How product scanner apps score products, and where they disagree with certifications

All of them follow the same three steps. The app matches a barcode to a product record. The record holds what is printed on the package: the ingredient list and, for food, the nutrition facts. Then the app applies a scoring method to that record and shows you a number or a color.

The apps do not test the product in a laboratory. Every score is a calculation from label information, so it depends on how accurate the product record is and on which method the app has chosen.

The methods below are taken from each organization's own published explanation, read in October 2026. Organic Babee is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the apps named here, and this page does not report any product's score.

For food, Yuka says its score is based on three criteria. Nutritional quality is 60 percent of the score, calculated with a method based on Nutri-Score, which takes into account sugar, sodium, saturated fat, calories, protein, fiber and fruit and vegetable content. The presence of additives is 30 percent, with each additive assigned one of four risk levels from risk-free to high-risk. The "organic dimension" is the last 10 percent, a bonus for products with an official national or international organic label.

There is one override. If an additive Yuka considers high-risk is present, the maximum score is set at 49 out of 100.

Cosmetics are scored another way. Yuka says it classifies every ingredient into one of four risk categories, looking at potential effects on health and the environment: endocrine disruption, allergenic, irritant, carcinogenic and pollutant. The score is based on the highest-risk ingredient present. With a high-risk ingredient the score will be lower than 25 out of 100. If the highest-risk ingredient is moderate-risk, it will be lower than 50.

Organic labels are treated differently in the two methods. Yuka gives food a bonus for an organic label, but says it does not take organic labeling into account for cosmetic products.

On funding and independence, Yuka states that the app carries no advertising, that brands cannot pay to advertise their products, and that scores are obtained with no influence from brands or manufacturers. It says its revenue comes from users, mainly premium subscriptions, and never from brands, and that it does not sell user data.

The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit, runs several databases behind its Healthy Living app. Skin Deep covers personal care products. EWG says it compares the ingredients on product labels and websites to the information in nearly 60 toxicity and regulatory databases, then gives every product and ingredient a two-part score: one for hazard and one for data availability. Hazard runs from 1 (low concern) to 10 (high concern). Data availability, rated from none to robust, reflects how much scientists know about an ingredient.

EWG is explicit about what the hazard rating is. It says the rating considers potential health hazards but does not account for exposure or individual susceptibility, factors which will drive health risks, if any.

Food Scores uses three factors: nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing. EWG says it weights nutrition most heavily, ingredient concerns next and processing least, and rates foods from 1 to 10 with 1 as the top score. Organic certification enters the math directly: EWG says an additional 0.5 is added for foods that are not certified organic, or 0.2 for foods certified as made with 70 percent organic ingredients.

EWG also runs a separate mark, described on our EWG Verified label page.

Think Dirty covers personal care products only. Its published methodology says it focuses exclusively on the chemical content of a product and evaluates each listed ingredient for documented evidence of three things: carcinogenicity, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and allergenicity and immunotoxicity. Ratings go up to 10, and a higher number means more concern.

By default, a product's overall rating is no lower than the highest rating of any single ingredient. Think Dirty also says it automatically assigns any product that lists "fragrance" on its label a rating of 7 or higher, because the components of a fragrance are not disclosed. That rule alone affects many scented products of the kind listed on our organic soap and body wash page.

Think Dirty says products certified by third parties such as USDA Organic, ECOCERT and NSF are reviewed case by case and may be rated more favorably. It also adds a caveat that applies to every app here: in its own words, assigning numerical ratings based on the results of scientific studies is necessarily a subjective process.

Because they measure different things. A scanner rates ingredients or nutrition from the label. A certification audits how something was grown or made. The USDA Organic rules, for example, are about farming and handling: certified operations, no genetic engineering, ionizing radiation or sewage sludge, and only allowed substances. Nothing in those rules grades sugar, salt or saturated fat.

So a certified organic cookie is still a cookie. In a method where nutrition is the largest share of the score and an organic label is a small bonus, a sweet or salty item from our organic snacks page can score low while holding a certification that is entirely valid.

Cosmetics disagree for a second reason. Hazard-based methods look at whether an ingredient has been linked to a concern, not at how much of it is in the bottle or how you use it. EWG says as much about its own rating. An ingredient can be permitted under an organic standard and still be flagged by an app, so a product on our organic face care page can hold a valid certification and be marked down anyway.

The apps also disagree with each other, since each chose its own weights, and a product record can be out of date. EWG says it marks products that have been in Skin Deep for more than three years as an old formulation.

Yes. Open Food Facts describes itself as a free food products database made by everyone: a non-profit association of volunteers, with more than 100,000 contributors who have added more than 4,000,000 products from 150 countries by scanning barcodes and uploading photos of labels.

The difference is openness. Open Food Facts says its complete database is published as open data under the Open Database Licence, and that anyone can reuse it for any purpose as long as the source is credited and improvements are shared the same way. It shows ingredients, allergens and nutrition facts, and it also grades the nutritional quality of each product.