How to Compare Skincare Products and Find the Best One

Last Updated on June 16, 2023 by Aysenur Yashar

Imagine you have two sunscreens and you do not how to compare skincare.

And you have a ticket for a family vacation.

And one hour to chose which one to pack with you!

One of the sunscreens is organic and the other one is from the few renowned pharmacy brands. How do you decide which one is a better product?

Most of the time we do not know which product will affect us better without trying, we do not know the results we will get or how our skin will react. We just decide to trust the appearance and the reviews of the product. It does not sound so bad, but it is not so objective, we have to look deeper!  What to do?

You will have to compare the products!

How to Compare Beauty Products?

You can evaluate skin care based on several criteria like ingredients, results, appearance and texture and price, of course. For sure, there could be more, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on these four.

Out of these four – appearance and results can be different from one person to another. Appearance of one product can really appeal to me and be completely horrible to you. About the results, well, it is very complicated, we all have different skin types and skin conditions.

You can also read skincare ingredient comparison here in this very blog! If you are as interested in natural skincare as me – I bet you would try to find the best face oil for yourself – read the fierce comparison of the different rosehip oils here – Rosa Rubiginosa vs Rosa Canina or why don’t you find out which rose flower oil is the best here – Rose Oil vs Rosehip Oil ?

According to Which Criteria Should You Compare Skincare Products?

So out of these four ways to evaluate your beauty products – the ingredient list is the most objective comparison point.

Oh but knowing all those complicated ingredient names, understanding what they do, looking into the science behind it. That seems like an endless pit!

But maybe it is not as complicated as it seams! There are already product ingredient checkers which are designed to check your product’s components but some of them also have the feature of comparing beauty products and their ingredient lists!

Compare Skincare Ingredients – Why is it important?

Ingredient lists are complicated.

Way too complicated, unless you are a chemist. But I am a medical student and still too complicated.

I should know about the nasty components in cosmetics, that anybody can buy so easily. But well, they do not teach you that in medical school. So educating ourselves is in our hands!

Last week’s blog was about skincare ingredient checkers and the takeaway from that blog is this fantastic quote by Dr. Sara:

“The average woman puts on 50 different synthetic chemicals that disrupt her hormones on her skin every day”

Dr. Sara Gottfried from Behind HER EMPIRE

I have always been skeptic about cosmetics and makeup but hearing how serious the situation is from a doctor makes me even more skeptic. This also makes comparing skincare products and brands even more important!

Let’s dive into the comparing part straight away!

How to compare skincare – the one easy way!

Short and Sweet Answer!

One easy way of comparing skincare products is based on their ingredient list and what do each ingredient do. This helps you understand the overall result and function of your product. You can use this website – Cosmily and find the two skincare products and click on compare.

The websites allows you to see the full ingredient lists of your products, the potential benefit and the potential hazards of the products. You can discover which ingredients are of synthetic and organic nature.

Here is an example of the comparison between my two sunscreens – Organic one from Alteya Organics and Pharmacy bought Bioderma Photoderm Max Aquafluide.

How to compare skincare products – the long and detailed answer!

Let’s dive into the details of the two products.

My first sunscreen was honestly bought due to its’ pink colour, I cannot lie. It is rose organic sunscreen by Alteya Organics. Alteya Organics is a Bulgarian organic cosmetics brand and it ticks the list for me – organic ingredients with certificates and a local brand (for me, ahah)!

I have always been a fan and an avid believer that what comes from the nature and is organic will be good for our health. So you can guess I was naturally drawn into this organic and clean sunscreen. But after my friend recommended that I buy pharmacy sunscreens, I followed the advice like a good friend would do.

The next day I had two sunscreens – one from Alteya and one from Bioderma.

It was only until the time to go for a vacation and pack for university that I wanted to settle down on one of them.

I wanted a quick, efficient and a reliable way of comparing the actual components in them. Sunscreen ingredients still are hazy for me and I would not be wrong with saying I don’t understand them yet.

I decided to use my knowledge from my previous blog I have written and use Cosmily to finally make the decision.

Use Cosmily to evaluate your cosmetic products like a pro in an instance!

Cosmily is free website to check the components in beauty products. They have a database of thousands of products and brands, so finding and comparing products is actually very easy and straightforward and it is free!

Another great advantage of Cosmily is the minimalist and small icons that are used to show you the benefits and hazards of products and ingredients. This visualisations makes it easy to skim through the product and have a general overview, very fast!

Comparing the products is very easy and straightforward.

• Find the first product from the finder-> product section
• Then click on the two arrows. It will lead you to a website where you will see the first box being filled with the product you just searched and another box being empty.
• Select the empty box and find your second product.

Cosmily is actually very easy to use and helps you make a decision faster. I have tried other websites but some are so complicated that I could not even find the compare button. So for now, Cosmily seems like a place that can give a quick result!

Decision Making Time

After following the steps above, I was in the page where the two sunscreens are compared side by side. I have written a small summary of the comparison below as a reference.

When I was making my decision there were two things I was paying attention to – how synthetic the ingredients were and could I get any benefits outside of sun protection from this product

Synthetic Ingredients

We can clearly see that Alteya Oragnics has more organic components which is not shocking having in mind that it is an organic brand. Some of the ingredients in the product were:

• Coconut Oil
• Jojoba Oil
• Avocado Oil
• Shea butter
• Rosa Damascena Flower Extract

The active sun protecting ingredient was Zinc Oxide. The main active sun protection ingredients in Bioderma are Octocrylene.

I do not mean to go into details which product is better in terms of sun protection, but that definitely should be a consideration point for future purchases!

So far the organic ingredient profile of Alteya Organics appeals more to me.

Potential Benefits alongside the Sun Protection

Bioderma has 21 potential benefits Alteya Organics has 65. There is a significant difference in the potential goodies, but let’s look a little closer into them. Here is a screenshot of the comparison section of the two products.

If you click on the category like softening, a falling menu will show which ingredients in particular are responsible for this function. This makes following so much easier.

After looking into the benefits, it is important to now think about your own skin. Ask yourself – is my skin oily, dry, sensitive, reactive.

According to your answer you can easily decide.

My skin is very dry and sensitive. So I would need any kind of extra moisture and extra brightening outside my regular moisturiser. This leads me to think Alteya is a better choice because there are 11 moisturising ingredients as opposed to only 5 in Bioderma.

Before deciding, always look at the Hazard picture.

Hazards of both products

Here we can see that Alteya has 14 and Bioderma has only 3 potential hazards. Make sure to click on rach category and see which ingredients do that.

After that you can do a quick research about them on google or any scientific paper.

How to evaluate the hazard profile of your product?

First of all, you have to be realistic.

It is important to note that a hazard potential does not mean that your skin will react in that way. This product just increases the risk. It is also vital to know your skin and to judge the risk accordingly

Let’e evaluate Alteya Organics together based on my skin type. I have a dehydrated and sensitised skin. Acording to this skin profile, it makes sense for me to avoid dehydrating ingredients like alcohol.

The hazard profile of Alteya Organics ranks higher in comodogens and malassezia feeding. These are concerns that I would take really seriously if I had oily and acne prone skin.

Product Price

Price is a very important factor as well. Most of the time even if we are between two products we would just get one of them.

However, this makes product comparison even more important. If you are between two different products or do not which skincare you need, using a free website with such an extensie database like Cosmily can be really helpful.

You can find the exact product you need and pay just for that one. This way you save up money and see an actual result with your skincare!

Easy way to choose to save up on money!

Last Words and which Product was better.

My blog’s always seem to be very long ahah I just love sharing! If you have been reading so far, you can already guess which product I chose.

ALTEYA ORGANICS ROSE SUNSCREEN

Yay!

I think my clean skincare passion made it very clear! I have added some pictures of the sunscreen and let me know if you would like a review on the product. And yes, the colour is really pink ahah!

Thank you for reading this blog, I hope it was helpful and can give you a perspective on how to compare skincare products. Let me know if you have any suggestions, comments or if you just want to chat a little bit!

If you got hooked up on clean skincare, here you can read about 5 clean skincare brands that actually work or you can read about another skincare hero – probiotics here!

Thank you and have a great day!