Launched in France in 2017, the Yuka app started as a tool for French shoppers to better understand the health impact of packaged food products while browsing the aisles of a grocery store.
“Ingredient lists are very complex, and it was very challenging to decipher good [nutritional] labels [in 2017],” Yuka co-founder Julie Chapon told Glossy. “[We thought] that it would be very useful to have a tool that could quickly and simply tell [us] if a product is good or bad.”
Developed with two additional co-founders, brothers Benoît and François Martin, the app was very simple: Scan a product’s barcode and wait for a score out of 100, which is determined based on a proprietary algorithm that weighs medical studies and other sources the team finds trustworthy. A score of 75 or higher is deemed excellent, more than 50 is good, mediocre is above 25, while below 25 is judged as bad.
The app is initially free, but advanced functions — like offline mode and the ability to look up products without a barcode — prompts users to pick a yearly, auto-renewed rate they can afford, from $10 to $20. Yuka is 100% financed by these user fees. Brands cannot sponsor the site or pay for a score to be changed. Yuka does not accept affiliate revenue or participate in similar programs, nor does it accept money from brands for any reason, Chapon told Glossy.
The app became an instant success and French users began asking for cosmetic product ratings, as well. “We didn’t think about launching cosmetics when we launched the app, it was all driven by demand,” Chapon said. In 2018, Yuka added cosmetics to its offering, and, today, one in three French citizens uses the app.
Driven only by word-of-mouth — Chapon told Glossy the app hasn’t invested in paid marketing or advertising — the app’s watershed moment happened in 2022 thanks to a viral TikTok video. Since deleted, the video was shared by Yuka with Glossy and shows a shopper simply browsing hair products from Shea Moisture, Cantu and Dove, each with a vastly different score. “[Our global expansion all] started with that video,” Chapon said.
Today the Yuka app has more than 56 million users across 12 countries, including 21 million in France, 14 million in the United States and 6 million in Spain. In September of 2023, the three co-founders moved to the U.S. to oversee its fastest-growing marketplace. “We see 20,000 new American users join each day,” Chapon said. “In Europe, we are famous for [being an app for checking] food; but in the U.S., [we’re famous for cosmetics].”
Yuka is currently the No. 1 health and fitness app in the Apple App store. A growing number of Gen-Z and millennial shoppers use the Yuka product scanning app to quickly look up beauty and wellness products’ ingredient safety scores before purchasing. But industry insiders, including product safety advocates and cosmetic chemists, say it’s misleading consumers with biased information or opaque methodologies. Still, brands with favorable scores have found inclusion on the app helps to boost sales and grow brand awareness.
Yuka is just one app among many similar ones that rate products and provide ingredient education. Others include Think Dirty, Clear For Me, INCI Beauty, The Good Face App, CosmEthics and the Environmental Working Group’s Healthy Living app. However, Glossy has noticed a sharp uptick in conversations surrounding Yuka in the past six months within industry circles and among younger Gen-Z users.
According to a report by Mintel market research company, 31% of U.S. beauty and personal care shoppers used third-party websites or apps to verify product safety over a 12-month period ending in 2022, the last year the data was available. What’s more, scanning apps specifically were used by 11% of consumers who research ingredients in products as of 2023, up from 9% in 2022, according to Mintel.
The marketplace seems primed for an easy-to-use app to become the go-to tool for shoppers. To wit: Consumers often cobble together a patchwork of information before making a purchase. According to Mintel, 27% of consumers who research ingredients in products use social media, 31% use online reviews, and 30% use product packaging to gather information about ingredients in beauty and personal care products.
But not everyone in the industry is thrilled about Yuka’s quick rise to the top. Cosmetic chemists, who formulate the products being rated, echoed frustration over the majority of product-scanning apps.
“If we look at the rating system within Yuka as a whole, it makes no sense because it doesn’t take into consideration percentage within a formula,” said Jane Tsui, a cosmetic chemist and creator behind @JaneTheChemist who educates her 200,000-plus social media followers about the ins and outs of product formulation.
Tsui is openly critical of apps like Yuka and EWG’s Healthy Living within her Instagram broadcast channel, recently telling her followers not to download the app because it misleads consumers. “I truly don’t think there are positives to this [product scanning trend],” Tsui told Glossy. “This [Yuka] app capitalizes on fear to help consumers make their decisions. Personally, I would rather promote education than fear, when it comes to decision-making. I would rather a consumer learn about what the ingredient’s purpose is in the formula than write it off because of Yuka. It makes our jobs as chemists harder because we are constantly trying to find an alternative that could have less data to prove the safety of the ingredient.”
For example, when consumers latch onto a problematic ingredient story, they have the power to shift the industry away from the ingredient through public outcry. As a result, chemists are often directed to an alternative ingredient without the scary data attached. The problem? This new ingredient could be better or it could be worse, but until more research is done, the safety is unclear. In short, many chemists believe the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
Ingredient safety advocates, on the other hand, are often openly critical of the product-scanning app trend for a totally different reason: inconsistent or opaque methodologies. “These apps are not all the same,” said Jennifer McPartland, the vp of mission at BeautyCounter with 15 years of experience working in chemical safety-focused non-profits. “While oriented in the same direction, their methods vary. So you can take a product and put it through a handful of the apps and you’ll likely get different results or characterizations [within each app].”
The various scanning apps available today, including Yuka, are powered by algorithms that can be challenging to understand, even for experts. What’s more, science is always evolving and the vast majority of ingredients used in consumer goods have little to no data on their safety, said McPartland. “Assessing chemical safety is a scientific and technical expertise that requires discipline in the methodology,” she said. Ingredient safety is nuanced; not a binary, she told Glossy.
However, the common argument made by chemists — that “the dose makes the poison” — doesn’t sit right with McPartland or Yuka’s Chapon. “This is an oversimplification as to how chemicals interact with biology,” McPartland said. For example, BPA and endocrine disruptors like common sunscreen filters impact the body at very low levels — sometimes even impacting the body more at lower levels.
As a response to these criticisms, Yuka co-founder Chapon told Glossy that the team’s toxicologist, Zoé Kerlo, is constantly updating the algorithm with the latest peer-reviewed studies and science, and ingredients without data do not negatively impact a product’s score. “The scores are always changing [based on new science],” Chapon said.
As of now, brands cannot opt out of being included in Yuka’s database since around 90% of products are input by consumers. For example, when a consumer scans a product not yet in the Yuka library, the user is prompted to photograph and categorize the product so it may be reviewed by Yuka and eventually given a score out of 100.
To prevent a “gotcha” moment for brands, Yuka allows brands to simulate the score of a product in development by entering all ingredients into a mock upload page, which can be done by contacting the Yuka team. “We want to give brands the tools to succeed,” Chapon said. That way, brands can be alerted to ingredients that may anger consumers down the road.
For brands that receive positive scores and effectively disseminate their positive results from the app to their communities, inclusion on the app can be a game-changer. For example, Pendrell skin-care founder Chase Larabee told Glossy that scoring positive scores on Yuka has been one of the biggest revenue drivers for his 6-month-old brand.
“We’re speaking to consumers daily that are looking for [third-party] validation,” said Larabee. Through the brand’s customer service and social media channels, Larabee’s team has learned that the majority of its customers use Yuka, which they mention by name, as their source for all their personal care, food and household shopping. For example, Larabee told Glossy that consumers will ping the brand on social or via the website to ask about an ingredient they learned about on Yuka or to share their praise over a positive score.
Pendrell is a line of hydration-focused skin-care products, most of which retail for under $20. It launched globally in February 2024 DTC and through Amazon.
The only problem? “Yuka isn’t a great discovery platform,” said Larabee. So his team spends time and resources to educate consumers about the platform to lead shoppers to the app. “Customers are scanning barcodes and looking at the ingredients, but they’re not necessarily shopping there, so we’re leading the charge in that regard.”
This includes an entire campaign around Yuka education, which plays out in welcome, pre- and post-purchase emails; social media content; and SMS messaging. “We certainly don’t have to do those things, [but once a customer sees our score on Yuka], transactions happen without any friction,” Larabee said.
Elsewhere throughout the industry, the opinion is cautiously optimistic about the value and reach of apps like Yuka.
“Generally, these [product scanning safety] apps do a good job, but there can be exceptions,” said Amy Batra, the founder of Maskād, a line of skin-care products and tools launched in 2022 by the skin-care and aesthetics company WeThrivv. “Their accuracy and fairness really depend on the app’s methodology and sources. If they’re using solid scientific research and offering context for their ratings, they can be incredibly helpful. But if the info is oversimplified or sensationalized, it can be misleading.”
Maskād’s hero products include an Anti Aging Serum for $125 and Hydrating Serum for $45 available DTC and through Amazon.
Maskād’s Batra believes the influx of new product scanning apps will ultimately be good for the industry because, at their core, they’re driving toward more transparency around formulation. However, she said, the results should be taken with a grain of salt. “It’s [still] important for consumers to use multiple sources and do a bit of their own research to get a well-rounded view of product safety and effectiveness,” she said.
But no matter the industry point of view, apps like Yuka are likely only to grow with time.
