What our labels mean

No animal testing

We tag a product cruelty-free when its brand appears on one of two registries:

• Leaping Bunny (Cruelty Free International) — the strictest standard. Requires an independent audit of the brand and its ingredient suppliers. No grandfather clauses.
• PETA's Beauty Without Bunnies — a self-reported pledge backed by PETA follow-up. Less rigorous than Leaping Bunny but still requires a signed commitment.

Why some popular brands don't get the badge

Several countries — most notably mainland China, for certain imported product categories — have historically required post-market animal testing. A brand that sells there under those rules can't claim cruelty-free status, even if it doesn't conduct tests itself.

We also don't tag brands based on parent-company entanglement. If a brand's parent group has lines that test in regulated markets, we leave the badge off that brand until it has its own independent certification. This is why some brands you might expect to see here don't have the badge.

China's rules for imported ordinary cosmetics changed in 2021, and the situation is still evolving for many brands. We update the database when certifications change.

No animal-derived ingredients

The vegan badge means the formula contains no ingredients that came from an animal. We set it when the brand holds a certification from a recognised vegan body — Vegan Society, V-Label, or PETA Vegan — or when the brand publishes a complete ingredient ledger and none of the ingredients are animal-derived.

Common disqualifiers

These turn up in otherwise "clean" formulas and mean the product can't be vegan, even if the rest of the brand's range is:

• Snail mucin (snail secretion filtrate) — harvested from snails
• Honey and propolis — bee products
• Beeswax (cera alba) — common in lip balms and occlusive creams
• Lanolin — derived from sheep wool grease
• Carmine (CI 75470) — red pigment from crushed cochineal beetles
• Hyaluronic acid (historically) — now almost always synthetic or fermented, but worth checking older formulas

A brand can be cruelty-free without being vegan, and vice versa. We track them separately.

No specific high-concern ingredients

"Clean" is not a regulated term, so we use Sephora's Clean at Sephora curation as our reference — it's the most widely recognised retail standard with a published ingredient exclusion list. A product earns the badge when it appears on that list or meets its checklist, which excludes:

• Parabens
• Sulfates (SLS and SLES)
• Formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives
• Methylisothiazolinone (MI) and methylchloroisothiazolinone (MCI)
• Phthalates

Clean doesn't mean the product is safer, more natural, or better for your skin than a product without the badge. It means a specific curator has checked a specific list. Whether those exclusions matter to you is personal.