Meet Chloe
Hi, I'm Chloe. Years of trying everything - the viral, the luxury, the drugstore dupe - taught me the beauty industry's best-kept secret: the price tag and the results barely know each other.
Glow Grader grades products the way a smart friend would: what's actually in it, what real buyers with your skin type report, and whether the money could do better elsewhere.
When the $9 product embarrasses the $80 one, we publish that. When a splurge genuinely earns it, we say that too. No filter, either way.
How we review
A grade here starts with the ingredient list - which actives, at what concentration, for which skin type - and weighs what verified buyers report. Each product is rated 1 to 5 on ease of use, features, value for money, and support, and the overall grade is the average of those four on a 10-point scale. Above 9.0 is outstanding and 8.5 is excellent, but plenty of famous products sit well below that.
What this method does not include
The honest limits: nobody here uses every product graded on this site, and skin varies too much for one face to settle anything anyway. A grade is built from the ingredient list, the concentrations, the format, the price per use, and what verified buyers report. Where a brand does not disclose a percentage, the page says the percentage is undisclosed rather than guessing at it.
How something gets on the list
A product gets graded because shoppers are already comparing it with something else, not because the brand pays well. Plenty of the products graded here earn nothing. Sorting by commission would undo the only thing a grade is for.
Our independence
Some links here are affiliate links, and a purchase through one may pay us a commission. That is what keeps the site running. It does not buy a grade - the nine-dollar product still outscores the eighty-dollar one when it deserves to.
Corrections
Formulas get reformulated and prices move, so every figure carries the date it was read. If an ingredient list has changed since it was read here, send the page and the grade gets rechecked. Corrections with a link to the brand's own page are handled first.
Contact
If a review helped, or you think we got something wrong, get in touch.