An EWG Skin Deep alternative built around your life stage
EWG Skin Deep is a toxicology database, and a good one. It tells you what is known about an ingredient's hazard in general. It does not tell you what to do about the moisturiser in your hand now that you are eight weeks pregnant, because that was never what it was built to do.
Figures below are read from EWG Skin Deep’s own site, last checked 31 August 2026.
- Conditions answered
- 6
- EWG Skin Deep answers one
- Products
- 500k+
- From the shops you use
- Truva Pro
- $29.99
- Once, not a year
What EWG Skin Deep is built to do
Skin Deep is the reference layer this whole category is built on. It is a nonprofit resource assembled from around sixty toxicity and regulatory databases, and it publishes its method rather than hiding it. Truva is not trying to replace that and could not.
It is a database, though, not an adviser. It is organised by ingredient and by product, not by the person reading it, and hazard in general is a different quantity from risk for you. A resource that answered the second question would have to ask who you are, and Skin Deep deliberately does not.
What EWG Skin Deep does better
- EWG runs Skin Deep as a nonprofit and publishes its methodology, which is more transparency than any commercial scanner offers.
- Large and genuinely well maintained: EWG lists 153,685 products across 7,600 brands.
- The EWG Verified mark is a real signal, and no app score is equivalent to it.
Where it stops
- A Skin Deep rating measures hazard, not your risk. An ingredient can carry a moderate score there and be entirely fine in a rinse off product, and carry a low one and still be on the list to stop before conception.
- There is no profile in Skin Deep, so a change in your circumstances changes nothing in the interface. Pregnancy, breastfeeding and PCOS read identically.
- Skin Deep is web first. Looking up sixty INCI names on a phone in a shop is not the same activity as scanning a label.
Why EWG Skin Deep cannot answer this one
Skin Deep answers a toxicology question: what the published literature holds on an ingredient's hazard. Truva answers an exposure question: given this concentration, in a product that is rinsed off or left on, over this much skin, for someone in this life stage, what does published guidance say to do. The second question contains the first and is not answerable from it.
This is why the two can disagree without either being wrong. One ingredient sits at a single point in Skin Deep's hazard range and at more than one verdict in Truva, because Truva holds a separate assessment for each of the six conditions and names the body behind each one. The disagreement is inspectable rather than a matter of which score you decide to trust.
The 6 profiles are Pregnancy, Breastfeeding, Postpartum, Trying to Conceive, PCOS and General Use. Truva holds per condition assessments for 13,252 ingredients, and each flag names the body it came from.
The list a hazard database cannot produce is the per profile one. What carries a flag while you are trying to conceive is a different set from what scores badly on hazard, and the gap between those two sets is the whole reason a hazard rating is not an answer. The same is true in the other direction for the postpartum list, which is short precisely because most of what applied a month earlier no longer does. A score computed from the bottle cannot move when your circumstances do.
Side by side
Two rows carry the whole argument. The rest is specification.
| Feature | EWG Skin Deep | Truvaours |
|---|---|---|
| Nonprofit | Yes | No, paid by its users |
| Price | Free | Free tier, Pro $29.99 once |
| Primary format | Web database | iPhone app |
| What the score measures | General hazard | Risk for your profile |
| Answers change with your life stagethe difference | No, one score per product | Yes, 6 conditions |
| Names the body behind each flagthe difference | Methodology page, not per flag | ACOG, FDA, SCCS or CIR, on the flag |
| Scans a label in a shop | Look up by name | Photograph the label |
Whether it has the thing you are holding
Every app here leads with a product count, the easiest number to quote and the least informative.
This one has no catch and we are not going to invent one. Skin Deep's figure is beauty and personal care only, it is staff reviewed, and it is larger than the retail half of our catalogue. On raw coverage of personal care products EWG beats us, and a reader choosing on catalogue size alone should pick Skin Deep.
Truva holds over 500,000 products from the shops you already use, Walmart, Target, Ulta and Sephora among them. The difference worth caring about here is not size though, it is that every product carries six verdicts instead of one hazard score.
Catalogue read on 31 August 2026. Coverage is what decides whether a scanner is any use to you, so it is worth checking against your own shelf rather than taking anyone’s number on trust, ours included.
What each one costs
A single purchase, or $4.99 a month if you would rather not pay it all at once. There is a free tier either way.
Skin Deep costs nothing, so Truva has no price argument to make here and will not pretend otherwise. $29.99 once buys a different thing, not a cheaper one: a profile, a scan in the aisle, and a verdict that changes when your situation does. If the general hazard data is what you need, the free resource is the right resource.
When to keep using EWG Skin Deep
If you want the underlying toxicology rather than a verdict, go to Skin Deep. It is the better tool for reading the evidence itself, and Truva links out to the same bodies so you can.
If what you are missing is a scan in a shop rather than a lookup at a desk, the comparison against Yuka covers the barcode first app built around exactly that moment. If it is beauty coverage you are after, the comparison against Think Dirty sets out what each of its two catalogue figures actually counts. And if you came to Skin Deep because of a pregnancy, the ranked roundup of pregnancy safe skincare apps puts all seven of them in one list, Skin Deep and Truva included.
Where these figures come from
Every number on this page about EWG Skin Deep is something EWG Skin Deep publishes about itself.
- EWG states Skin Deep contains 153,685 products across 7,600 brands, including 2,479 EWG Verified products.Read it on EWG Skin Deep’s site
- EWG states each product is rated on factors calculated from nearly 60 integrated toxicity, regulatory, and study availability databases.Read it on EWG Skin Deep’s site
Questions
Is Truva more accurate than EWG Skin Deep?
Accuracy is the wrong axis for this comparison. EWG Skin Deep reports hazard data about an ingredient in general. Truva reports what published guidance says a person in your specific situation should do about it. Both can be right at once, and usually are.
Does Truva use EWG's ratings?
No. Truva reads guidance from ACOG, the FDA, the EU SCCS and the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, and each flag names which one it came from so you can go and read it.
Why does Truva clear something EWG scores as a concern?
Usually because the exposure matters. An ingredient in a cleanser you wash off in thirty seconds does not reach you the way the same ingredient does in a cream you leave on overnight, and published guidance often turns on exactly that difference. Truva accounts for it; a general hazard score cannot.
Truva summarises published ingredient guidance from ACOG, the FDA, the EU SCCS and the Cosmetic Ingredient Review. It has no access to your medical history and it is not a substitute for your doctor or midwife. Comparisons on this page describe EWG Skin Deep as EWG Skin Deep describes itself, and were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Ask the question the way you actually have it.
Not whether this product is good, but whether it is fine for you, this month, in the situation you are actually in.
Download on theApp StoreFree to scan. Truva Pro is $29.99 once.