Why Does The Ordinary Score So Unevenly on Yuka?

The Ordinary's acid exfoliants are the best-scoring products in its range on Yuka, and the serums people buy first are the worst. The AHA 30% + BHA 2% Peeling Solution and the Glycolic Acid 7% Toning Solution both read 93. Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% reads 47, Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 reads 49, Natural Moisturizing Factors + HA reads 43, and Retinol 0.5% in Squalane reads 24.

That is the opposite of what most people expect. The acids are the strong, sting-on-contact products; the hydrating serums are the ones sold as gentle. But Yuka does not score strength. It scores the ingredients on its hazard list, and in this range one preservative decides most of the outcome.

Five of the seven readings below were taken in the Yuka app on 12 October 2026, by searching each product by name. Two were published earlier on this site, and the table says so.

Every The Ordinary Score We Hold

The Hyaluronic Acid reading is on the reformulated version, which Yuka lists as "Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 and Ceramides". The Retinol reading comes from a listing a Yuka user created from photos of the bottle. Our Squalane Cleanser review did not record its flags; what its 79 does tell you is that nothing in it is rated moderate or high risk.

One Preservative Splits the Range

Yuka publishes the rule that matters here. The worst ingredient sets the range a product can land in: a moderate-risk ingredient holds it between 0 and 49, a high-risk one between 0 and 24, and a product with nothing worse than low risk can never fall below 50.

Read the table with that rule and the range sorts itself. Every product above 50 contains nothing Yuka rates moderate or high. Every product below 50 contains exactly one ingredient that does, and in three of the four it is the same one: phenoxyethanol, the preservative in the Niacinamide, the Hyaluronic Acid and the Natural Moisturizing Factors.

The arithmetic below the cap is tidy enough to check by hand. The Hyaluronic Acid has phenoxyethanol and nothing else flagged, and it reads 49, the top of the band. The Niacinamide adds one low-risk flag and reads 47. The Natural Moisturizing Factors adds three and reads 43. On these readings each extra low-risk flag costs two points once phenoxyethanol has set the ceiling, which matches the two-point low-risk penalty in Yuka's published rules. The serums are not failing on a long list of problems. They are failing on one.

The peel and the glycolic toner do without it. Their flags are a single low-risk ingredient each, salicylic acid in one and triethanolamine in the other, and Yuka's rules charge 10, 7 or 2 points for a single low-risk flag in an otherwise clean formula, depending on the kind of risk. Here it was seven both times. A hundred minus seven is 93.

The retinol fails for a different reason

Retinol 0.5% in Squalane has no phenoxyethanol, because it contains no water and needs no preservative of that kind. Its eight-ingredient list is three oils, retinol, two plant extracts and two antioxidants. The last of them is BHT, there to stop the retinol oxidising in the bottle, and Yuka rates it high risk. That one ingredient caps the product at 24, and 24 is what it reads. Everything else, retinol included, is risk-free in the app.

Where Yuka and European Law Disagree

A hazard flag and a legal restriction are different claims. We checked every ingredient Yuka flags in this range, plus two it does not, against Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on 13 October 2026, using the European Commission's CosIng database and, where CosIng's exact-name search came back empty for a substance we expected to be regulated, the text of the amending regulations themselves.

Two rows deserve a second look.

Chlorphenesin is a preservative, it carries a tighter EU limit than phenoxyethanol, and it is on the current ingredient lists of the Niacinamide, the Hyaluronic Acid and the Natural Moisturizing Factors. In the Natural Moisturizing Factors, where Yuka's 46-ingredient listing matches the current list exactly, the app passed it as risk-free, and it flagged nothing but phenoxyethanol in the Hyaluronic Acid either. So the app is not flagging "preservatives with an EU limit". It is flagging phenoxyethanol specifically, and that is a judgement about one molecule rather than a reading of the law.

Retinol runs the other way. The EU decided in 2024 that retinol in face products should be capped at 0.3%, and from 1 November 2025 a product that does not comply may no longer be placed on the EU market; from 1 May 2027 it may not be sold there at all. The Ordinary labels this serum as 0.5% retinol. Yuka scores the retinol as risk-free and the trace antioxidant protecting it as high risk. If there is a regulatory question about this bottle, it is about the active, not the BHT. We have not checked what The Ordinary currently sells in EU shops, and we are not going to guess.

The Commission's caveat applies to every row: an entry in the CosIng inventory is not an authorisation, and only the Regulation itself has legal force.

Is The Ordinary "Yuka Approved"?

There is no such thing. Yuka scores products one at a time; it does not certify brands. On our seven readings, The Ordinary has two products at 93, one at 79 and four below 50, three of them in "Poor" and one in "Bad".

So the honest answer depends on the bottle. If you scan an acid, you will probably be pleased. If you scan a hydrating serum, you will probably see orange.

Which The Ordinary Product to Pick if You Care About the Score

For exfoliation, either acid. The Glycolic Acid 7% Toning Solution is the daily, gentler option; the Peeling Solution is a once-a-week treatment for skin that already tolerates acids. Both read 93, and the score is not the thing to worry about with either. Strength is.

For cleansing, the Squalane Cleanser at 79 contains nothing moderate or high risk.

For hydration, niacinamide or a moisturiser, none of The Ordinary's products we have read clears 50. If the score is your reason for scanning, those are the jobs to buy from another brand. The cheapest version of that decision is below.

For retinol, nothing in the range we have read scores well, and nothing we have read anywhere is a like-for-like replacement with a good score. More on that below.

Higher-Scoring Alternatives We Have Read

Every product here has a Yuka reading published on this site. We list nothing we have not scanned.

Each swap has a cost, and you should know it before you make it. The Skin1004 ampoule and the EQQUALBERRY serum carry niacinamide at around 4%, as recorded in our reviews of them, well under The Ordinary's 10%; if you bought the 10% for oil control, you are buying less of it. The Byoma toner is a lighter hydrating step, not a concentrated serum. And bakuchiol is not retinol. It is a plant compound marketed as a gentler alternative, and it is not a retinoid. If a dermatologist put you on retinol, a 24 on Yuka is not a reason to stop.

What We Have Not Read

Seven products is a sample of a range with dozens. We hold no reading for The Ordinary's Multi-Peptide Serum for Hair Density, which is the hair serum readers ask about, nor for its caffeine eye serum, its vitamin C products or its lactic acid. We are not going to estimate them from the pattern above, tempting as it is: a product's score depends on its whole list, and The Ordinary reformulates.

That last point already shows up in our own readings. Yuka's entry for the Niacinamide flags isoceteth-20 and lists eleven ingredients, while the current ingredient list published on INCIDecoder has twelve and no isoceteth-20. Yuka is probably showing an earlier formula. Phenoxyethanol is on both lists, so a current bottle would still sit below 50, but we would not promise you the exact number.

The Short Answer

The Ordinary scores unevenly on Yuka because its products are preserved differently. The water-free and acid products avoid phenoxyethanol and land in the nineties. The water-based serums and the moisturiser use it and are capped at 49. The retinol avoids phenoxyethanol and is capped at 24 by its antioxidant instead.

None of that tells you whether a product works. It tells you which one ingredient to look for on the label, and that is more useful than the number. Every reading is collected on The Ordinary's brand page.

Sources

• Yuka scores: read in the Yuka app by product name on 12 October 2026 (five products), or first published in the linked reviews where the table says so.
• Yuka scoring rules: Yuka help centre (help.yuka.io), "How are penalties calculated in the cosmetic product scores?", checked 13 October 2026.
• EU limits: Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 Annexes III and V, CosIng lookups of 13 October 2026; Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/1966 (salicylic acid), (EU) 2022/2195 (BHT) and (EU) 2024/996 (retinol), read in their published text on 13 October 2026. Regulation (EU) 2024/996 on EUR-Lex.
• Current ingredient lists: INCIDecoder product pages for each product, fetched 13 October 2026.