✦ Free forever Healthy choices shouldn't be behind paywalls — Try KindlyChecked
Considerate · Clear · Never alarmist

The label,
kindly checked.

Scan any food, cosmetic, or cleaning product. We read what's actually inside and tell you plainly — no moralizing labels, no anxiety bait, no paywall. Just the kind of honest read a friend who happens to know about this stuff would give you.

Live demo · real data
Try a real scan

Pick a sample — we'll fetch it from Open Food Facts and score it live.

3M+
Products in database
3
Categories scored
340+
Hazardous ingredients flagged
$0
Forever · No paywall
Real products · real scores

From 13 to 100, no punches pulled.

Scroll to see more →
Cola
Coca-Cola Classic
Coca-Cola
13 Heavy
nutella
Hazelnut spread
Nutella · Ferrero
18 Heavy
COOKIES
Belvita breakfast
Mondelez
41 Mixed
OAT milk
Oat Milk, original
Oatly
78 Solid
ORGANIC Quinoa
Organic quinoa
Bob's Red Mill
92 Strong
evian
Natural mineral water
Evian
100 Strong
PRINGLES
Original chips
Pringles
22 Heavy
GREEK yogurt
Plain Greek yogurt
Fage 0%
88 Strong
A small manifesto

What we cared about.

Other scanners have gotten a fair amount of criticism — for moralizing food, for putting basic features behind paywalls, for changing scoring rules without telling anyone. We thought about each of those carefully and made some opposite choices. Here's what we paid attention to.

✕ Not this

Words that make food "bad."

Food doesn't have a moral character. It has a nutritional profile. So we describe what's there, gently, and let you decide what it means for you. No "Avoid" warnings, no "Yuck" labels, no shame.

Our verdicts: Strong / Solid / Mixed / Heavy. Descriptive, not moralizing.
✕ Not this

Health information behind a paywall.

Some scanners gate offline mode, search, and even the alternatives engine behind subscriptions. We don't think the basics of "what's in this" should cost money. Healthy choices shouldn't be a premium feature.

Every feature, free, forever. No premium tier.
✕ Not this

Scoring that changes silently.

Quietly updating an algorithm without telling anyone is how trust dies. When we change something, we'll write it down — what changed, why, and which products were affected. Public log, plain language.

Open algorithm. Full math in the user guide.
✦ What it is

A scanner that treats you like a grown-up.

Install free →
What people are saying
847
Beta scans this week
9.2/10
Would recommend
62%
Changed a purchase
"

Scanned my "healthy" cereal and got a 28. I've been lied to my whole life. Going to Trader Joe's tomorrow with this thing in hand.

M
Maya R.
Beta tester · Brooklyn
"

My toddler has a dairy allergy. The fact that I set it once and now every scan checks for it has saved me from at least three near-misses.

S
Sara P.
Parent · Austin
What we score

Three categories.
One honest answer.

Most scanner apps stop at food. We don't. Cosmetics and cleaners hide some of the worst stuff in the smallest type — so we score them too.

Most popular
🍴

Food & drink

Built on Nutri-Score plus a curated database of additives ranked by actual health risk.

  • 60% nutrition
  • 30% additives
  • 10% organic bonus
Endocrine watch

Cosmetics

Endocrine disruptors, allergens, irritants, formaldehyde-releasers. The stuff that bypasses your skin barrier.

  • Parabens & siloxanes
  • Allergens (limonene, linalool)
  • Sulfates & phenoxyethanol
New in v1
🧼

Cleaners

What you spray every day matters. We flag the bleaches, ammonias, and quats that nobody talks about.

  • Bleach & ammonia
  • Quaternary ammonium
  • VOCs & phthalates
How it works

From question to
answer in 3 taps.

1

Scan

Point your camera at any barcode. We use your phone's native barcode detector — no app store, no waiting.

2

Read

Open Food Facts (3M+ products) sends us the ingredient list, nutrition, additives, and certifications.

3

Score

Our scoring engine breaks it down by what actually matters — and tells you why, in plain language.

4

Swap

Heavy load on the score? We surface up to four genuinely better options in the same category — same shelf, smarter pick.

The math, exposed

No black boxes.
Just honest weights.

Most scoring apps hide their formula. We show you exactly how a 1–100 score gets built — for every single product, every single time.

🍫
Nutella, hazelnut spread
Ferrero · 400g jar
nutrition × 0.6 + additives × 0.3 + organic × 0.1
Final score
18
Heavy
Better picks engine

Don't just judge. Suggest.

Other scanners are great at telling you what's bad. They're terrible at telling you what to buy instead — pasta with sausage hoops gets swapped for "wholewheat spaghetti" and that's supposed to help. We took the alternatives engine seriously, because the swap is the whole point.

  • Only suggests products scoring 70+ (no mediocre swaps)
  • Filters out anything containing your allergens
  • One line explaining why the alternative wins
  • Sorted by actual health score — never by sponsorship
✨ Better picks for you
🥜
Almond butter, organic
Once Again
92
🌰
Hazelnut spread, 70% nuts
Nocciolata
81
🥥
Cocoa & coconut spread
Nutiva
76
🍯
Date-sweetened cocoa spread
Wildbrine
71
Personal allergens

Your allergens.
Your scores.

Set your allergens once. Every product containing them gets capped at "Avoid" and flagged at the top of the result, before anything else.

  • 9 common allergens, one-tap toggle
  • Score capped automatically — no second-guessing
  • Alternatives engine filters them out too
  • Set once, forget about it
My allergies · 3 active
🌾 Gluten ✕
🥛 Dairy ✕
🥚 Eggs
🥜 Nuts
🥜 Peanuts ✕
🫘 Soy
🐟 Fish
On a real scan
Contains your allergen 🥛 Dairy · score capped at 20
See it in action

From scan to
swap in 4 seconds.

No tutorials. No setup wizard. Hold a barcode in front of your phone and watch what happens.

  • 1
    Point and hold

    The native barcode detector kicks in instantly. No app to install, no permissions theater.

  • 2
    We read the label

    Open Food Facts returns the ingredient list, additives, nutrition, and certifications in under a second.

  • 3
    You get the verdict

    Score, color-coded category, breakdown of what's good and what's flagged — in plain English.

  • 4
    Better swaps appear

    Score under 50? We surface the highest-scoring alternatives in the same category. One tap to scan them next.

Hold a barcode in the frame
Analyzing...
Reading the label so you don't have to
Health score
28
Mixed
🍫
Nutella, hazelnut spread
Ferrero
!
Nutri-Score E
Weak nutritional profile
!
57% sugar by weight
Far above recommended limit
✨ Better picks for you
🥜
Almond butter, organic
Once Again
92
🌰
Hazelnut spread, 70%
Nocciolata
81
🥥
Cocoa & coconut
Nutiva
76
🍯
Date-sweetened
Wildbrine
71
The promise

"Brands have armies of marketers convincing you their product is fine.

You deserve one tool in your pocket that doesn't work for them.

Healthy choices shouldn't be behind paywalls."

No ads · No tracking · No subscriptions · No BS
Real questions

The honest answers.

Is it actually free?
+
Yes. Free forever — every feature, no premium tier. Healthy choices shouldn't be behind paywalls. We pay for hosting, you pay nothing. The whole thing runs on open data from Open Food Facts.
Do I need to download anything from the App Store?
+
No. KindlyChecked is a Progressive Web App — open the link in Safari or Chrome, tap "Add to Home Screen," and it lives on your phone like a regular app. No 200MB download, no app store review, no permissions you don't want to give.
What if you can't find the product I'm scanning?
+
We'll show you a "not found" screen with a one-tap link to add it on Open Food Facts. Open Food Facts is community-maintained — your contribution helps every other user. Takes about 30 seconds with your phone's camera.
How is this different from Yuka?
+
Same idea, different scope. We add household cleaners (Yuka doesn't), we put allergen-checking front and center (Yuka has it but buried), and we're a web app so there's no install friction. Yuka's been around longer and has more products contributed; we're built on the same Open Food Facts database, so coverage is essentially identical.
Where do the scores come from?
+
Food: 60% Nutri-Score (the EU's official nutrition rating), 30% additive risk based on EFSA and ANSES research, 10% organic certification bonus. Cosmetics & cleaners: hazard-rating based on a curated database of ~340 problem ingredients. Sources cited inside the app.
Do you track me or sell my data?
+
No. We have no accounts in v1 — your scan history lives on your device, nowhere else. We don't run ads. We don't take money from brands. We use privacy-friendly analytics (Plausible) for total visitor counts; no individual tracking.
Does it work offline?
+
Yes — for products you've previously scanned. New scans need a connection (we're hitting a live database). The app caches everything you've looked at for 7 days, so you can re-check while you're at the store with spotty signal.
Isn't this just another anxiety-inducing food app?
+
It's a fair concern, and one we took seriously. Registered dietitians have rightly criticized scanner apps for moralizing food into "good" and "bad" — that framing genuinely contributes to disordered eating. So we built differently. Our verdicts are Strong / Solid / Mixed / Heavy — describing the data, not judging the food. We tell you what's measurable; we don't tell you what to feel about it. You're an adult. The point is information, not shame.
How is this different from Yuka?
+
We share the underlying data sources (Open Food Facts, Open Beauty Facts) — most scanners do. The differences are deliberate: (1) No moralizing labels — never "Bad" or "Avoid." (2) Free forever — no premium tier, no paywalled offline mode, no paywalled search. (3) An open algorithm with a public changelog — when scoring updates, you see what changed and why. (4) An alternatives engine that actually surfaces meaningful swaps, not laughable ones. (5) Household cleaners on day one, not as a future promise. We're a lot smaller. We think we're a lot better-suited for people who want information without judgment.
Can I trust the score? Could it be wrong?
+
Sometimes, yes. The score is a calculation based on the ingredient data we have — when that data is incomplete or out of date in Open Food Facts, our score will be off. We surface uncertainty (low-confidence scans get a flag), and we tell you our blind spots: we can't see processing methods beyond the ingredient list, we don't account for portion sizes, and our cosmetics scoring doesn't yet weight ingredient concentration. Treat the score as a starting point for thinking, not the final verdict.
Still curious?

Read the 10-minute user guide.

A walkthrough of your first scan, the score breakdown, allergen setup, and how people actually use this in their week.

Open the user guide →
Free forever · Always

Healthy choices
shouldn't be behind
paywalls.

Other scanner apps charge $20/year to unlock the alternatives feature — the one feature that actually helps you change anything.

We think gating better health behind a subscription is gross. So we don't.

The competition

Other apps

  • Scan & score: free (the hook)
  • Better alternatives: $19.99/year
  • Allergen filtering: premium tier
  • No ads: premium tier
  • Sells anonymized scan data to brands
KindlyChecked

All of it. Free.

  • Scan & score: free
  • Better alternatives: free
  • Allergen filtering: free
  • Zero ads, zero trackers
  • Your data never leaves your phone

Stop reading.
Start scanning.

30 seconds to install. No app store. No account. Just answers.