How to tell if your skincare is vegan

The clear ones, and the honestly-ambiguous ones

Clarra splits vegan checking into two honest buckets. The clear non-vegan ingredients — carmine, beeswax, lanolin, honey, collagen, guanine, shellac — are flagged plainly. The ambiguous ones — glycerin, squalane, stearic acid, hyaluronic acid — can come from plants or animals, and the INCI list usually doesn't say which. Rather than pretend certainty, Clarra flags that ambiguity so you can check with the brand if it matters to you.

Why Clarra

• Flags clear animal-derived ingredients plainly.
• Marks genuinely ambiguous-source ingredients honestly.
• Keeps vegan status separate from cruelty-free.
• Focuses on beauty and personal care for depth.
• Encourages checking with the brand where sourcing is unstated.

How Clarra reads a product

• Search a product by name, or scan its ingredient label — no live 'point at anything' barcode magic promised.
• Clarra parses the INCI ingredient list into plain English.
• Flagged ingredients get their sourced regulatory context; benign ones are marked as generally well tolerated.
• You see the three pillars at a glance and decide for yourself — informational only, not medical or safety advice.

Calm by design

Most ingredient apps lean on fear-red warnings. Clarra is deliberately the opposite: a warm, editorial interface with plain-English bands like 'generally well tolerated' or 'flagged or restricted'. Fear makes for engagement but poor decisions. We'd rather you leave informed and calm than anxious and misled — which also means correcting myths about ingredients that sound worse than their sourced record.

Hazard is not the same as risk

This is the idea Clarra is built around. A regulatory hazard classification describes what an ingredient could do in principle; risk is whether it actually does at the amount, and in the way, you're exposed. An ingredient can carry a hazard flag and still pose little real-world risk in a finished product used normally — which is why regulators so often set a concentration limit instead of a ban. Clarra shows the flag, names the source, and leaves the judgement to you.

What Clarra reads on every product

• Ingredient flags — how named regulators (EU CosIng, IARC, Prop 65, CIR, ECHA) classify or restrict what's inside, with hazard kept separate from risk.
• Cruelty-free status — shown with positive framing: what a brand states or is certified for, never an accusation.
• Vegan status — flagging animal-derived ingredients like carmine, beeswax and lanolin, and honest about ambiguous-source ones.