Food and cosmetic scanner website, barcode app, ingredient ratings, nutrition labels, additives, beauty products, independent recommendations, and consumer health choices

Yuka

Yuka is a website and mobile app that scans food, beauty, and personal care products, explains ingredient and nutrition ratings, and suggests healthier alternatives when a product receives a low score.

Official site

yuka.io is the main public website for Yuka and its food and cosmetic scanner app.

Product areas

Yuka covers food products, beauty products, personal care products, ingredients, additives, and nutrition labels.

Database

Yuka's app page lists 4 million food products and 2 million cosmetic products.

Yuka is a food and cosmetic scanner website and app that explains product ratings and ingredient concerns.View image on Wikimedia Commons

What Yuka is

Yuka is a website and mobile app for scanning food, beauty, and personal care products by barcode. The app gives products a color-coded score, explains why the score was assigned, and can recommend similar products with better ratings. The official Yuka app is available on the App Store and Google Play.

How scanning works

A user scans a product barcode, and Yuka matches it to a product record in its database. The app then shows a product sheet with the score, nutrition or ingredient details, and reasons for any concerns. If a product scores poorly, Yuka may show independent alternatives rather than paid placements.

Food ratings

Yuka says food scores are based on three criteria: nutritional quality, additives, and whether a product has an official organic label. Its help page says nutrition accounts for most of the score, additives are assessed using scientific and institutional sources, and the organic dimension is treated as a smaller bonus.

Cosmetic ratings

For cosmetics and personal care products, Yuka analyzes ingredients and assigns risk categories based on possible health or environmental effects such as endocrine disruption, allergenicity, irritation, carcinogenicity, or pollution. The score is strongly shaped by the highest-risk ingredient present in the product.

Independence model

Yuka presents itself as an independent project: brands cannot pay to influence scores, and the app does not sell advertising space to manufacturers. The company says its funding model is designed to avoid conflicts of interest, with premium features helping support the project.

Why it matters

Food and cosmetic labels can be hard to interpret quickly in a store. A scanning app like Yuka matters because it turns dense labels into a simplified explanation, helping consumers compare products, notice additives or ingredients of concern, and ask better questions about everyday purchases.

Limits and interpretation

A simplified score is not a medical diagnosis, allergy warning system, or full diet plan. Product records can be incomplete or corrected over time, ingredient risk depends on exposure and context, and a low score may reflect Yuka's precautionary approach rather than a regulatory finding that a product is unsafe.

WHOIS domain data

Data pulled: June 1, 2026View current WHOIS record

Domain: yuka.io
IP address: 46.101.146.164
Registrar: Gandi SAS
WHOIS server: whois.gandi.net
Referral URL: https://www.gandi.net
Created: December 14, 2016
Updated: November 18, 2025
Expires: December 14, 2026
Nameservers: ns1.digitalocean.com (172.64.52.210); ns2.digitalocean.com (172.64.53.21); ns3.digitalocean.com (172.64.49.209)
Domain status: clientTransferProhibited
Contact privacy: Registrant name and contact details are redacted; the registrant organization is listed as Yuca SAS, and admin and technical contact details are redacted.

Key concepts

Barcode scanningmatching a product code to a product database record.
Color-coded scorea simplified visual rating that summarizes Yuka's assessment.
Additive assessmentreviewing food additives and assigning risk levels based on selected evidence.
Precautionary principleflagging potential concerns even when a substance may comply with current regulations.

Website and app features

Scan food, beauty, and personal care products by barcode.
View product sheets with scores, ingredient details, and explanations.
See alternatives for some products that receive low ratings.
Use premium features such as search, offline scanning, and dietary preference detection where available.

Common misconceptions

A Yuka score is not the same as a doctor's advice or a public-health regulation.
A product with a poor rating is not automatically illegal or proven harmful in normal use.
A high score does not mean a food fits every diet, allergy, medical condition, or personal preference.
Yuka is not only a food scanner; it also evaluates cosmetics and personal care products.

Open questions

How should scanner apps explain uncertainty without making labels harder to understand?
Can simplified scores reflect dose, exposure, diet context, and product category fairly?
How quickly can product databases keep up with reformulations, regional labels, and user corrections?
Will consumer scanner apps push brands toward clearer labels, reformulation, or more public ingredient data?