The Guru Index app reads the label on the product in your hand and shows you what the world's most trusted skincare experts have said about it. Free, for iPhone, no account needed.
It installs through TestFlight, Apple's own early-access app, which is where it lives while the App Store version is in review. One tap, nothing to sign up for.
You are in front of a shelf with forty moisturizers on it and no way to tell which ones anybody credible has actually tried. That is the whole problem this solves.
Point the camera at the label. No barcode to find, no typing, and the photo is used to read the label and then discarded.
If we hold the product, you get its Guru Score straight away, as a percentage, with the number of experts it is built from.
One tap opens the full verdict, where every take is quoted and attributed to the expert who said it, with the date.
The Guru Score is not our opinion. We follow the skincare experts people actually watch, among them dermatologists, cosmetic chemists and estheticians, and we go through what they say about specific products in their own videos.
The score is our read on how warmly they talk about a product, not a simple thumbs up or down. An unreserved rave counts for more than a lukewarm "it is fine, but it is pricey". A product a dozen experts have weighed in on counts for more than one that two people liked. When the experts are split, the score sits in the middle rather than hiding the disagreement.
The app is reading the same index as this website, so it is as current as the site is, and it gets more products every night without you updating anything.
The app carries all of it, not a sample: more than 42,000 individual expert takes, each one attributed and linked to the moment in the video it came from. If we hold a product, the scan finds it. If we do not, the app says so plainly and shows you what we hold from that brand instead, which is usually the more useful answer on a shelf.
Dermatologists, plastic surgeons, estheticians and cosmetic chemists.
Skincare and beauty, each with the expert takes shown underneath.
From the household names to the ones only the experts talk about.
The same rules the website runs on, because it is the same index.
Not summarised into a verdict you cannot check. You read what the expert said, and you can open the video at the moment they said it.
A take given in a paid partnership stays on the page, labelled, and counts for half as much. An expert reviewing their own brand is labelled too, and their take carries no weight at all in that product's score.
Placement is not for sale. Being found, ranked or approved is not something a brand can buy.
The scanner is never behind a login. Signing in is optional, and it only exists so your wish list survives a new phone.
Nothing in the app is medical advice. If a product or a skin concern worries you, ask your own doctor or pharmacist.
There is nothing to buy from us. Where a retailer link exists we show it, and we say when it earns us a commission.
We review nothing ourselves. Every verdict in the app belongs to a named expert who said it in public.
The photo is read and discarded. There is no advertising tracker in the app, and what you scan is yours.
Free, for iPhone. It installs through TestFlight while the App Store version is in review with Apple, and there is nothing to sign up for.
Get it for iPhone