About this publication
Last updated
This site analyses skincare products at the level of the ingredient list.
Not whether a cream felt nice for a fortnight. What is in it, in what order, at what concentration where that is published, and what the evidence says about those ingredients at those amounts.
Why this exists
Skincare is unusual among consumer categories in that the full composition is printed on the box by law, and almost nobody reads it. The INCI list is the most honest thing on the packaging and the least used.
Most product coverage substitutes texture impressions and before-and-after photographs for that list. Both are interesting. Neither tells you whether a formula can do what the front of the bottle claims.
What an analysis contains
Every product analysis on this site includes the complete ingredient list transcribed from the manufacturer’s own page, with the date it was checked; the function of each ingredient; the published concentration where a brand states one and an explicit “not published” where it does not; an assessment of the specific marketing claims made for the product; and a section stating what the analysis could not establish.
That last section is not a disclaimer. It is the part that tells you how far to trust the rest.
What this site does not do
It does not rank products against each other in a league table. It does not run clinical trials. It does not take payment, product or advertising from the brands it writes about — see funding and independence for the full position.
It also does not give medical advice. Formulation analysis tells you what is in a product. It cannot tell you what your skin will do with it.
Corrections
Ingredient lists change without notice, and analyses go out of date. Every page carries the date its ingredients were last verified. Where something here is wrong, it gets fixed and logged publicly on the corrections page.