SkinSAFE Reviews

This used to be free and it would tell you why something wasn’t safe for you for free, you could search or request to add as many products as you needed to search in a month for free (and they’d get back to you within 2-3 days). It was the BEST app for checking things against my allergies. Now, like everything, they want you to subscribe. There’s no option for a lifetime plan, just stupid subscription services in order to see which ingredients are unsafe for you in a product (helpful since some ingredients can go by dozens of different names), and to check more than 3 items they don’t have listed per month. I am SOOOO sick of subscription culture and people trying to monetize things on a monthly basis, but when it’s healthcare-related, it’s especially disgusting/despicable.

When my patch test finally revealed what’s been irritating me, I was so relieved. And they said there is an app I can use since some of the things are mixtures and are also long, hard-to-remember chemical names. But SkinSAFE is designed absolutely terribly. It is so disappointing and frustrating because it really is critical for me and I don’t know of any other tool. That data itself is decent and rather extensive but the interface is horrible. It is over-complicated, cannot navigate in an intuitive manner, have to basically hack your way into getting it to work as i need it to. I don’t know who they geared this to when they designed it (patients or practitioners), but SkinSAFE is not user-friendly for either. The website isn’t much better, sadly. And even if it were, the use case for this tool should primarily be mobile (you check items as you are shopping, etc). Extremely disappointed.

Was recommended SkinSAFE after my allergy test results came back positive for a few things. Super disappointed to find SkinSAFE is extremely inaccurate! It filtered out so many things from a brand that I liked so I turned my filter off to find out why. It added ingredients saying “not safe for me” which are not on my allergen list or even related to any of my allergens. Their product inventory list is also severely lacking as they only have 16 total Derma-e brand products. I also searched for foundation (I have an allergy to titanium dioxide which is in most foundations) it said that a MAC foundation is safe for me. I checked the ingredients and one of the first ingredients listed was titanium dioxide 1%. SkinSAFE is just a huge disappointment :(

I used to love SkinSAFE and I would recommend it to everyone! I even got my dermatologist to recommend it to other patients. But now it’s pretty terrible. Features that used to be free are now behind a subscription paywall. I understand that SkinSAFE needs to make money, but you should add new features instead of screwing over loyal users. Additionally, it is now IMPOSSIBLE to search for products. I tried to search for my shampoo, Biolage Ultra Hydrosource, a well known and popular brand, and SkinSAFE found zero results in the search. I know for a fact that this product is in the this app database because I have looked up its ingredients on SkinSAFE before. Unfortunately, given the many negative changes to SkinSAFE, I will probably stop using it and stop recommending it to other people.

I have relied on SkinSAFE to navigate my multiple allergies and it was great! Suddenly a “premium” option became available that now locks the scan featured to a limited amount and won’t show you the specific ingredients that were flagged as bad for you within a product.

The loss of the ingredient flagging specifically is a huge blow. I no longer will be able to easily tell what ingredient is flagged so I can look out for it in other products. Shame on you for locking vital features that were previously free for such a high fee! $60 a year is crazy basically just unlocking things that were previously accessible with no cost! There is no new updates other than cosmetic changes to justify the increase.

I am contacting my dermatologist and allergist for a new referral to another service and alerting them to this new cost addition so they can better advise their clients.

Like many others, I have used this service due to having allergies and sesnsitive skin. While SkinSAFE can be buggy, it was still incredibly helpful. They have decided to start charging a subscription fee to use previously free features like Clear Ingredient Insights, Product History, Product Scanning, and the Ingredient Is Not features. I find this incredibly disappointing given that anyone who needs SkinSAFE is most likely already spending more on medical services and safe products. I would be happy to support SkinSAFE with a one time purchase fee, but $60 a year is insane. I expected better from Mayo Clinic.

The extent of filtering for products is shown in one of the screenshots, and can be seen on the this app website. They are broad swaths of general categories. My patch testing from years ago indicated allergies to specific chemicals that can be used for multiple purposes in a wide variety of products. Which of the “common allergens” do carba mix components (rubber accelerator chemicals frequently found in personal care products, with various names like Iodopropynyl butylcarbamate) fall under? You can’t filter for specific ingredients and their aliases or related chemicals, so SkinSAFE over simplifie, resulting in either limiting your products too much, or completely missing allergens, or risking missed allergens because we can’t tell what is actually included.

Update: I agree with all the newer reviews. The premium fee is ridiculous especially for an app that is unreliable and buggy. There are several products that have old formulas, not updated regularly, lots of products that haven’t been available for years. It could be so much better but it is most definitely not worth the price.

There are definitely issues with SkinSAFE refreshing every time you click on something. I’d like to pick more than one brand at a time or even create my own filter for brands I have access too. Otherwise, when it works, the information has been incredibly helpful.

SkinSAFE has the potential to be very helpful to someone with a list of allergies or very serious allergies. Unfortunately, they are not tapping in to what they could be. When it tells me that somethings not safe for me, I can’t figure out why. If my allergy is not in the list of ingredients it doesn’t tell me why it’s not safe for me. There are too many products that I scan that have not been submitted for review. If SkinSAFE is supposed to save me time, it’s not working. The amount of time I use to scan some thing, Check it, take a photo of it, and then submit it, over and over again, I could’ve easily looked up the ingredients on Google myself. Extremely disappointed in the untapped potential of SkinSAFE!

Every time SkinSAFE updates a different feature is locked for premium users only. Stuff that was free when I first downloaded SkinSAFE at my dermatologist’s suggestion is now locked and I must pay a premium fee to access it. It’s annoying enough that I’m considering uninstalling and just using the paper list of safe products that my doctor gave me. I used SkinSAFE due to the extensive contact allergens I’m allergic to but I’m not going to pay to use features that were once free. It’s kind of a bummer considering this was meant to help identify safe products but pretty soon you’ll have to pay to even do that.

I have relied on SkinSAFE for years after skin patch testing revealed severe allergies. The latest update seems to have broken some things. Items that used to show as not safe now show safe for me. Searches often give no results even though the items are in the database. Example I search for metronidazole and get no products but there are multiple products that should show up. Selecting categories of items often take you to the wrong place. Noted that I reacted to a product and it doesn’t show up in my reaction list.

It’s nice I can more clearly see my allergy list. However, it appears there were changes in what the categories include. For example balsam of peru used to block benzyl alcohol for me but now it doesn’t. I definitely react to products with benzyl alcohol.

This is a critical app for many people and should work better even if you have to charge something to afford to make it work more effectively.

My dermatologist gave me the allergen codes to have them input into my profile which is a great feature. The only issue is products I know I’m not allergic to and don’t contain ingredients I’m allergic to do not show the “safe for me” symbol on the product page. If I look up a specific product, there’s no way to know if it’s potentially safe for me except to still read the ingredients list. That isn’t very helpful when some chemicals go by several names. The only way to find “safe for me” items is by doing a general category search that gives several products to chose from and to purchase. SkinSAFE is only partially helpful if you don’t know exactly what you want to buy, otherwise it’s still a roll of the dice on if you’ll have a reaction to something.

As of this review, app hasn’t been updated in 5 years, so it seems it likely won’t be updated soon which is disappointing since it’s otherwise a decent functioning app.

I was suggested to use this by my dermatologist after doing patch testing that tested for my skin allergies. They helped me upload all results to my account. I noticed that SkinSAFE hasn’t been updated in 4 years. It’s screen ratio isn’t even set up for recent iPhones as it doesn’t take up the whole screen. I’ve been on the actual website and it looks great there, but you can’t scan barcodes from there. I am really looking forward to an update for SkinSAFE before it goes out of compatibility for a new iOS. It would also be nice to see on SkinSAFE itself if a product is actually safe for me or not like it shows on the website. Currently, it shows the ingredients and other safety factors but does not show the icon that specifically says safe or not safe for me. I told my dermatologist that SkinSAFE has not been updated in 4 years and there’s a chance it will stop being compatible with new phones on a new iOS. I hope that there’s an update before that.

I’ve been using their website for a long time. I have many sensitivities. I decided to try SkinSAFE . It’s a little frustrating to use the search feature. It often looses your search results when you go to a product and then back to your search results. Often when doing a search it defaults to saved products search. Annoying, my saved products I already know about. So it’s an added step to search skin safe products versus my activity. If I sort results it will go back to unsorted after looking at a product. All this is just a little annoying but I find the website and SkinSAFE useful and VERY valuable. However I think $9/month or $60 a year is too much for features that used to be free. I will still keep SkinSAFE and use it but for these reasons I don’t think it deserves 5 stars. I would only consider a one time price for SkinSAFE. And not over $15. If glitches were fixed and price lowered it would deserve a 5. Again very valuable information.

I appreciate that SkinSAFE now tells you which ingredients in a product are unsafe for you instead of just telling you the product is unsafe.

I do wish they would do a better job of auditing / combining submissions. I search for facial cleaners for example and it looks like there are 150 results that are safe for me when in reality there may be a third of that. The same products are listed over and over again, some because one is the 3 oz versus the 8 oz and some because an extra word was added in a submission (I.e. hydrating facial cleanser versus facial cleanser) even though it is the same product. Very frustrating to scroll through all the duplicates.

Ideally they would allow for custom lists as well. After scrolling through all those duplicates, if I find a product I want to try I would like to add it to a list so I don’t have to search for it again. The only two options currently are use daily or got a reaction. I use favorites for something I’ve used and like whether I am currently using or not.

As a newer eczema sufferer SkinSAFE is helpful but there are a few features I wish it had. I’m a UX designer for reference so these aren’t just from a user perspective.
- Ability to add a product without scanning: this would be with a credible link, photo, and the ingredient list. I think this would increase the availability for people to add products and be more helpful in the long run.
- The date the product was added: ingredients change in products all the time, and it would be helpful to know when a product was updated or validated, or both, so we can see how accurate the ingredients are today. If the product is added later with a different list, the product could just update accordingly.
- On the note of ingredient lists, I wish it would keep the list as a normal list, and in order that they’re listed on the product.
- In terms of the tags/call outs: if it says it’s not safe for eyelids let’s say, it would be helpful for SkinSAFE to identify which ingredient(s) are getting flagged. This is helpful so we don’t have to click on each individual ingredient.

I really like SkinSAFE but tweaks need to be considered. I think I read there’s an update coming? I’m hoping you add/ed the feature you can use on the desktop version which is filtering results by brand. Filtering saves a great deal of time. I also noticed you’re unable to see the specific ingredients you find unsafe on SkinSAFE which again, is displayed on the desktop. It’s helpful to have this handy on an app too. Overall, SkinSAFE is super helpful to us who have/want to be extra careful with our skin and I’m glad it exists!

Recently left a review with concern over the refine & sort by feature not working correctly on my phone. The next update included a correction for this. I have never had a company actually pay attention to a complaint like that and correct it. They corrected it faster than I could even respond to their inquiry about my issue. I was not expecting someone to reach out about it, so I was not actively looking in my messages. Anyways, the point
is I can now use SkinSAFE on the go and the refining feature works flawlessly! Thanks! I really depend on SkinSAFE for a quick reference. Now that I can use SkinSAFE fully it is worth every penny!
I have changed almost all products I was previously using, this app really made that transition possible. Having a list of 100 ingredients you are allergic to, each with 100 different names, makes it difficult to constantly cross check everything, but this app does that for you, and that’s invaluable. It has saved me so much time.

I haven’t had any issues with the accuracy of ingredients, they seem to update those as well, quite frequently.
All the irritation and breakouts I was experiencing before are now completed cleared. Now I use SkinSAFE mostly for maintenance for when my products are out of stock, it helps find an alternative. If I scan an item that ends up not being safe for me, this app shows you similar products that are safe, which is great! Anyway thanks again for the update!

For much of my life, I’ve struggled with sensitive and easily irritated skin. No more!
I started off using this app’s filters… I didn’t want to give up fragrances, but I’d heard that products that say “fragrance free” or “unscented” really aren’t. According to this app, a ton of products are sooo not fragrance free. The Fragrance Free filter helped my skin a lot, but once I add the common preservative free filter, I got even better!
I still have occasionally flares (probably stress!), but SkinSAFE has really changed my skin for the better. Thanks this app for bring Mayo Clinic skin allergy research to we eczema sufferers!

I just finished my patch test this week, and my dermatologist added my results into the database. She told me to download SkinSAFE which would then allow me to scan product- barcodes and find what products aren’t safe for me and safe alternatives. SkinSAFE works extremely well and is an easy to use format! (I have an iPhone SE) It looks like there was an update two days ago (March 2, 2023) that has addressed many previous reviewer’s issues and desires :-)

A couple of shampoo and soap bars I scanned at Whole Foods were not in the database; SkinSAFE allowed me to easily take photos of the product and add them for review. I, like many others I’m allergic to propylene glycol, which is in so many products! SkinSAFE has already made my life easier as I navigate the beauty world for safe-for-me products! ❤️😀 Thank you!