Absolutism about mass within Newtonian gravity claims that mass ratios obtain in virtue of absolute masses. Comparativism denies this. Defenders of comparativism promise to recover all the empirical and theoretical virtues of absolutism, but at a lower ‘metaphysical cost’. This article develops a Machian form of comparativism about mass in Newtonian gravity, obtained by replacing Newton’s constant in the law of universal gravitation by another constant divided by the sum over all masses. Although this form of comparativism is indeed empirically equivalent to the absolutist version of Newtonian gravity—thereby meeting the challenge posed by the comparativist’s bucket argument—it is argued that the explanatory power and metaphysical parsimony of comparativism (and especially its Machian form) are highly questionable.

1.  Absolutism versus Comparativism

2.  Absolute Masses and Mass Ratios

3.  The Argument for Comparativism

4.  Empirical Equivalency via Possibility Checking

5.  A Challenge for Comparativism: The Comparativist’s Bucket

6.  Novel Comparativist Laws

6.1.  Varying Newton’s constant

6.3.  Summing over all the masses: Machian comparativism

7.  Metaphysical Parsimony and Explanatory Power

7.1.  Quantitative and qualitative metaphysical parsimony

7.2.  The conspiracy of mass relations

7.3.  Chain comparativism

7.4.  Metaphysical parsimony at the level of worlds