SkinCarisma: How to use it + Why its better than CosDNA

Hi guys, welcome back to my blog! Today I'll be sharing all about SkinCarisma, why you should use it, plus why its better than CosDNA.

If you guys remember, I shared about CosDNA back in December. Short for Cosmetics DNA, CosDNA is a website (which I think is based in China) where you can check the comodogenic-ness (whether it will cause acne), irritation level and safety level of cosmetic products, both skincare and makeup. Its useful for people and bloggers who want to know what's inside their products before they use it.

If you need more info on what EWG ratings are and what they mean, click here!

It's very open based, and after using the site for a while, I realized it's not really that reliable. One of the downsides of CosDNA in my opinion is that there is no verification process. You can input the ingredients, analyze them and label where you got your information from (like official website, printed packaging, etc.), but I think that leaves room for error and human mistakes.

Also, CosDNA does not give you any more information than the ingredient's function, comodogenic-ness, irritation level and safety level. I honestly only use it to screen if there are any yellow or red-level ingredients that may or may not harm my skin.

I was introduced to SkinCarisma by my friend Anis from thethinkerbelle.com, and SkinCarisma is similar to CosDNA because they also show the EWG ratings of ingredients. What sets them apart is the extra information the provide.

In their description they say that they collected ingredient information from over 1000 brands and 20000 products based on scientific research and journals, as well as giving other useful information. Let's look at a demo shall we?


First thing's first: since SkinCarisma is quite a new website, I don't think their selection is that big yet. You can manually input ingredients into their analyzer like CosDNA, but you also have the option to directly input the ingredients from CosDNA to SC.

After you input your own ingredients or exporting from CosDNA, you can submit the product info into SC's database. The SC team will then verify it before publishing it online. I think this is really good because this means that all information is verified and you won't get multiple entries like in CosDNA.

When you reach the page of a product that has already been confirmed, you'll first see it's name, picture and origin country:

The Product Overview category has 4 sections:

Section 1: Quick Product Notes - This section shows some of the effects of the product in general.

Section 2: Notable Effects & Ingredients - This section highlights which of the ingredients specifically has that effect.

Section 3: Ingredients Related to Skin Type - I really like this section because it shows you if there are any ingredients in the product that will be bad or good for your skin type.

Section 4: Product Ingredient Safety Breakdown (EWG Rating Ratings) - Here you can see the percentage of the ratings of the ingredients inside the product.

There are different categories aside from the Product Overview as well, such as where you can purchase the product:

As well as the full ingredient list, their EWG & CIR ratings + notes on each of the ingredients.

So as you guys can see, SkinCarisma is more detailed and more informational that CosDNA. I think it's really informational and helpful for skincare enthusiasts and just people who want to learn more about what is in their products in general.

SkinCarisma is still a new website, but I think their community + database is getting bigger. SC has also announced that they will be offering exclusive trials + a reward program soon for active community members. I highly recommend you guys to switch over to SkinCarisma today!

And that's it for this post! I hope you guys found this post interesting and helpful. As always thank you for reading and I'll see you guys in the next post!