CeraVe or La Roche-Posay: Which One Scores Better on Yuka?

On Yuka, the answer to "CeraVe or La Roche-Posay?" changes with the aisle you are standing in. La Roche-Posay's Toleriane Double Repair moisturiser reads 100 out of 100, higher than any of the nine CeraVe products we have scanned, which run from 0 to 41. Walk two metres to the sun care shelf and the order breaks. La Roche-Posay's Anthelios sunscreens read anywhere from 0 to 51, and CeraVe's one mineral sunscreen, at 24, lands in the middle of them.

So there is no brand verdict to give, only category verdicts. Both brands belong to L'Oréal, both are sold to the same sensitive-skin shopper, and the two scorecards do not overlap in the way people expect. Below is every number we hold for either brand, where each one came from, what produces the gap, where Yuka is right about it and where it is not, and which one we would buy for which job.

Every Score We Hold, Grouped by What the Product Does

Each row links to the article where the reading was first published. We do not carry a score across from a similarly named product or from another country's formula, and for sunscreen that rule does real work, because La Roche-Posay sells different Anthelios formulas in the US and in France under near-identical names. Where the source article did not record the day the app was read, the row says so and gives the date the review went live instead.

Moisturisers and treatment creams

Cleansers

The Lipikar reading has been taken twice, on two bottles with different barcodes (3337875905466 and 3337875656764), and both came back 86.

Sunscreens

The Anthelios names are reproduced exactly as the app displayed them, truncations included. All nine Anthelios rows come from our Anthelios explainer, which also explains why most of the French rows cannot be pinned to a single barcode.

Read the three tables together and the scoreboard is two to one with a draw. In moisturisers La Roche-Posay wins by 61 points or more. In cleansers the like-for-like face washes sit within four points of each other, all below 50, and La Roche-Posay only pulls ahead with a body-and-face oil that is a different kind of product. In sunscreen there is no winner at all: CeraVe's 24 beats five of the nine Anthelios readings and loses to three.

Why the Same Shopper Gets Two Different Answers

Yuka does not average its ingredient ratings. It sorts each ingredient into one of four risk levels and lets the worst one set the product's range. Its own help centre puts the rule in numbers: a product with a high-risk (red) ingredient scores between 0 and 24, one whose worst ingredient is moderate risk (orange) scores between 0 and 49, and a product with only risk-free and low-risk ingredients "will systematically be greater than or equal to 50/100". Everything else in the formula only decides where inside that range it lands.

Two consequences follow, and both can be checked against the tables above. A product at 50 or higher contains nothing Yuka rates orange or red. A product below 50 contains at least one. That second rule runs in one direction only, though: below 25 does not prove a red ingredient, because CeraVe's mineral sunscreen reached 24 with eleven flags and no red one among them, purely by accumulation.

Moisturisers: one preservative decides it

Every CeraVe moisturiser in the table is held below 50 by its preservative. In the Moisturizing Cream, the Baby Eczema Relief Cream and both facial lotions it is phenoxyethanol, which Yuka rates moderate risk; the Renewing SA Cream still carries methylparaben and propylparaben, which Yuka rates high risk, and that is the difference between 33 and 0. We set out the full case for and against phenoxyethanol in why CeraVe scores so low on Yuka. The short version: the EU permits it up to 1% of the finished product, and the industry adopted it as the replacement for parabens.

Toleriane Double Repair is preserved differently. La Roche-Posay's own US product page lists eighteen ingredients, and neither phenoxyethanol nor any paraben is among them; the preservation is carried by caprylyl glycol and capryloyl glycine. Nothing on that list is an ingredient we have seen Yuka rate orange or red in any CeraVe reading. That is the whole moisturiser gap, and it has nothing to do with ceramides, which both brands use.

One caution about the 100, and we would rather you heard it here. The same La Roche-Posay ingredient list includes dimethicone, and when we read CeraVe's Facial Moisturising Lotion on 31 August 2026 Yuka rated dimethicone low risk. Under Yuka's published rules a low-risk ingredient in an otherwise clean formula costs 7 or 10 points, which would put the ceiling at 93, not 100. Our Toleriane reading went live in December 2025, its read date was not recorded, and either the formula we scanned differed or Yuka's rating of dimethicone has changed since. We have not re-read it. The ranking does not depend on the exact figure, because nothing in the published formula would cap it below 50, but treat 100 as the least current number on this page.

Cleansers: both brands hit the same ceiling

The three CeraVe face cleansers read 39, 39 and 41, and each one is capped by phenoxyethanol. Effaclar Gel Moussant Purifiant reads 43, which by Yuka's own rule means it also carries at least one moderate-risk ingredient. We do not know which one; we read it as part of the French batch in 1138 and did not take its ingredient list apart. Four points between them is noise inside the same band.

Lipikar AP+ Cleansing Oil, at 86, is the exception, and its score tells you more than its ingredient list does here: 86 means nothing in it is rated orange or red, and the 14 missing points are low-risk deductions. It is also a shower oil sold for face and body on very dry skin, not a face gel, so it does not make La Roche-Posay the better brand for washing your face.

Sunscreens: the filters set the floor

A sunscreen is defined by its UV filters, and that is where Yuka's ceiling lands. The US Anthelios Melt-in Milk uses four organic filters (avobenzone 3%, homosalate 10%, octisalate 5%, octocrylene 7%), and homosalate in particular has an open regulatory file. After a scientific review the EU restricted it, and since 1 July 2025 it may be sold there only in face products, at up to 7.34%. A body lotion at 10% could not be sold in the EU today. Our Anthelios explainer sets out the full chain.

CeraVe's sunscreen uses mineral filters only, titanium dioxide at 5.5% and zinc oxide at 10% as CeraVe declares them. Yuka flags both at low risk. They did not sink the score; phenoxyethanol set the ceiling and eleven small marks across a fifty-ingredient label did the rest.

The two Anthelios products at 50 and 51 crossed the line that matters: no orange or red ingredient. We could not confirm their exact SKUs, so we cannot tell you which filters they use.

Is Yuka Right About Any of This?

Category by category, it gets two of three roughly right and one backwards.

Moisturisers: right in direction, and cheap to act on. The gap reflects a real formulation choice. One brand preserves its creams with an ingredient that carries an allergen and irritant flag and an EU concentration limit; the other does not need to. Whether phenoxyethanol at under 1% harms anyone is a separate argument, and the EU's answer is that it does not. But a reader who would rather avoid it can do so here at no cost in ceramides, texture or price bracket.

Cleansers: right, because it calls a draw. Four points inside the same capped band is what two similar face washes should look like.

Sunscreens: backwards, at least for the US pair. Put the two American products side by side. The US Food and Drug Administration has proposed exactly two sunscreen actives as generally recognised as safe and effective, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, at up to 25%. Homosalate, octisalate, octocrylene and avobenzone are on the list it proposed as not yet recognised because more safety data are needed. CeraVe's sunscreen uses only the first two. Melt-in Milk uses only the second four. On the regulator's reading the CeraVe bottle is the one with the settled safety file, and Yuka scores it 24 against 0, both in the same red band, with a gap a shopper would read as noise.

That is not Yuka being careless. It flags mineral filters for documented reasons, nanoparticle penetration studies and zinc oxide's environmental record among them, and it has no way to weigh what a sunscreen is for. A score built from ingredient hazards will always undersell the one product whose whole purpose is to block a known carcinogen. Use the number to spot which filters are in the bottle, then decide on the filters.

The criticism that applies across all three categories was put best by biochemist Mollie Kelly Tufman in Hypebae's November 2025 feature on the app: "It's not just about whether an ingredient is present — but how much, how it's used, and on what kind of skin." Yuka cannot see concentration. The EU and FDA positions cited here are both, at bottom, about concentration and exposure.

Which One to Buy, by Use Case

Sensitive or eczema-prone skin

For the face, La Roche-Posay. Toleriane Double Repair gives you ceramides and niacinamide without the preservative that caps every CeraVe moisturiser, and it is the only product from either brand in the moisturiser table above 50.

For very dry body skin in an eczema flare, the answer is less tidy. CeraVe's Moisturizing Cream gets its occlusion from petrolatum, which dermatologists reach for precisely because little else matches it at stopping water loss, and Toleriane is a light face lotion, not a replacement for a heavy tub. Keep the CeraVe cream for that job if it works. The same goes for the Baby Eczema Relief Cream: its 39 is the same phenoxyethanol cap the adult products carry and says nothing specific about babies, so if your paediatrician recommended it and your child tolerates it, do not switch on the number.

For washing very dry, reactive skin, Lipikar AP+ Cleansing Oil at 86 is the best-scoring cleanser either brand has in our tables.

A daily face moisturiser

La Roche-Posay Toleriane Double Repair. This is the clearest call on the page, and it holds even if a fresh reading came back below 100.

A daily face cleanser

Neither brand, if the score is why you are here. CeraVe's three face cleansers and La Roche-Posay's Effaclar gel all sit between 39 and 43. If you like the one you have, keep it. If you want a face wash above 50, leave both brands (see below).

Sunscreen

In the United States, CeraVe Hydrating Mineral Sunscreen SPF 30 over Anthelios Melt-in Milk SPF 60, and not because of the 24. Its filters are the two the FDA has proposed as safe and effective; Melt-in Milk's four are still waiting on data. The trade-off is real: mineral formulas can leave a cast on deeper skin tones, and SPF 30 is not SPF 60.

In Europe, the only sunscreens from either brand that cleared Yuka's 50 line are the two Anthelios products at 50 and 51, a body milk and a children's spray. Above all, whichever you pick: a low score on a sunscreen is a reason to change sunscreen, never to stop wearing one.

If You Want to Leave Both Brands

Every product here has a Yuka reading published on this site. We list only products we have scanned.

Vanicream and Cetaphil are worked through against CeraVe in detail in CeraVe vs Cetaphil vs Vanicream, including the one case where switching costs you something. The Avène row is a European face sunscreen; check the formula sold where you live before assuming the score transfers. Everything else we hold for each brand is on the CeraVe and La Roche-Posay brand pages.

The Short Answer

La Roche-Posay for a face moisturiser. A draw on face cleansers, both capped below 50. For sunscreen, ignore the brand and look at the filters: in the US that points to CeraVe's mineral formula, whatever its score says.

One owner, two preservative philosophies, and a scoring system that rewards one of them while misreading the sunscreen aisle.

Sources

• Yuka scores: read in the Yuka app on the dates in each table row and first published in the articles linked from them. No score on this page was read for it.
• Yuka scoring rules: Yuka help centre (help.yuka.io), "How are penalties calculated in the cosmetic product scores?", checked 6 October 2026.
• Toleriane Double Repair ingredient list: La Roche-Posay US product page, checked 6 October 2026.
• Homosalate restriction in the EU (face products only, up to 7.34%, from 1 July 2025): Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/2195 amending Annex VI of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, summarised by Obelis, checked 6 October 2026.
• FDA status of sunscreen actives: FDA, "Questions and Answers: FDA's regulatory actions on over-the-counter sunscreen", checked 6 October 2026.
• Both brands belong to L'Oréal's Dermatological Beauty division: L'Oréal Dermatological Beauty, checked 6 October 2026.
• Melt-in Milk actives: sourced in article 1138. CeraVe filter percentages and Yuka's reasons for flagging mineral filters: article 1143. Phenoxyethanol's EU limit and the case for petrolatum: article 1116.
• Expert criticism: Hypebae, "Cosmetic Chemists Break Down the Yuka App Trend", by Kleigh Balugo, 6 November 2025.