Ingredient Checker
Are you sure your skincare products aren’t causing breakouts?
Why "non-comedogenic" doesn't always mean what you think
The FDA doesn’t regulate the phrase “non-comedogenic.” Manufacturers can print it on the front of a bottle even when the ingredient list tells a different story. If your skin is acne-prone, oily, or simply reactive, the wrong ingredient can clog a pore and trigger a breakout that takes weeks to settle.
“Comedogenic” just means pore-clogging. Some of the usual suspects are easy to spot — heavy oils like coconut oil, certain fatty alcohols, isopropyl myristate. Others hide behind chemistry names you’d need a degree to parse. The good news: there’s a known list. It’s not actually that long.
This tool compares any product’s ingredient list against that list and flags what’s worth knowing about.
How to read your ingredient list
Pull the full ingredient list from the manufacturer’s website — not the back of the box, which can be incomplete or hard to read. Paste or type each ingredient into the field above, in any order. The checker scans for known pore-cloggers and tells you what’s flagged.
A flagged ingredient doesn’t automatically mean a product is wrong for you. Skin is individual, and some ingredients only cause issues in certain concentrations or formulations. But you’ll have something concrete to weigh — instead of trusting “non-comedogenic” on faith.
Questions about a specific result? Bring it to your next skincare consultation. Always complimentary.
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Our expert curated list of products — from Sephora, Ulta, and more — that contain zero known pore-clogging ingredients. Updated regularly.
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