A very low absorption beamsampler for diffracting a very small fraction of a laser beam while specularly reflecting substantially all of the main beam with minimal absorption. The beamsampler comprises a plane mirror surface coated with a high-reflectivity multilayer dielectric coating, the topmost dielectric of which is grooved into a grating and coated with a transparent dielectric having a refractive index very similar, but not the same, as the grooved layer to form a weak phase grating for diffracting a weak first order sampling beam.