A Think Dirty alternative for your life stage
Think Dirty answers one question well: how hazardous is this product in general. Truva answers a narrower and more useful one: is this product a problem for you, right now, given that you are pregnant or breastfeeding or managing PCOS. If you have been scanning products and still ending up unsure what to do, that is the difference.
Figures below are read from Think Dirty’s own site, last checked 31 August 2026.
- Conditions answered
- 6
- Think Dirty answers one
- Products
- 500k+
- From the shops you use
- Truva Pro
- $29.99
- Once, not a year
What Think Dirty is built to do
Think Dirty has been rating cosmetics since 2012 and its catalogue reflects that. It is the deepest beauty specific database of the three big scanners, and depth in this category takes years that cannot be bought.
Its frame is hazard, and the name says so. A product is dirty or it is clean. That frame was a genuine service in 2012, when the alternative was reading an INCI list unaided, but it answers a question about the product rather than a question about the person holding it.
What Think Dirty does better
- Beauty is Think Dirty's whole focus rather than one category among several, and the coverage shows it.
- The 0 to 10 meter is immediately legible, and Think Dirty is a polished app.
- Think Dirty subscribers can set custom ingredient alerts, which is the closest any of the big scanners gets to personalisation.
Where it stops
- A custom ingredient alert in Think Dirty requires you to already know which ingredient to watch. That is the entire problem you opened the app to solve.
- Dirty and clean are Think Dirty's two categories, and neither is a clinical one. Salicylic acid is not dirty, and it is still something the AAD and most obstetricians ask you to keep under two per cent and off large areas while pregnant, even though ACOG lists it among the products that can be used. A hazard meter has nowhere to put a threshold like that, and no way to show two bodies landing in slightly different places.
- Life stage does not enter the reading. Pregnancy, breastfeeding, postpartum, trying to conceive and PCOS all get the same answer from Think Dirty, and those five situations genuinely disagree with each other about several common actives.
Why Think Dirty cannot answer this one
A hazard score is a property of a bottle. It can be computed once, stored, and served to everyone, which is what makes a catalogue of three million products possible in the first place. The moment a score has to change depending on who is holding the bottle, it stops being a property and becomes a lookup, and the whole architecture behind that number has to change with it.
Truva is built as the lookup. Benzoyl peroxide is the example that shows the cost: it is broadly fine in pregnancy at over the counter strengths, and it is the kind of active a hazard meter tends to mark down for irritancy regardless. One reading tells you to put it back on the shelf, and the other tells you it is one of the few acne actives you can keep using. They are both defensible, and only one of them answers the question you asked.
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.
Salicylic acid is the case to check, and the catalogue entry for it carries the strength and the area the guidance actually turns on. That is a threshold, and a meter with two settings has nowhere to put one. The five life stages Think Dirty reads identically are five different lists here, including the one for postpartum, where the pregnancy instructions have stopped applying and what replaces them is a shorter list than most people expect.
Side by side
Two rows carry the whole argument. The rest is specification.
| Feature | Think Dirty | Truvaours |
|---|---|---|
| Beauty focused | Yes | Yes |
| Price | $28.99 every year | $29.99 once |
| Score shown | 0 to 10 hazard | 0 to 100 for you |
| Custom ingredient alerts | Yes, you name the ingredient | Automatic from 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 |
| Explains why an ingredient is flagged | Hazard category | A paragraph and a citation |
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.
Those are Think Dirty's own two verbs and they are not the same one. Submitted is what people sent in; rated is what has been through the methodology. The larger number is the first kind, and Think Dirty does not publish how much of it is the second. A catalogue of that size is a genuine achievement over fourteen years, and the honest thing to say is that its headline figure and its reviewed figure are different quantities.
Truva holds over 500,000 products, pulled from the shops you already use: Walmart, Target, Ulta, Sephora and the rest of the aisle. Not submissions waiting on review, and not a number inflated by a second category.
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 free tier, with premium features held back
Think Dirty’s own pricingA single purchase, or $4.99 a month if you would rather not pay it all at once. There is a free tier either way.
This is the comparison where cost is genuinely one sided. Think Dirty Premium is $28.99 a year. Truva Pro is $29.99 once. You pay Truva roughly what one year of Think Dirty costs, and then never again, and the second year is where that stops being a close call.
When to keep using Think Dirty
If you are building a general clean beauty shelf and life stage is not your concern, Think Dirty's catalogue is deeper than ours on ordinary cosmetics and it will serve you well.
If groceries are half of what you scan, the same comparison against Yuka is the one to read next, since Yuka covers food and cosmetics in a single app and Think Dirty does not. If you would rather pay nothing and read the underlying data yourself, EWG Skin Deep is free and nonprofit, and that comparison says where a hazard database stops. And if the reason you are replacing an app is a pregnancy, the ranked roundup of pregnancy safe skincare apps puts all seven of them in one list, Truva included.
Where these figures come from
Every number on this page about Think Dirty is something Think Dirty publishes about itself.
- Think Dirty rates products on a 0 to 10 scale and has been operating since 2012.Read it on Think Dirty’s site
- Think Dirty states it has rated 12,300+ brands, with 3.4 million products submitted and 66.9 million scans.Read it on Think Dirty’s site
Questions
Is Think Dirty's database bigger than Truva's?
On general cosmetics, yes, and the head start is real. Truva holds 20,242 ingredients, of which 13,252 carry a per condition safety assessment, which is a different asset rather than a smaller version of the same one.
What does Truva do with the dirty and clean framing?
Truva drops the dirty and clean framing entirely. It returns safe, caution or avoid against your specific profile, and a caution always arrives with the condition attached, such as a concentration limit or an area of skin to keep the product off.
Can I use both?
Yes, and plenty of people will. They answer different questions and neither reading invalidates the other.
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 Think Dirty as Think Dirty 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.