Abstract: Raman spectroscopy, laser conoscopy and photoinduced light scattering methods have been applied to comparatively study composition uniformity of strongly doped LiNbO3 crystals with a magnesium concentration close to a threshold value ≈5 mol % MgO, grown from a charge synthesized using precursor Nb2O5:Mg (homogeneous doping method) and at direct addition of magnesium to the melt (direct doping method). It has been shown that application of homogeneous doping method allows one to obtain compositionally more homogeneous heavily doped LiNbO3:Mg crystal than direct melt doping method. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd. 2023. ISSN 0030-400X, Optics and Spectroscopy, 2023, Vol. 131, No. 7, pp. 599–606. Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2023. Russian Text The Author(s), 2022, published in Optika i Spektroskopiya, 2022, Vol. 130, No. 1, pp. 184–191. English Text Ioffe Institute, 2023.