3 Best Clean Beauty Apps
One topic I LOVE is clean beauty! I get such a thrill out of using and trying new makeup and skincare products that have healthy, safe, high-quality, and high-performing ingredients. Now it’s even easier to find these products! Clean beauty apps let you find non-toxic products, analyze the ingredients, and recommend products on the go. I will highlight the best apps I found that make it less overwhelming to find non-toxic personal care products.
What is Clean Beauty?
Before we dive in to the apps, let’s talk about clean beauty. According to the Good Face Project, clean beauty products must meet the following criteria:
“1. Clean ingredients: At its core, clean beauty means that you can use a product without risking your own health. The ingredients list must contain only safe, clean ingredients.
2. Transparent labels: When a beauty brand makes an effort to list all of its ingredients and label accordingly, it is on the right path to clean beauty.
Switching to clean beauty products focuses on eliminating as many toxins as possible from our daily products.”
Clean Beauty Apps
Think Dirty
One of the most popular apps is Think Dirty. I have an iPhone so I can give you some user stats. The app currently has 33K reviews with 4.8 Star Rating.
Think Dirty app makes it really easy to find out if a product has toxic ingredients, and makes it even easier to make a purchasing decision. They currently have a database of 1.9M products.
Here is what I loved about the app:
- Helps With the Buying Decision:
- Reviews: There were so many product reviews and this was my favorite feature because it made it easier to know if the product is high-performing and high-quality. So many clean beauty products are only available online. This means you really need to do your research to ensure you will like the product, so having reviews in app made it easy to know if it’s worth buying.
- Love Feature: You can love a product and the app displays the total amount of love a product gets so it’s another easy way to find out if people like the product.
- Purchase: If you are interested in purchasing you can either add it to your list, or the app will send you to another site to make a purchase.
- Simple Ingredient Checker
- Super easy to scan a barcode and see if the product has any toxic ingredients
- Search:
- These is a database of over 1.9M products
- Inclusive
- Features lgbtqia brands, and black-owned businesses
Here is what I didn’t like about the app:
- Many categories I was interested in browsing products were locked, so I would need to sign-up for a monthly or yearly plan and pay to browse categories like sunscreen, hair care, skincare.
- Cluttered design with the product page and the Our Pick section was unclear to me. The picks didn’t seem relevant to my search and the product page I was on
- Sends to only one site to purchase, i like looking at many options so I can see if there are any sales and choose the lowest price point
Good Face
The Good Face app currently has 775 reviews with 4.8 Star Rating. The app is about discovering clean beauty products, and getting personalized non-toxic recommendations for your skincare and personal care products.
Here is what I loved about the app:
- Personalized recommendations: You start off by taking a quiz so the system can create your perfect skincare routine. The app will tell you if a product is a good match for you as you browse products.
- Purchase: I like that it gave various places to buy so you can check the price point. Sends you to the website upon click.
- Clean swap option: If you search for a product and find out it has toxic ingredients, you can just click on clean swap and get product recommendations.
Here is what I didn’t like about the app:
- Ratings were an aggregate from sites that sell, and you couldn’t read the comments. I want to hear what people have to say to find out if it’ll be a right fit for me so having just a number didn’t help me decide if I should purchase or not.
- Does not allow option for scanning a barcode, would need to search for product instead
- Community Feature – wasn’t sure what this was for. Was it to let people share their favorite products? Can anyone post? Would want to be able to search for keywords in the post to find out if someone reviewed the product and recommended it.
EWG Healthy Living App
The EWG Healthy Living app makes it easy to search for a product or scan the barcode and instantly see if it has any concerning ingredients. They use a ranking scale from low hazard to high hazard. This has been my go-to app for years. The Environmental Working Group is a source I trust and I use their app beyond finding personal care products. The app currently has a database of 130K products.
Interestingly they did not show the total amount of reviews for the app and the average rating, you can still read through the reviews though. This app seems to get the most buzz on different media outlets, they highlight being featured on Times, Goop, Glamour, Kardashians, Buzzfeed, MindBodyGreen and the list goes on.
Here is what I loved about the app:
- EWG verified products: The EWG puts the verified stamp on products that are “free from EWG’s chemicals of concern and meet our highest standards for health and transparency.” I tend to focus on purchasing the EWG verified products since I hold high value with a company being transparent.
- Simple Ingredient Checker
- Super easy to scan a barcode and see what the ingredients are like
- Use the search bar
- Create lists: After researching products and finding one you want to try, it’s nice to be able to save it to a list. You can also share the list with others, think birthday and Christmas gift ideas!
- Browse: If you want to go beyond personal care products you can browse other categories like food, sunscreens, and household cleaners.
Here is what I didn’t like about the app:
- I wish they would include product reviews. Once I find a product then I need to go to separate sites like makeupalley or amazon to see what people think of the product. It would make things even more convenient by being able to read reviews within the app.
Final Thoughts:
I explored many non-toxic clean beauty apps and Think Dirty, The Good Face, and EWG Healthy Living App were the best options for making it easy to find safe, and healthy personal care products. I would use these apps for different situations. In my opinion there still isn’t an app that does it all.
- Think Dirty App: I would use this app if I wanted to look up my current product, and then find a less toxic option since it has a “swap” feature. To support lgbtqia brands, and black-owned businesses I would use this app because they create collections of products to browse.
- Good Face App: If I wanted personalized skincare product recommendations I would use this app.
- EWG Healthy Living App: If I wanted to focus on purchasing from transparent companies then I would use this app for the EWG verified stamp of approval. If I wanted to go beyond finding personal care products then I would use this app. If I wanted to browse categories by hazard score I would use this app since you don’t have to pay extra to do so.
