Evigrade
DrugsCosmetic ingredientsCalculatorsInteractionsEvigrade SkinEvigrade Meds ↗
ConditionsJournalMethodologyPro for practitioners
ESRU

Why Evigrade

Doctor-built ingredient and drug reference for people who read labels

Evigrade scans skincare product pages and shows a traffic-light verdict on every ingredient: green, yellow, or red. Built by an MD with a primary-care background on peer-reviewed dermatology data. Free covers ingredients; Pro adds a drug interaction reference.

From a recurring question to a Chrome extension

I am Viktoriya Gankova, MD, a general practitioner by training and a medical editor. I built Evigrade around one question that comes up all the time: does this cream, supplement or drug have evidence behind what it promises?

Checking every ingredient against PubMed is not realistic for a normal person. Most ingredient apps either oversimplify or push you to buy something. I wanted a tool that tells you what the literature actually says, without an agenda.

Evigrade installs in Chrome. On any skincare product page – Sephora, Amazon, niche brand sites – it pulls the ingredient list and color-codes each one based on published research. Green is well-tolerated. Yellow has caveats (irritation, photosensitivity, mixed evidence). Red has documented harm or strong contraindications. Click any ingredient to see the source.

The Pro tier adds a drug interaction reference for users on retinoids, isotretinoin, immunosuppressants or any therapy where layered topicals matter. Free stays genuinely free with no upsell on the basic ingredient view.

Why we build this now

The average shopper sees more skincare and supplement options than ever, while the evidence behind each ingredient sits in journals and regulatory PDFs. Official information about a drug is spread across AEMPS, EMA and FDA labels, Cochrane reviews and the guidelines of specialty societies.

Checking all of that for one product takes hours. Evigrade puts the sources on one page, links to each of them and gives every claim a tier from A to F.

How we rate

Verdicts come from PubMed, the CIR (Cosmetic Ingredient Review) reports, AAD and EADV dermatology guidelines, EMA assessment reports and FDA labels. For drugs we add ESC, ACC/AHA, ADA, EASD, NICE, IDSA, NCCN and Cochrane systematic reviews. Each entry stores its citation list and a published methodology.

We assign tiers A through F based on GRADE and the Oxford CEBM Levels of Evidence. Yellow means "depends on your skin type, sun exposure, or formulation," not "scary chemical." Ratings get re-evaluated when new randomised trials, meta-analyses or updated guidelines appear.

Frequently asked questions

How is Evigrade different from Yuka, Think Dirty or INCIDecoder?
Three things. Source transparency – click any ingredient and you see the actual paper or guideline behind the verdict, not a black-box score. Conservative when evidence is mixed – a lot of consumer apps either bash everything or rubber-stamp everything; we try to match how a dermatologist would rate it. Drug interactions – none of the others check whether your topical isotretinoin conflicts with what is in your foundation. That is the Pro tier.
Where do the verdicts come from?
PubMed, the CIR (Cosmetic Ingredient Review) reports, dermatology society guidelines (AAD, EADV) and regulatory assessments (FDA, EMA, AEMPS). For each ingredient there is a stored citation list and the verdict logic is published on the methodology page. If a paper updates or contradicts it, the verdict changes. Disputed verdicts are rechecked in scheduled card audits.
Free vs Pro – what is actually free?
Everything skincare-side is free forever. No paywalls on ingredient scans, no premium verdicts, no limits per day. Pro is purely the medication interaction layer. If you are not on any meds, you will never see the upsell.
What data do you collect?
The extension reads the product page DOM client-side to extract the ingredient list. No browsing history is sent anywhere. Ingredient lookups hit our API anonymously without a user ID unless you sign in for Pro. We do not run analytics on individual scans.
Why a GP and not a dermatologist?
Ingredient assessment is mostly work with the literature and toxicology data. Where dermatology details matter (retinoids, photosensitizers, rosacea triggers), we follow the AAD and EADV guidelines. Drug interactions are core general practice work.
Does it work outside Chrome?
The Evigrade Skin and Evigrade Meds extensions install from the Chrome Web Store into Chrome and Chromium-based browsers: Edge, Brave, Opera. There are no Firefox or Safari versions yet, and no date for them. The website opens in any browser with the full reference, composition comparison and calculators, and on a phone you can take a photo of the ingredient list on the pack.

Done so far

  • Composition comparison for several products, on the website and in the Skin extension
  • The interaction reference has grown to over 1,100 pairs written up across more than 200 substances
  • Interaction mentions from AEMPS and FDA labels on drug pages, more than 4,000 of them confirmed against the exact quote
  • Pregnancy and lactation: a section on drug pages, a pregnancy rating on ingredient pages and a filter in the Skin extension

What's next

  • More summaries of Spanish AEMPS labels on the Spanish version of drug pages, each one checked twice against the label text
  • Checking the severity of written-up pairs against AEMPS and FDA labels where the label is milder than our rating
  • A change history on every card and an open list of our own errors with the fixes

Try Evigrade

Install the Chrome extension in one click. The full ingredient database, drug reference and clinical calculators stay free.

Install for Chrome