The Beauty Scorecard
We rate beauty brands the way we rate everything, on specific, checkable facts. We scored 17 makeup and skincare brands. The drugstore names beat almost every celebrity and luxury brand we scored.
The cheapest brands scored highest
The top makeup brand is e.l.f. Cosmetics at 8.8/10. The top skincare brand is CeraVe at 8.0/10. Both are drugstore brands. Neither is a celebrity line or a luxury label.
"Celebrity brand" predicts nothing
Some earned it: Rihanna's Fenty Beauty scored 8.0, Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty scored 8.0. But Hailey Bieber's Rhode scored 5.4 — below The Ordinary, whose serums start around $6.
Luxury underdelivered
The lowest-scoring makeup brand is Charlotte Tilbury, at 5.0/10. NARS scored 5.3. Drunk Elephant, a premium "clean" skincare line, scored 5.4.
The takeaway
Price and formula predicted the score. The celebrity attached to it did not. Across 17 brands, you're often paying for the name, not the product.
Each score is the average of independent dimension ratings — price, ingredients, performance, and more — tied to specific facts and not influenced by affiliate relationships. See how scores work →