The bank holds no cleanser product photography, a gap the honesty section admits. The frame is skin in daylight, which is what this shelf is graded on: what a formula prints, not what it promises.

Checked and updated October 2026

First, the decision

A cleanser is not a moisturizer with the sign flipped. It is a short-contact instrument: on, worked for thirty to sixty seconds, off. That is why this Card is built on the published record alone, the full ingredient list in the order the maker prints it, the Drug Facts panel where the product is a drug, and the maker's own claims graded as claims. Nothing here asserts what a formula does to a face. It asserts what a formula prints, and whether the printing is honest.

Three species stand on this shelf, graded as themselves. The daily rinse-off (four of the seven ranked) is built to remove the day and nothing else. The treatment cleanser (three) carries an acid, and in the United States the two sold as acne treatments are legally drugs, with panels, percentages and twice-a-day rhythms; they are still rinse-off products, which means the acid's working time is the time the reader gives it, not the night a leave-on treatment gets. The exfoliating scrub is the third species, and the one sent home: grit instead of chemistry, on a shelf where the skincare Decoder has already printed this desk's doctrine, exfoliation gently and rarely, once or twice a week, done evenly by a mild acid rather than violently and unevenly by a scrub.

Dry, or tight after washing: the two creams, CeraVe Hydrating (88) and La Roche-Posay Toleriane Hydrating (83); the first has no dedicated surfactant at all, the second keeps its surfactant down at 10th of 16. Reactive or fragrance-averse: Vanicream Gentle (86), 12 ingredients and an absence list that runs to masking fragrance. Congested, and wanting a number: The INKEY List (82), the only maker that puts its percentage in the product's name; CeraVe Renewing SA (78) if the face also runs rough, with the caveat printed on its card. The legacy drug at drugstore money: Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash (74), $0.99 an ounce, fragrance and dyes included in that price. The prestige shelf: Fresh Soy (68) is a well-mannered gel whose record does not carry $7.80 an ounce. Exfoliation: not a daily cleanser's job; see the verdict box.

The acid column: the number exists where the law asks for it

Four records in this field involve salicylic acid, the Decoder's clogged-pore specialist. Two are over-the-counter drugs, and their Drug Facts panels print the strength because the panel compels it: Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash, salicylic acid 2 percent, and The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Cleanser, salicylic acid 2 percent, the same figure carried on its US drug label. The INKEY List goes further than the law: the percentage is in the product's name on its own store, its FAQ answers the question "what percent" with "2 percent", and it publishes a pH of 4.5 to 5.0 besides. It is the only maker in the field that volunteers the number as the headline.

The third record is the finding. CeraVe Renewing SA Cleanser is built and named around the same acid and sold as a cosmetic, so no percentage is owed and none is printed, anywhere, by the brand. On its published list the acid sits 16th of 29, behind niacinamide at 5th and behind a second acid the name never mentions, gluconolactone at 6th, a gentle surface acid doing quiet work while the famous one lends the tube its initials. The same house prints 2 percent on the drug labels it sells, so the silence is a shelf decision, not a house style. And the fourth record closes the column: the scrub sent home contains no salicylic acid at all in the version graded, while its sibling tube, near-identical on the shelf, is a drug printing 2 percent on its front. Of the three acid cleansers ranked, 2 of 3 print the strength. The one that does not is the one the law does not make.

The fragrance column: a scent system in a sixty-second product

The second count is shorter because the field is mostly clean. A Parfum or Fragrance entry appears in 2 of 8 records: Neutrogena's drug, where Fragrance sits 10th of 18 inactive ingredients and the list is closed out by two dyes, Yellow 5 and Red 40, colour in a product rinsed off in a minute; and the skip, Parfum 19th of 24. A third record carries a scent without the word: Fresh Soy's fragrance is its own botanicals, rosewater, rose oil and cucumber, itemised as ingredients rather than blended behind a Parfum entry, which the desk credits as the honest way to scent a product. The other five records print no scent system at all.

No maker doses any of it. Position on the list is the only public trace of how much scent a formula carries, and in a rinse-off product the scent is the one system with no functional work to do in the time available: it cannot cleanse, it cannot treat, it can only be smelled in the shower and, on a reactive face, objected to. That is why the Decoder's sensitive rule, quoted in the moisturizer Card and repeated here because this Card is its sibling, is fragrance-free everything, one new product at a time, and why the two scented-by-entry records sit where they sit in the table.

How the scores work

The basis is the moisturizer Card's, unchanged, because the class grades identically: a published list, an absence list, a claim set, a price per ounce, and a species. Active record, as published (30): the cleansing system and the named actives in the order the maker prints them, Drug Facts percentages where the product is a drug, positions where it is not. In a rinse-off, celebrated barrier ingredients are graded as a gentleness record, not a treatment record, because sixty seconds is the contact the formula gets. Formulation honesty (20): full lists published, absence lists itemised, no actives hiding behind proprietary blends, divergences between a maker's list and a retailer's rendering printed rather than smoothed over. Claim discipline (20): claims bounded and footnoted earn; percentages that exist only where the law compels them, superlatives, and sample sizes of 11 lose. Acne language is the makers' regulated claim, graded as a claim; this desk makes no efficacy or medical claims of its own. Value per ounce (15): the arithmetic in the open, door prices, with size spreads printed. Format and species clarity (15): the product is honestly the species it claims to be, rinse-off, treatment or scrub, with its rhythm and its crossovers stated on the pack. The full method is on the methodology page, and the routine these cleansers open is the skincare Decoder; what follows a wash is ranked in the moisturizer Card.

Seven ranked, and the one sent home

The numbers, side by side

Two of the three salicylic acid cleansers print their strength, both of them drugs; the cosmetic prints none. Five of the eight records print no scent system at all, and none of the eight wears a men's name: this shelf is the pharmacy shelf, and the desk graded what is actually bought.

Value per ounce, in the open

Which one to buy

Most faces: CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser (88). The gentlest full record in the field, no fragrance, no dedicated surfactant to argue with, and $1.33 an ounce while doing it. The reactive face: Vanicream Gentle (86), the shortest list money buys, one new product at a time per the Decoder's rule. The dry face that wants the pharmacy upgrade: La Roche-Posay Toleriane Hydrating (83), bought at Target's price, not Ulta's. Congestion with a number to read: The INKEY List (82), used as a treatment with a drug's rhythm, not as a twice-a-day habit by default; CeraVe Renewing SA (78) for the rough-and-bumpy record, bought in the 12-ounce size. The legacy drug, knowingly: Neutrogena (74), the cheapest honest ounce of 2 percent, fragrance included. The gift-shop shelf: Fresh Soy (68) smells like a garden and washes like a mild gel; buy it for those reasons with the arithmetic in front of you, or not at all. Sent home: the apricot scrub (46). Follow any of them with the moisturizer Card's winner, and run the whole routine by the Decoder.

How we know: the honesty section

The winner's two lists. CeraVe Hydrating is graded on the maker's published list, glycerin 2nd and ceramides at 7, 8 and 9 of 24, corroborated by the maker's own regional sites and multiple ingredient records in agreement. Ulta's product page prints the same formula in a different order, phenoxyethanol 4th and the ceramides at 16, 17 and 23, which is why this desk grades makers' lists and treats retailer renderings as renderings. A legacy list carrying methylparaben and propylparaben still circulates in grocery records; the current list carries neither, and the page grades the current one.

Two of the ranked seven are drugs. Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash and The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Cleanser are over-the-counter drugs in the United States; their strengths, directions and warnings quoted here come from their published Drug Facts panels, and any acne language attached to them is the maker's regulated claim, graded as a claim. The desk asserts nothing about what any of these products does to any face, and nothing on this page is medical advice.

The house's own correction, printed. Neutrogena now sells an Oil-Free Acne Wash Sensitive Skin version, fragrance-free by name, whose published drug label (first marketed July 2024) drops the olefin sulfonate for a milder surfactant system and carries no fragrance and no dyes. The Card grades the original, the version the name made famous, and prints the sibling because the sibling is evidence the house read the same list this desk did.

The scrub's two tubes. The St. Ives record graded is the published list of the plain apricot exfoliant: walnut shell powder 2nd, Parfum 19th, apricot extract 23rd of 24, no salicylic acid. Its sibling, sold under the same apricot banner in a near-identical tube, is an acne drug whose label prints salicylic acid 2 percent. Regional variants of the plain scrub's list reorder slightly; the positions graded are the published record's.

The bar species was read and rested. Bar cleansers were checked for this field and rested to a later pass: the one bar record captured in checking, a salicylic acid cleansing bar at Target, belongs to a house already ranked twice on this page, and the desk does not grade a species on a single borrowed record. If readers want the bar Card, it will be built the same way, on lists.

Doors. Seven of seven buy doors were verified live on the merchant's own domain on the day of checking. Six are exact product pages, including the maker's own stores for The INKEY List and Fresh and the Mayo Clinic Store for Vanicream. Neutrogena's door is a Target search page, class (c) under this desk's deep-link rule, because the wash's exact listing moves between Target's rotating product pages; the price on its card, $8.99 for 9.1 fl oz, is Target's own published figure for the product. The skip ships no door, by this desk's standing pattern. Fresh's own US page opens on a $16.00 travel size; the $39.00 full-size figure on its card is the maker's published full-size price, corroborated by Sephora's listing.

The photo gap, admitted again. The image bank holds no cleanser product photography and no bathroom-shelf frames; a fresh sweep on the day of building confirmed it. The cards therefore run text-first, the rows carrying the evidence, and the hero is a bank portrait frame, captioned honestly. When licensed brand creative reaches the desk, this page gets its product frames; until then the gap is printed rather than papered over with a stock tube.

Questions the desk hears

Verdict Card No. 67. The grooming run continues: the moisturizer Card (No. 66), the deodorant Card (No. 65), the skincare Decoder this page answers to, the Grooming Take on the claims behind the shelf, and hair and scent in the sea salt spray Card and the fragrance Card.

Checked and updated October 2026