What Does Medicube's PDRN Capsule Cream Score on Yuka?

Yuka reads Medicube's PDRN Pink Collagen Capsule Cream at 58 out of 100, in the Good band. We took the reading in the app on 7 September 2026. Six ingredients are flagged, all of them at low risk, and fifty-three come back risk-free.

One detail before the analysis, because it will save you a search. In the Yuka app this product is filed as "PRDN Pink Collagen Capsul...", with the letters of PDRN transposed and the name cut off. If you scanned it and assumed you had the wrong entry, you did not.

Every Flag Is a Texture Ingredient

Here is the whole flagged list, with what each one is doing in the jar:

• Glycereth-26, low risk. A humectant that also thickens.
• Carbomer, low risk. The gel former. This is the ingredient holding the pink capsules in suspension instead of letting them sink to the bottom.
• Simethicone, low risk. An antifoaming agent, in the formula to keep air bubbles out of a clear gel.
• Polyacrylate-13, low risk. A film former and thickener.
• Disodium EDTA, low risk. A chelator, present so that trace metal ions do not destabilise the emulsion.
• Hydroxypropyltrimonium hyaluronate, low risk. A modified hyaluronic acid, classified in the Commission's inventory as a film former.

Read that list again and notice what is absent. The niacinamide is not flagged. Neither is the salmon-derived sodium DNA, the ceramide NP, the glutathione, the hydrolysed collagen, nor any of the five peptides. Every ingredient this cream is marketed on came back risk-free. What Yuka has docked forty-two points for is the delivery system.

That is a genuine trade-off rather than a scoring quirk. A cream that suspends visible capsules in a clear gel needs a gel former, a film former and an antifoam to look the way it looks on the shelf. The format is the penalty.

There is also a small irony worth naming: one of the six flagged ingredients is a hyaluronic acid derivative, while the plain sodium hyaluronate further down the same list is not flagged at all. Same family, different modification, different treatment from the app.

What EU Law Restricts Here: Nothing

We do not take an app's word for which ingredients regulators have acted on, so we ran all six through our own CosIng lookup on 14 September 2026. CosIng is the European Commission's database of cosmetic substances and the machine-readable form of the annexes to Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009.

All six returned an inventory record. None of the six returned an entry in any annex.

Not Annex II, the prohibited list. Not Annex III, the restricted list. Not Annex V, the permitted preservatives. The Commission's own database records carbomer as an emulsion stabiliser, gel former and viscosity controller, simethicone as an antifoaming and skin-conditioning agent, disodium EDTA as a chelator, and so on down the list, with no restriction attached to any of them. The Commission also publishes a caveat we carry verbatim, because it matters: the inclusion of an ingredient in the CosIng inventory is not an indication of authorisation, and only the Regulation itself has legal value in that respect.

So the honest summary of the regulatory position is that there is no regulatory position. Six low-risk flags, zero annex entries, and a score in the fifties.

One Number We Could Not Reconcile

We cross-check every reading against a published INCI list before we publish it, and this one did not line up.

Yuka's reading implies fifty-nine ingredients in total: six flagged plus fifty-three risk-free. The published ingredient list we checked runs to fifty-two. All six flagged ingredients appear on it, in the positions you would expect, so the flags themselves are not in doubt. The count is out by seven.

The likeliest explanation is that the two lists are different versions of the product. Medicube has shipped this cream under at least three closely related names, and the published lists for them differ by an ingredient or two each. We are telling you about the gap rather than quietly averaging it away, because a score is only as good as the formula it was read against.

Who This Is Still Fine For

• Anyone whose skin already gets on with it. Nothing in this formula is rated above low risk by the app that scored it, and nothing in it carries an EU restriction.
• Dry or dehydrated skin in winter. The unflagged half of the list is ceramide NP, glycerin, several hyaluronic acid forms and a fatty alcohol, which is a competent barrier-support formula by any reading.
• People chasing the peptides specifically. Acetyl hexapeptide-8, copper tripeptide-1 and palmitoyl pentapeptide-4 are all present and none of them is flagged. If the peptides are your reason for buying, the score is not arguing with you.

Where we would pause: if you have reacted to gel-textured creams before, the ingredients responsible are likely to be the same polymers on this flag list, and a 58 is a fair warning that the formula leans on them. Fragrance is not the issue here. There is none declared.

Higher-Scoring Alternatives

All three of these beat 58 comfortably. None of them contains encapsulated anything, which is the point of the swap and also its cost.

• Typology Moisturizing Face Cream, 100/100. A plain, short-list daily moisturiser with no Yuka penalty at all. Forty-two points clear, and considerably less interesting to use.
• Typology Lab 1001, 98/100. The same approach with a more treatment-oriented formula.
• Inside the brand, the Medicube Collagen Jelly Cream reads 79. Twenty-one points higher, same brand, same broad job. If you want to stay with Medicube and move up the scale, that is the move.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Yuka score of the Medicube PDRN Pink Collagen Capsule Cream?

58/100, in the Good band, read on 7 September 2026. The app lists it as "PRDN Pink Collagen Capsul...". Six ingredients are flagged, all at low risk, and fifty-three are returned risk-free.

Why is the score so much lower than other Medicube creams?

Count, not severity. Six low-risk flags pull the number further down than the two or three a simpler cream carries. The capsule format is the reason for the extra flags: suspending visible beads in a clear gel needs a gel former, a film former and an antifoam that a conventional cream does without.

Is anything in it restricted under EU cosmetics law?

No. We looked all six flagged ingredients up in the European Commission's CosIng database on 14 September 2026. Each has an inventory record; none has an entry in any annex of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009.

Our Verdict

A 58 here means "this cream contains six thickeners and stabilisers", not "this cream is a risk". Nothing in it is rated above the app's mildest level, nothing in it is restricted in Europe, and every ingredient on the front of the box came back clean.

Buy it for the texture and the peptides if those are what you want, and read the score as what it is: a tax on formats that need a lot of polymer to work. If you would rather have the number, the Jelly Cream at 79 is the same brand doing a plainer job. The full spread across the range is in our Medicube Yuka guide, and every score we hold sits on the Medicube hub.