Cruelty-free & vegan makeup brands

Cruelty-free means a product — and its ingredients — were not tested on animals, by the brand or anyone acting for it. The word itself is not legally protected, so look for an independent certification such as Leaping Bunny or PETA’s Global Animal Test-Free logo rather than a brand’s own claim.

No. Cruelty-free is about animal testing; vegan is about ingredients. A cruelty-free lipstick can still contain carmine or beeswax, and a vegan product can come from a company that tests on animals where the law requires it. If you want both, look for brands marked “100% vegan” here, or for the Vegan Society trademark or PETA’s “Animal Test-Free and Vegan” logo.

They measure different things. Leaping Bunny requires a supplier monitoring system, a fixed cut-off date and accepts independent audits, but says nothing about ingredients. PETA’s list is free to join and based on a signed company assurance; its vegan logo also covers ingredients. The Vegan Society trademark covers both ingredients and testing for each registered product. Many shoppers look for Leaping Bunny plus a vegan mark.

Not necessarily. The EU banned animal testing of cosmetics and the sale of animal-tested cosmetics (fully from 2013), but PETA points out loopholes: products tested on animals elsewhere can still be sold in the EU if those test data aren’t used for EU safety assessment, and some ingredients are tested for worker or environmental safety under chemicals law.

Yes — certifiers such as Leaping Bunny and PETA assess the brand itself, so a certified brand can belong to a group that sells animal-tested products elsewhere. Some shoppers avoid those brands because their money ultimately supports the parent; others buy them to show demand for cruelty-free lines. We show the parent company where a certifier names it, so you can decide.

Less often than before. Since 1 May 2021 imported general cosmetics can skip mandatory animal testing if the manufacturer has a GMP certificate from its home country and a full safety assessment. Special-use cosmetics such as hair dyes, sunscreens and whitening products, products for children and new ingredients can still require testing — which is why certifiers check each brand’s China sales individually.

Check the ingredient list (INCI) for carmine (CI 75470), beeswax (cera alba), lanolin, guanine (CI 75170), shark squalene, keratin, collagen, shellac, tallow, honey, silk and snail secretion filtrate. Some names, like glycerin or stearic acid, can be plant or animal — a vegan logo or a brand that is 100% vegan removes the guesswork.

We only list brands we have verified against a certifier’s database or the brand’s own published policy, and we add brands gradually. A brand being absent does not mean it tests on animals — it means we have not checked it yet. Search the Leaping Bunny, PETA and Vegan Society databases yourself, or suggest the brand with a source link.

Every brand is checked against the certifier’s own database — Cruelty Free International and Leaping Bunny’s shopping guides, PETA’s Ultimate Cruelty-Free List and the Vegan Society’s trademark search — or, where no certifier lists it, the brand’s own published statement, which we label as such. Each badge links to its source with the date we checked it. Statuses change, so use “Report an error” if something is out of date.