges is layered and polished; on a fake it is often a single thick coat.

Codes and chips. This is where house knowledge matters:

  • Louis Vuitton used date codes - typically two letters for the workshop and four digits encoding week or month and year - until early 2021. Bags made since March 2021 carry an NFC microchip instead and have no date code. A date code on a 2024 bag is wrong, and so is a chip on a 2005 bag.
  • Chanel used a serial sticker with a hologram (seven digits in early series, eight later) and a matching authenticity card until 2021; current production has a metal plate with a microchip. The CC turn-lock has the right C overlapping the left at the top and the left over the right at the bottom.
  • Hermès has no serial. It has a blind stamp: a craftsman mark and a year letter, in a circle for 1971 to 1996, in a square for 1997 to 2014 and unframed since 2015, with the sequence no longer strictly alphabetical after 2014. Bags sold with an Hermès "authenticity card" are a red flag - Hermès does not issue one.
  • Gucci uses a leather serial tag inside, with "GUCCI made in italy" on the front and two rows of numbers on the back; newer bags also carry a QR code tag.
  • Dior stamps a date code on an interior leather tab in a two digits, two letters, four digits pattern.
  • Prada uses interior plaques and a white fabric factory tag, plus an authenticity card listing the bag's details.

Photograph all of it - the whole bag from each side, the base, the heat stamp, the code or chip area, every hardware engraving, the zip pull, the interior tag, the stitching at a corner - in daylight, in focus. Every service listed above will ask for roughly this set.

Which authentication service should a UK shop use?

It depends on volume and brand mix.

Under ten bags a month, mixed brands: LegitGrails at $15 to $25 a bag on 12-hour turnaround, or Real Authentication at $30 with the $10 certificate. The difference is speed and documentation; Real Authentication's written statement is designed to be "sufficient for SNAD claim" on marketplaces.

Consignment shop taking bags from the public: Entrupy, because the consignor is standing there. A Petit plan is $139 a month; a Designer-tier bag (5 tokens) costs about $28 of that and a Prestige-tier bag (8 tokens) about $45. The result comes back before the consignment agreement is signed, and the financial guarantee is the only one in the table that pays out rather than refunds. Ultra Prestige bags at 20 tokens (about $112 on Petit) are where a specialist second opinion earns its fee.

Hermès or Chanel above four figures: Bababebi or Zekos respectively, in addition to whatever else you did. Four business days for Bababebi is slow; the certificate is what the buyer's own authenticator will recognise.

Selling on eBay.co.uk: the Authenticity Guarantee is mandatory above £200 and free, so your own authentication is to protect the consignor relationship and your reputation, not the sale.

Why does the record of the authentication matter?

Because the dispute arrives after the bag has gone. A consignor says the bag you returned as "unable to authenticate" was genuine and you damaged their reputation. A buyer says the bag you sold is fake and their own service agrees. A marketplace opens a significantly-not-as-described case. In each of those, what you need is not your memory of having checked - it is the certificate, dated, with the item's photographs, held against that item.

Three things to store against every piece, whether you use a spreadsheet or software:

  1. The result and its reference. Service name, certificate or order number, date, result (Authentic / Counterfeit / Unidentified), and the PDF or link. LegitGrails and Bababebi certificates carry verification links or QR codes; Entrupy issues a certificate per item; Real Authentication's COA is a paid add-on, so buy it.
  2. The photographs you submitted. Services give opinions on what they saw. If the bag comes back from a buyer and the photographs do not match, that is your evidence.
  3. The identifiers. Date code, serial, chip status, blind stamp, hardware engravings, and the consignor's warranty of ownership and authenticity from the consignment agreement.

A second reason is commercial. Entrupy's own pricing page sells "Letters of Evidence" as an enterprise feature because the document is what the next buyer pays for. A bag with a certificate and the matching photographs on file sells faster and argues less.

What we could not verify

  • Bababebi's fees. Deliberately unpublished; "terms and applicable fees" come by email in US dollars.
  • Zekos' GBP or USD prices. The shop displayed euros to us (a Spain storefront); its B2B bundle is quoted in dollars. Check the price in your own region before relying on the figures above.
  • Entrupy's hardware cost and contract length. Not on the pricing page. Assume a device is required and ask.
  • Per-brand token tiers at Entrupy. The page gives tiers (Ultra Prestige to Contemporary) and tokens per tier, not which brands sit in which tier.
  • Brand code formats in detail. The code and chip descriptions above are what the trade uses as of 2026; houses change them without notice. Treat them as a checklist, not a rule.

Sources

This is general information, not legal advice, and no part of it is an authentication. Every service above issues an opinion, and the brand-specific checks change as the houses change their production. If a bag's value justifies it, use two independent services and keep both results. Liability for selling a counterfeit sits with the seller.

Milleso holds the authentication record against the serialised item, alongside the consignor's details and the VAT treatment decided at intake, so the evidence is attached to the bag rather than filed in an inbox.