The bank holds no scalp product photography, no scrub jar, treatment bottle or bathroom-shelf frames, a gap the honesty section admits. The frame is the territory itself: hair drawn back off the hairline, the margin every record on this page is bought to treat.
Checked and updated October 2026
The short version. One basis, published in full below: the record the maker prints, because a scalp product is a promise about an exfoliant or an active, and on this shelf the promise divides cleanly in two. On one side, four over-the-counter drug records whose doses are printed because federal labelling compels them. On the other, cosmetic scrubs whose named exfoliants carry no quantity anywhere. The INKEY List’s Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment wins at 86, the one cosmetic record that volunteers its dose. The counts, each verified against the lists and panels printed on the cards: full records, ingredient lists or Drug Facts panels with inactive lists, are published for 8 of 8. A dosed active stands on 5 of 8, and of those five, 4 are dosed under a federal panel and 1 voluntarily. The named exfoliant stands first or second on 2 of 8, both of them sea salt. A printed use frequency stands on 8 of 8, the shelf’s fullest column. A printed contact time stands on 2 of 8. A Fragrance or Parfum entry stands on 5 of 8. And two corrections stand at the head of the paperwork column where they belong: the seat this page’s brief reserved for a Brickell scalp scrub is filled by the house’s drug record, because no scrub by that name stands in its line and its scalp record verifies as a federal panel; and the Jupiter below is not a cosmetic with a marketing percentage, it is an over-the-counter drug whose dose stands on its own DailyMed label.
First, the decision
One product, named before anything is scored: buy The INKEY List’s Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment. Its published record does the thing this shelf exists to test, and does it without being made to. The active stands third of 15 on a short, full list, and it is dosed, 2 percent, in the product’s name and on the maker’s page, beside two further doses the house prints the same way, 2.5 percent for the soothing blend it files as FluidPure 8G and 1 percent for the panthenol at fifth. The maker prints a pH, 4.0 to 4.5, answers the fragrance question with a plain no in its own FAQ, and prints the two terms a treatment is spent by: ten minutes on the scalp before shampooing, one to two times a week. The charges are printed on its card and priced into its score: the dose is voluntary, which means no panel audits it and the buyer takes the house’s word for its own numbers; the soothing blend the copy names files on the list as two separate lines, hexylene glycol ninth and capryloyl glycine tenth, so the named technology has no single seat to read; and the maker’s American store lists the bottle as notify-me at this check, so the card ships without a buy pill at the printed $17.00, a service fact graded in the open. What carries it to the top is the combination no other cosmetic record here attempts: a named active at a named seat, a printed dose, a printed clock and a printed pH, on a 15-line list a buyer can audit at a glance.
Now the naming paragraph, because this shelf’s central fact is a divide, and the divide is legal before it is cosmetic. On the scalp shelf, the dose exists where the law compels it, and is a marketing position everywhere else. Four of these eight records are drugs in American law, and their panels print the number because the panel must: ketoconazole 1 percent, selenium sulfide 1 percent, zinc pyrithione 1.0 percent, salicylic acid 1.80 percent. The four cosmetics print no quantity for anything, and their named exfoliants stand where they stand: sea salt first, twice, because salt is a scrub’s body and cannot hide; salicylic acid third on the winner, dosed by a house that doses everything; salicylic acid sixteenth and undosed on the apothecary scrub; and charcoal fourteenth on the scrub sent home, behind the cellulose that does its work. The desk’s rule, stated plainly once: a scalp record is graded on the document the buyer is handed, the dose where a dose is printed, the seat where only a seat is printed, and the silence where neither stands, and never on the exfoliant standing on its label. A cosmetic scrub is not a fraud for filing no dose; the law asks none of it. What is graded is the distance between the name and the record, and on this shelf that distance is measured in two currencies, percentages and positions.
The by-need rulings, one line each, printed here so a reader can leave with his answer before the cards:
Flakes with a named cause to treat: the winner (86) for a cosmetic routine, or the ketoconazole record (85) where a drug is wanted.
A medicated wash that reads like skincare: the Jupiter (83), its panel complete and its scent filed as oils.
The dosed ounce at drugstore arithmetic: the Head & Shoulders Clinical record (81), $0.89 an ounce.
A weekly salt reset, nothing to medicate: the Christophe Robin (75), a tablespoon at a time.
The salt scrub with the amino bench behind it: the Kiehl’s (73), bought for the salt at first and read here for the acid at sixteenth.
The dose column: four panels, one volunteer, three silences
Count the records that print a percentage for the ingredient they are sold on, and the shelf splits exactly along its legal seam. The four drug panels dose as a condition of being sold: the Nizoral’s ketoconazole at 1 percent, the only bottle of that molecule on the page; the Head & Shoulders Clinical’s selenium sulfide at 1 percent; the Jupiter’s zinc pyrithione at 1.0 percent, filed on its own DailyMed label under its maker’s name; and the Brickell’s salicylic acid at 1.80 percent, the shelf’s most precise figure, two decimal places of federal exactitude from the house this run has caught filing a charcoal with no charcoal in it. The volunteer is the winner: The INKEY List is a cosmetic, no panel compels it, and it prints three doses, 2 percent for the acid in its name, 2.5 percent for its soothing blend and 1 percent for its panthenol, because the percentage is the house’s entire format. The three silences are the cosmetic scrubs. The Christophe Robin doses nothing, and is charged least for it, because a salt scrub’s quantity is its crystal mass and its directions dose the use instead, a tablespoon. The Kiehl’s doses nothing, and its salicylic acid, an ingredient with a known drug dose in two records on this very page, stands sixteenth as a cosmetic garnish. And the Briogeo doses nothing at all, charcoal, cellulose or oil, which is one of the two facts it is sent home on. The column’s lesson is the page’s: a buyer who wants a number on this shelf can have one, but he will find it where the law put it, or in the one house that prints numbers for a living.
The exfoliant column: salt first, acid third, charcoal fourteenth
Ask the cosmetic lists only where the named exfoliant stands, and the seats tell the shelf’s story in four numbers. First, twice: sodium chloride opens the Christophe Robin’s 21 lines outright, the salt as the formula’s body with the surfactant standing second beneath it, and maris sal opens the Kiehl’s 34, the same construction in an apothecary accent. A salt scrub cannot seat its salt anywhere else; the ingredient is the product’s mass, and both records are credited for a name their first line cashes. Third: the winner’s salicylic acid, behind water and a propanediol solvent, the highest a dissolved active can reasonably stand and the only chemical exfoliant on the page filed inside a cosmetic list’s top half. Sixteenth: the Kiehl’s salicylic acid, the acid its retail copy headlines beside the salt, standing below its own fragrance at eleventh and its thickener at fourteenth, a supporting entry in a salt scrub wearing an acid’s headline. And fourteenth: the charcoal, on the record sent home, behind the microcrystalline cellulose at sixth, the plant-derived bead that does the scrubbing the name assigns to the charcoal. The drug records stand outside this column by design: their actives are not seated in lists at all, they are declared on panels, which is the stronger document, and the panels’ inactive lists are graded in the paperwork column for what can and cannot be read off them.
The clock column: eight frequencies, two contact times
The frequency column is the one column this shelf maxes out. Every record prints its cadence, eight of eight: once a week for both salt scrubs and for the scrub sent home, each in place of shampoo; one to two times a week for the pre-wash; and a floor of at least twice a week on all four drug panels, the monograph’s cadence repeated panel after panel, with the Jupiter’s maker advising three to four times a week to start on its own page, above its own panel’s floor, a tension printed on its card rather than smoothed over. The contact column is nearly as empty as the frequency column is full. Two records print how long the product should sit: the winner, ten minutes on a dry or damp scalp before shampooing, the longest clock on the page; and the Jupiter, whose panel itself, not its marketing, directs the buyer to let the lather sit two to three minutes, the only drug panel here that times its own contact. The Head & Shoulders panel prints the column’s strangest time, a five-minute rinse caution for bleached, tinted, grey or permed hair, a warning wearing a clock’s clothes. The other five records print no minutes at all: the salt is worked and rinsed, the drug lathers are massaged and rinsed, and the dose each delivers is set by a contact nobody specifies. This desk has argued before that the minute is a dose term; on the scalp shelf the minute is mostly an absence, and the two records that print it are the winner and the panel in skincare dress, which is where they stand in the ranking too.
The fragrance column: five entries, three empty chairs
A Fragrance or Parfum entry stands on five of the eight records, and its seats map the shelf’s price ladder inversely, as they did on the mask shelf. Highest stands the drugstore panel’s, fifth of 15 inactive ingredients on the Head & Shoulders record, ahead of its second cleanser. The prestige seats: ninth of 21 on the Christophe Robin, in a formula that also declares its scent’s allergens in a tail running to twenty-first; eleventh of 34 on the Kiehl’s, ahead of the salicylic acid its copy headlines; and twenty-seventh of 29 on the fuller rendering of the sent-home Briogeo, a seat the shorter retail rendering omits entire, a plurality the paperwork column prints. The Nizoral’s stands on its inactive list at a seat the label’s alphabetical filing makes unreadable, charged as an unreadable seat rather than a high one. The three empty chairs divide by construction: the winner files no scent and says so in its FAQ; the Jupiter scents itself with five peel and leaf oils and a vanillin standing nineteenth among its inactives, each filed as itself; and the Brickell scents itself with lavender, peppermint and tea tree oils filed the same way. The desk’s standing position holds: the entry is graded by its seat and its disclosure, and a shelf on which three records scent themselves without filing the word Fragrance at all has earned the column a paragraph of its own.
The paperwork column: alphabetical panels, a range name, and the record that was rested
Full records are published for eight of eight, and the desk credits the shelf-wide publishing before it reads a word. The paperwork problems are of five kinds. First, the panels that file alphabetically: a Drug Facts inactive list is not a cosmetic list, and two of the four panels here, the Nizoral’s and the Brickell’s, render their inactives in alphabetical order, water standing last on the Brickell’s, so that no seat inside them can be read as a concentration. What a panel guarantees is the active and its dose; the bench behind it is a cast list, not a ranking, and both cards print the caveat where a reader will meet it. The Jupiter’s panel is the exception that proves the reading possible: its 45 inactives run in concentration order, surfactants at the head and the declared allergen at the tail. Second, the range name: Clinical Strength is not one Head & Shoulders record but at least three, an Oil Control panel with 12 inactives, the Dry Scalp Rescue graded here with 15, and 2-in-1 variants beside them, one name over three documents; a buyer holding the name holds whichever panel his variant files. Third, the plurality in the scrub lists: the Christophe Robin circulates in two renderings, the maker’s 21 lines with Fragrance ninth, and a retail rendering of 23 that reseats the scent thirteenth and adds two tail entries, lilial and tree moss extract, that the maker’s list does not carry; the Briogeo circulates in a fuller rendering of 29 lines with Fragrance at twenty-seventh and a shorter retail rendering that omits the scent entry; and the Kiehl’s answers to three names in its maker’s own pages, Scrub Detox, Scalp Scrub Detox Treatment and Scalp-Detoxifying Treatment Scrub, over one 34-line list. Fourth, the seat that changed species: this page’s brief reserved a chair for a Brickell scalp scrub, and no product by that name stands in the house’s line; the house’s scalp record is its Relieving Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, an over-the-counter drug whose panel verifies on DailyMed, and it is graded in the scrub’s chair with the substitution printed, the run’s standing rule that a record is graded as the document it is. Fifth, the rested record, printed so the resting is auditable: the CeraVe Anti-Dandruff Hydrating Shampoo also verifies entire, a Drug Facts record with pyrithione zinc at 1.0 percent, 37 inactive ingredients in concentration order, no Fragrance entry anywhere, ceramides standing twelfth to fourteenth and a printed floor of at least twice a week, at $9.99 for 12 fl oz at Target, $0.83 an ounce, the cheapest dosed ounce this desk read for this page. It is rested, not ranked: the zinc seat is carried by the Jupiter, whose document is the fuller one, and a second zinc panel would duplicate the dose column the page is built to read. Its record stands here so a reader can see exactly what was left off, and why.
How the scores work
Every product is scored out of 100 on its published record, under a basis settled for this shelf in the grooming run’s five-row shape: ingredient and claim honesty, 30 (the fullness of the published record, whether it files a cosmetic list or a federal panel, where the exfoliant or active the product is named or sold for actually stands, whether any percentage is printed for it and under what compulsion, and whether a Fragrance entry stands and where); the active record, 20 (the named exfoliant’s or drug active’s identity, seat or dose as printed, and the bench standing around it); fit and format, 20 (which scalp and which routine the product actually serves, scrub against pre-wash against medicated wash, its printed use frequency and any printed contact time counted as dose terms, its tub, jar or bottle, its scent load and its sizes counted as fit facts); value per ounce, 15 (the checked shelf price divided by the container, printed in the table below so the arithmetic can be checked); and longevity and service, 15 (the stability of the formula record, the maker’s published service behind the product, and the house’s standing). Nothing here is a use test, and the discipline is printed because this shelf invites the confusion: efficacy is graded nowhere on this page. This desk scrubbed no scalp, timed no lather beyond reading the printed clocks, and asserts nothing about what any acid, salt or antifungal does to any head. A high score means the published record is strong. The desk grades documents, not scalps. No finish on this Card stands level.
Seven ranked, and the one sent home
The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment
The fullest voluntary document on the shelf, graded on the full list the maker publishes on its own page. It runs 15 lines: water, propanediol, and then the headline, salicylic acid standing third, dosed at 2 percent in the product’s name and on the maker’s page, the only cosmetic record here that prints a quantity for the ingredient it is sold on. The dosing does not stop at the headline: the maker prints 2.5 percent for the soothing blend it calls FluidPure 8G and 1 percent for the panthenol standing fifth, and a pH of 4.0 to 4.5 in its own FAQ, one of the run’s rare printed pH figures outside a drug panel. The directions are the shelf’s most exact cosmetic document: apply to a dry or damp scalp, leave ten minutes, rinse and shampoo, one to two times a week, with the maker’s FAQ answering the fragrance question in one word, no, and no Fragrance entry stands anywhere on the 15 lines. The charges are the audit and the blend. The dose is voluntary: no federal panel stands behind the 2 percent, and the buyer takes the house’s word for the house’s numbers, a trust the honesty row prices rather than ignores. And the named blend has no seat of its own: FluidPure 8G files on the list as its two components, hexylene glycol ninth and capryloyl glycine tenth, so the technology the copy names cannot be pointed at on the list it is sold on, the mask shelf’s lesson in miniature. The service charge is printed in this card’s price line: the maker’s American store lists the bottle as notify-me at this check, so the record a buyer cannot currently buy from its maker is graded with the stock-out in the open. What carries it to first is that it is the only record on the page that volunteers everything the drug panels are compelled to print, dose, clock, cadence and pH, and then files a list short enough to audit in one reading.
$17.00 for 150 ml (5.07 fl oz) at the maker (about $3.35 an ounce) (October 2026). No buy pill: the maker’s US store lists the bottle as notify-me at this check, and the capture is a November errand.
| Ingredient & claim honesty | 28 / 30 |
| Active record | 19 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 18 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 11 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 10 / 15 |
Nizoral Anti-Dandruff Shampoo
The shelf’s distinctive molecule on the shelf’s standard document, graded on its Drug Facts panel as filed on DailyMed. The panel’s head is the whole story told in one line: ketoconazole 1 percent, an antifungal active no other record on this page carries, with the purpose, the warnings and the directions in the federal format, and the cadence printed in the panel’s own consumer copy, use just twice a week to control your dandruff symptoms, then only as needed. Behind the active stand 17 inactive ingredients, and their filing is this card’s paperwork charge: the current label renders them alphabetically, benzyl alcohol first and water seventeenth, so the list is a cast and not a ranking, and no seat inside it can be read as a concentration, including the Fragrance entry the fresh scent in its name promises, which stands on the list at a position the alphabet chose. The credits are the panel’s completeness and the record’s stability: the full document, active, dose, directions, warnings and inactives, is published where any buyer can read it, the formula record has stood in this form for years, and the price is honest drugstore arithmetic, $2.41 an ounce for the shelf’s only ketoconazole. The charges beyond the alphabet are the scent and the system: a fragrance stands on a scalp drug’s list at all, disclosed but unseated, and the cleansing system is the laureth sulfate school, printed on the panel for a buyer to read rather than discovered on a cosmetic list. What carries it to second is the molecule and the document together: a unique active, dosed by law, at a twice-weekly cadence its own label prints in plain words.
$16.89 for 7 fl oz at Target (about $2.41 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $16.89 at Target| Ingredient & claim honesty | 24 / 30 |
| Active record | 19 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 16 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 12 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 14 / 15 |
Jupiter Anti-Dandruff Balancing Shampoo
The drug record that reads like a skincare launch, graded on its Drug Facts label as filed on DailyMed under its maker, Zero Flakes Given. The panel doses its active in the federal line, zinc pyrithione 1.0 percent, and then does two things no other panel on this page does: its 45 inactive ingredients run in concentration order, the isethionate cleansers at the head, the squalane its copy headlines standing twenty-second, the sugar kelp extract twenty-first, the rosemary oil seventeenth, the declared allergen linalool at the tail; and its directions print a contact time, massage to lather and let sit for two to three minutes, the minute admitted to a drug panel as a dose term. No Fragrance entry stands anywhere: the scent is filed as its parts, five peel and leaf oils and a vanillin at nineteenth, each an ingredient rather than a perfume. The maker’s own page repeats the dose in its copy, 1 percent zinc pyrithione, and adds a 30-day, no-questions guarantee and a free scalp brush, service terms printed where a buyer reads them. The charges are the cadence tension and the bench’s quiet members. The maker advises three to four uses a week to start where its own panel sets a floor of at least twice a week, two documents from one house pointing at two frequencies, both printed here. And the ordered inactive list carries two antiseptics the copy never mentions, octenidine HCl twenty-ninth and hexamidine diisethionate thirty-second, filed honestly on the panel and sold nowhere in the prose. A door plurality is printed beside the grade: Target lists the same 8.5-ounce bottle at $16.99 against the maker’s $28.00, and the value row grades the maker’s price, the door this card links. What carries it to third is completeness in both registers at once: a federal panel a reader can actually read in order, and a maker page that prints its dose, its clock and its guarantee in the same type as its promises.
$28.00 for 8.5 fl oz at Jupiter (about $3.29 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $28.00 at Jupiter| Ingredient & claim honesty | 26 / 30 |
| Active record | 18 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 17 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 10 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 12 / 15 |
Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Dry Scalp Rescue Shampoo
The mass-market drug record, graded on the Dry Scalp Rescue panel as filed on DailyMed, the variant its Target door sells. The panel is complete in the federal shape: selenium sulfide 1 percent at the head, the purpose stated, the directions setting the floor at least twice a week with a shake before use, and a caution this page counts in the clock column, rinse for five minutes on bleached, tinted, grey or permed hair, a contact time printed as a warning. The 15 inactive ingredients run in order: water, sodium lauryl sulfate, glycol distearate, sodium chloride, and Fragrance standing fifth, ahead of the second cleanser, the highest scent seat on the page, in a medicated shampoo whose menthol and two mint oils stand thirteenth to fifteenth behind it. The system is the sulfate school entire, disclosed on the panel rather than discovered, and the arithmetic is the shelf’s gentlest: $0.89 an ounce for a dosed federal document, the value row’s easiest mark here. The charges are the name and the scent’s seat. Clinical Strength is a range, not a record: the Oil Control sibling files 12 inactives, the 2-in-1 variants file their own lists, and a buyer who buys the name buys whichever panel his variant carries, a plurality printed on this card because the desk grades the panel in the hand, not the banner over the shelf. And the Fragrance at fifth is charged as a seat, in a drug whose buyers include the itchiest scalps in the store. What carries it to fourth is the combination the prestige half of this page cannot match: a complete, dosed, frequency-printed federal document at under a dollar an ounce.
$11.99 for 13.5 fl oz at Target (about $0.89 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $11.99 at Target| Ingredient & claim honesty | 22 / 30 |
| Active record | 17 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 15 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 14 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 13 / 15 |
Christophe Robin Cleansing Purifying Scrub with Sea Salt
The original salt scrub, graded on the full list the maker publishes. It runs 21 lines, and the first line is the product: sodium chloride, the sea salt of its name, standing first outright, with sodium laureth sulfate second, water third and the salt’s supporting cast behind, hydrated silica eighth as the second abrasive, Fragrance ninth, the carbohydrate complex its copy names tenth, bisabolol twelfth and sweet almond oil thirteenth, the scent’s allergens declared in a tail that runs to twenty-first. The directions dose the use because the formula cannot be dosed any other way: a tablespoon, once a week, in place of shampoo, or immediately after rinsing a colourant, the post-colour use printed on the maker’s own pages. The credits are the construction and the candour of the seat: a scrub whose exfoliant is its body cannot seat its name anywhere but first, and this record’s first line is its whole claim, cashed. The charges are the plurality and the price. A second rendering circulates at retail, 23 lines, which reseats the stearates, moves Fragrance to thirteenth and adds two tail entries the maker’s list does not carry, lilial and a tree moss extract, so the document a buyer reads depends on the door he reads it at; and one retail details panel describes the formula as sulfate-free over a list whose second line is a sulfate, an error in the retailer’s copy, printed here because the desk grades documents and that one is wrong. At $6.48 an ounce it is the dearest ounce on the page, mitigated only by the tablespoon the directions spend it in. What carries it to fifth is the first line: on a shelf of seated and dosed actives, this is the record whose name and whose formula are the same ingredient.
$54.00 for 8.33 oz (250 ml) at Nordstrom (about $6.48 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $54.00 at Nordstrom| Ingredient & claim honesty | 25 / 30 |
| Active record | 16 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 16 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 6 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 12 / 15 |
Kiehl’s Amino Acid Scalp Scrub Detox Treatment
The apothecary scrub, graded on its full list as published on its packaging records. It runs 34 lines: maris sal, sea salt, standing first, the scrub’s body in the open; a gentle syndet bench behind it, sodium cocoyl isethionate second, glycerin fourth, the glucoside cleansers fifth to tenth; Parfum standing eleventh; sodium chloride twelfth, table salt filing a second salt seat as a thickener; and salicylic acid sixteenth, the acid the house’s own copy headlines beside the salt, standing undosed in a cosmetic list, below its own fragrance and its xanthan thickener. Behind the acid the humectants and the babassu oil, and then the name’s payload arriving as a tail: the amino acids the product is called for, arginine twenty-first, aspartic acid twenty-second, and glycine, alanine, serine, valine, threonine, isoleucine, proline and phenylalanine running twenty-sixth to thirty-third, with histidine an eleventh amino name at thirty-fourth, ten by the house’s count, every one of them in the list’s last third. The maker’s cadence is printed on its own advice pages, once per week in place of shampoo, a frequency this card credits. The credits are the salt’s seat and the list’s fullness: 34 lines published entire, the working bench in the open, no silicone anywhere. The charges are the two distances: between the copy’s acid headline and the acid’s sixteenth seat, and between the name’s amino acids and their seats in the tail, where a blend functions as a humectant footnote rather than the formula’s engine. Nothing here is hidden; everything is seated deep, which is a different charge and the one this card prints. At $4.76 an ounce the arithmetic is mid-shelf and innocent. What holds it at sixth is that its two selling names, the acid and the amino blend, stand sixteenth and twenty-first at best, while its honest first line does the work alone.
$40.00 for 8.4 fl oz (250 ml) in the maker’s storefront listings (about $4.76 an ounce) (October 2026). No buy pill: the exact door for this record evaded capture in this pass, as the house’s pak door did on Card No. 99, and the capture is a November errand.
| Ingredient & claim honesty | 23 / 30 |
| Active record | 14 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 15 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 9 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 12 / 15 |
Brickell Relieving Anti-Dandruff Shampoo
The house record this run knows best, graded on a document type it has never filed here before: a federal Drug Facts panel, as filed on DailyMed. The panel’s head prints the shelf’s most precise dose, salicylic acid 1.80 percent, two decimal places, with the anti-dandruff purpose, a sunlight caution the other panels do not carry, and directions setting the floor at least twice a week. The 30 inactive ingredients are filed alphabetically, aloe leaf juice first and water twenty-sixth, so their order is the alphabet’s and no seat among them can be read as a strength: the hydrolyzed quinoa stands seventh because Q follows G, and the ziziphus joazeiro bark extract the maker’s copy headlines stands twenty-eighth because Z stands last, both printed here so a reader does not mistake the filing for the formula. No Fragrance entry stands anywhere; the scent is lavender, peppermint and tea tree oils, each filed as an oil. The credits are real and they are the panel’s: a complete federal document from a house whose cosmetic records have failed this desk’s audit three times, a charcoal mask whose list carried no charcoal among them, because here the law, not the house, holds the pen. The maker’s own scalp page repeats the federal number as its headline, 1.8 percent, the dose doing marketing work precisely because it is a labelling fact. The charges are the opacity around the panel: the bottle is sold inside the maker’s Hair System and through resellers, no standalone American shelf price was captured in this pass, so the value row grades an unpriced record low, and the directions print no contact time where the house’s retail record suggests a two to three minute massage its panel never specifies. What carries it to seventh is the panel itself; what holds it there is everything the panel does not govern, the price, the clock and the cast list’s unreadable order.
8 fl oz bottle, sold in the maker’s Hair System and by resellers. No standalone US shelf price was captured in this pass, so no per-ounce figure is printed. No buy pill: the exact standalone door evaded capture, and the capture is a November errand.
| Ingredient & claim honesty | 21 / 30 |
| Active record | 16 / 20 |
| Fit & format | 14 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 6 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 10 / 15 |
The numbers, side by side
| Scalp record | Score | Format | Record | Price | The record, as printed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment | 86 | Bottle, pre-wash | 15 lines, salicylic acid 3rd and dosed at 2%, no Fragrance entry | $17.00 / 150 ml at the maker | Three doses and a pH printed voluntarily; ten minutes, one to two times a week; the maker’s US store lists it notify-me |
| Nizoral Anti-Dandruff Shampoo | 85 | Bottle, medicated wash | Drug Facts panel, ketoconazole 1%, 17 inactives filed alphabetically | $16.89 / 7 fl oz at Target | The shelf’s only ketoconazole; twice a week in the panel’s own words; no seat inside the inactive list can be read |
| Jupiter Anti-Dandruff Balancing Shampoo | 83 | Bottle, medicated wash | Drug Facts panel, zinc pyrithione 1.0%, 45 inactives in concentration order | $28.00 / 8.5 fl oz at Jupiter | A two to three minute sit printed on the panel; no Fragrance entry; Target lists the same bottle at $16.99 |
| Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Dry Scalp Rescue | 81 | Bottle, medicated wash | Drug Facts panel, selenium sulfide 1%, Fragrance 5th of 15 inactives | $11.99 / 13.5 fl oz at Target | The cheapest dosed ounce on the page; the Clinical name covers at least three different panels |
| Christophe Robin Cleansing Purifying Scrub with Sea Salt | 75 | Tub, salt scrub | 21 lines, sodium chloride 1st, Fragrance 9th | $54.00 / 8.33 oz at Nordstrom | A tablespoon once a week in print; a second rendering runs 23 lines and seats the scent 13th |
| Kiehl’s Amino Acid Scalp Scrub Detox Treatment | 73 | Tub, salt scrub | 34 lines, sea salt 1st, salicylic acid 16th, Parfum 11th, amino bench 21st to 34th | $40.00 / 8.4 fl oz in the maker’s listings | Once per week on the maker’s advice pages; door uncaptured in this pass |
| Brickell Relieving Anti-Dandruff Shampoo | 67 | Bottle, medicated wash | Drug Facts panel, salicylic acid 1.80%, 30 inactives filed alphabetically | No standalone price captured | The house’s fullest document is the one the law writes; sold inside the maker’s Hair System |
| Briogeo Scalp Revival Charcoal + Coconut Oil Micro-Exfoliating Shampoo (skip) | 65 | Jar, scrub shampoo | 29 lines, coconut oil 3rd, cellulose 6th, charcoal 14th, Fragrance 27th | $42.00 / 8 fl oz at Sephora | Named for the charcoal at 14th; the cellulose at 6th does the exfoliating; no dose printed for anything |
The value table
Price per ounce against score, the arithmetic checkable. The shelf runs from $0.89 to $6.48 the ounce among the records that print a price, and its order is nearly the ranking read backwards at the top and forwards at the bottom: the dosed drugstore ounce is the cheapest thing here, the prestige salt is the dearest, and the winner sits in the middle, bought by the ten-minute application rather than by the jar.
| Scalp record | Score | Price per ounce | The verdict in one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Dry Scalp Rescue | 81 | $0.89 | The panel ounce: a complete federal document for under a dollar, Fragrance fifth and all. |
| Nizoral Anti-Dandruff Shampoo | 85 | $2.41 | The molecule ounce: the shelf’s only ketoconazole, dosed, at drugstore arithmetic. |
| Jupiter Anti-Dandruff Balancing Shampoo | 83 | $3.29 | The boutique drug ounce at the maker’s price; Target lists the same bottle at $2.00 an ounce. |
| The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment | 86 | $3.35 | The volunteer ounce: three printed doses and a pH, spent ten minutes at a time. |
| Kiehl’s Amino Acid Scalp Scrub Detox Treatment | 73 | $4.76 | The apothecary ounce: a salt scrub whose acid and amino acids stand in its second half. |
| Briogeo Scalp Revival Charcoal + Coconut Oil Micro-Exfoliating Shampoo (skip) | 65 | $5.25 | The fourteenth-line ounce: the shelf’s second-dearest, for a charcoal seated fourteenth, and sent home anyway. |
| Christophe Robin Cleansing Purifying Scrub with Sea Salt | 75 | $6.48 | The salt ounce: the page’s dearest, spent a tablespoon at a time, its first line its whole claim. |
| Brickell Relieving Anti-Dandruff Shampoo | 67 | Not printed | The unpriced ounce: no standalone American shelf price was captured in this pass, and the value row grades the opacity. |
The skip stands inside this table’s arithmetic and outside its ranking, as its aside prints: at $5.25 an ounce it is nearly the dearest record here, and it is sent home anyway, because an ounce of signage is not made honest by being scarce.
Which one to buy
A flaky, itchy scalp and a cosmetic routine: The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment, $17.00 at the maker, ten minutes before shampoo, one to two times a week, its dose and its pH in print.
Dandruff, treated as the drug it is: the Nizoral Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, $16.89 at Target, the shelf’s only ketoconazole at 1 percent, twice a week as its panel directs.
A medicated wash without the pharmacy register: the Jupiter Anti-Dandruff Balancing Shampoo, $28.00 at Jupiter, its panel in concentration order and its two to three minutes printed on the label.
The dosed document at the gentlest price: the Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Dry Scalp Rescue, $11.99 at Target, selenium sulfide 1 percent at $0.89 an ounce.
A weekly reset for an oily or post-colour scalp: the Christophe Robin Cleansing Purifying Scrub with Sea Salt, $54.00 at Nordstrom, a tablespoon once a week, bought for the salt at first on its list.
The salt scrub with a gentle surfactant bench: the Kiehl’s Amino Acid Scalp Scrub Detox Treatment, $40.00 in the maker’s listings, bought for the salt and the syndets, its acid read here first.
What we could not verify, and what we rested
The records were graded as published, and their provenance varies, printed here rather than tidied away. The winner’s list, doses, pH and directions were read on the maker’s own page and its FAQ; its American store lists the bottle as notify-me at this check, so no pill ships and the stock-out is printed on its card, a November errand. The Nizoral and Head & Shoulders panels were read on DailyMed, the federal label archive, and their prices on their Target pages the day of this check; the Nizoral panel graded is the plain shampoo’s, and its inactive list is rendered alphabetically on the current label, which its card states. The Jupiter’s panel was read on DailyMed under its maker’s name, its price and availability on the maker’s own store, and Target’s lower listing for the same bottle is printed on its card as a door plurality. The Christophe Robin was graded on the maker’s published list; the second rendering and the sulfate-free error stand on its Nordstrom page, which also carries its price. The Kiehl’s list stands on its packaging records as published, its cadence on the maker’s own advice pages, and its price, $40.00 for 8.4 fl oz, in the maker’s storefront listings; its exact door evaded capture in this pass, as the house’s pak door did on Card No. 99, so no pill ships. The Brickell panel was read entire on DailyMed; the bottle is sold inside the maker’s Hair System, a two-month three-product supply at $49.00, and through resellers, and no standalone American shelf price was captured in this pass, so no per-ounce figure is printed and no pill ships, both November errands. The skip’s fuller list stands on its professional retail record, its shorter rendering on a second retailer’s page, and its price on its Sephora page. Prices were checked on 22 October 2026 against merchant pages carrying the exact products named on the cards.
Rested, and why. The CeraVe Anti-Dandruff Hydrating Shampoo, the brief’s fallback seat, is rested as a ranking seat and printed as a record in the paperwork column: its panel verifies entire, pyrithione zinc 1.0 percent with no Fragrance entry, but the Brickell seat the brief named first verified as a drug record, and the zinc chair is carried by the fuller Jupiter document. Briogeo’s Scalp Revival MegaStrength+ shampoo is rested as a seat and cited on the skip’s card: a second record from a house already seated, and its dosed panel is the paperwork column’s evidence, not a ninth chair. The INKEY List’s own Glycolic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Scrub is rested: a second scrub from the winning house, whose salicylic record is the fuller document. Selsun Blue is rested: a third selenium sulfide school record would duplicate the Clinical panel’s dose column at a second door. And H&M is rested, as it has been across the run: no product from its shelf is scored on this page. The photograph gap is admitted plainly: the bank holds no scalp product photography, no scrub jar, treatment bottle or bathroom-shelf frames, the grooming run’s standing gap, so these cards run text-first and the hero is the territory itself, hair drawn back off the hairline in studio light. Product and shelf frames are wanted from the merchant programmes.
Questions, answered
What is the best scalp scrub or treatment for men?
On the published record, The INKEY List’s Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment at 86 of 100: the only cosmetic record on the shelf that doses its active voluntarily, salicylic acid at 2 percent standing third of 15, with two further doses printed beside it, 2.5 percent for its soothing blend and 1 percent for its panthenol, a pH of 4.0 to 4.5 in the maker’s own FAQ, a ten-minute application and a frequency of one to two times a week, at $17.00 for 150 ml at the maker, about $3.35 an ounce. Behind it the Nizoral drug record at 85, the Jupiter panel at 83, the Head & Shoulders Clinical panel at 81, the Christophe Robin salt scrub at 75, the Kiehl’s scrub at 73, the Brickell drug record at 67, and the charcoal scrub sent home at 65.
Why do only some of these bottles print a percentage?
Because on this shelf the dose exists where the law compels it and is a marketing position everywhere else. Five of the eight records print a dosed active. Four of the five print it under a federal Drug Facts panel: ketoconazole 1 percent on the Nizoral, selenium sulfide 1 percent on the Head & Shoulders Clinical, zinc pyrithione 1.0 percent on the Jupiter and salicylic acid 1.80 percent on the Brickell, each an over-the-counter drug whose label must carry the number. One prints it voluntarily: The INKEY List doses its salicylic acid at 2 percent because the house’s whole format is the percentage. The three cosmetic scrubs print no dose for anything: not for the Kiehl’s salicylic acid at sixteenth on its list, not for either sea salt, and not for the charcoal the sent-home scrub is named for.
Where does the named exfoliant stand on each list?
First on two of the eight: sea salt, filed as sodium chloride, stands first of 21 on the Christophe Robin and first of 34, as maris sal, on the Kiehl’s, the two records whose exfoliant is the formula’s body. Third on one: The INKEY List’s salicylic acid stands third of 15. Nowhere near the head on the sent-home record: the Briogeo’s charcoal powder stands fourteenth of 29, behind the microcrystalline cellulose at sixth that does the exfoliating its name assigns to the charcoal. The four drug records file their actives on panels rather than in lists, dosed to the decimal, and the seats inside their inactive lists cannot always be read: two of the panels file those lists alphabetically.
How often should a scalp scrub or medicated shampoo be used?
Every record on this page prints its frequency, the shelf’s fullest column at eight of eight, and the numbers divide by species. The scrubs are weekly instruments: once a week for the Christophe Robin, in place of shampoo, once per week for the Kiehl’s on the maker’s own advice pages, and weekly in place of shampoo for the Briogeo sent home. The pre-wash prints one to two times a week, with ten minutes on the scalp before shampooing. The four drug panels set a floor of at least twice a week, and the Jupiter’s maker advises three to four times a week to start, above its own panel’s floor. Read the printed cadence on the bottle in front of you: a scrub used daily and a drug used monthly are both being spent against their documents.
Is a dandruff shampoo a drug?
Four of the eight records on this page are, in American law, over-the-counter drugs, and their documents say so in the federal format: a Drug Facts panel with the active ingredient and its percentage at the head, a stated purpose, warnings, directions with a use frequency, and an inactive list. The Nizoral (ketoconazole 1 percent), the Head & Shoulders Clinical (selenium sulfide 1 percent), the Jupiter (zinc pyrithione 1.0 percent) and the Brickell (salicylic acid 1.80 percent) all file panels. The other four are cosmetics, whose lists carry no dose and whose claims are graded as claims. The distinction is this page’s spine: the drug records’ numbers are not marketing, they are labelling, and the cosmetic records’ silence about quantity is legal, common and graded here as the document it is.
Which of these scalp records are fragrance-free?
Three of the eight file no Fragrance or Parfum entry at all: The INKEY List treatment, whose maker’s FAQ answers the fragrance question with a plain no; the Jupiter, which scents itself with the peel and leaf oils and the vanillin standing in its inactive list; and the Brickell, scented by its lavender, peppermint and tea tree oils, each filed as an oil rather than as a scent. A Fragrance entry stands on the other five: ninth of 21 on the Christophe Robin, eleventh of 34 on the Kiehl’s, twenty-seventh of 29 on the fuller rendering of the Briogeo, fifth of 15 inactive ingredients on the Head & Shoulders panel, and on the Nizoral’s inactive list, where the label’s alphabetical filing makes its seat unreadable.
Why was the Briogeo scrub sent home?
Because its name assigns the work to an ingredient its own list seats fourteenth. The jar is sold as a Charcoal + Coconut Oil Micro-Exfoliating Shampoo, and the full published list runs 29 lines: the coconut oil the name promises stands third, fairly, but the charcoal powder stands fourteenth, behind the microcrystalline cellulose at sixth, which is the exfoliant the formula actually scrubs with and which the name does not mention. No dose is printed for the charcoal, the cellulose or anything else on the record, and the fuller of the two renderings in circulation files a Fragrance entry at twenty-seventh that the shorter retail rendering omits. The formula underneath is a competent weekly scrub at $5.25 an ounce, the shelf’s second-dearest, and priced as one it would grade as one. Sold as a charcoal exfoliator, it is graded as a charcoal exfoliator. Scored 65 and sent home.
The scalp shelf continues at Card No. 70, shampoos, the daily records every treatment on this page is measured against, Card No. 71, conditioners, Card No. 99, hair masks and deep conditioners, where the minute returned as a dose term, Card No. 98, hair oils, where the same species question was asked of the finishing shelf and answered the same way, and the argument this Card’s clock column descends from, that the minute is the dose, is made in Take No. 8, the minute is the dose.
Checked and updated October 2026