A free INCI decoder and cosmetic ingredient checker. Paste an ingredients list or snap a photo of the back of the bottle and we'll explain every ingredient — what it does, in plain language, no sales pitch.
We don't store your input.
Every cosmetic sold in the UK and EU carries an ingredients list written in INCI — the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. It is a single naming standard, which is why a bottle of shampoo in Manchester and a foundation in Milan both say Aqua, Sodium Laureth Sulfate or Butyrospermum Parkii Butter rather than water, a detergent and shea butter. Consistency is good for regulators and useless for shoppers: the label is accurate, standardised and almost entirely unreadable. This free ingredient checker closes that gap. Paste the list, upload a photo, or snap the back of the bottle with your phone or webcam, and our AI reads the label, matches each INCI name to its common name, and explains what the ingredient is doing in the formula.
Order matters more than most people realise. Ingredients appear in descending order of concentration down to 1%; below that threshold they can be listed in any sequence, which is why a "star" botanical often sits between the preservative and the fragrance. Our cosmetic ingredient checker groups everything it finds into plain functional families — cleansers and surfactants, conditioning agents and cationics, humectants, emollients and oils, proteins and bond-builders, thickeners and polymers, silicones, preservatives, pH adjusters, fragrance and colourants — so you can see the shape of a formula at a glance. Tap any category with the AI filter to isolate it: every surfactant in a clarifying shampoo, every silicone in a smoothing serum, every humectant in a leave-in.
Anything associated with irritation or contact allergy — the 26 declarable fragrance allergens such as limonene, linalool and citronellol, methylisothiazolinone, strong anionic surfactants, high-percentage denatured alcohol — is flagged with a red marker and a short note. A flag is context, not a verdict: concentration, leave-on versus rinse-off, and your own scalp decide whether it matters. We do not run a hazard score, a "clean beauty" rating or a comedogenic index, because those systems compress complicated dose-dependent science into a single number and mostly mislead.
Because INCI is shared across the whole category, the decoder is not limited to haircare. It reads shampoo, conditioner, hair mask, styling and scalp treatment labels, and it works just as well as a makeup ingredients checker or skincare label reader — foundation, moisturiser, sunscreen, cleanser and body care all use the same nomenclature. Where an ingredient already has an entry in the encyclopedia, the result links straight through to a full write-up: origin, evidence, typical use levels and how it behaves on different hair types and porosities.
Common questions we built this to answer: is this shampoo sulfate free? What is the difference between sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate? Is dimethicone bad for hair? Which of these ingredients is the actual conditioning agent? Is there protein in this mask, and is it a hydrolysed protein small enough to penetrate? Is this product curly-girl friendly? What preservative system is in here? Which fragrance allergens do I need to avoid? You get a factual answer, sourced from the same reference material as the rest of this encyclopedia, with no product being sold to you at the end of it.
Want the background rather than the breakdown? Browse the ingredient encyclopedia.