What’s worth paying for in skincare — and what isn’t?

Not predictably, and sunscreen — the most rigorously tested category in skincare — shows it cleanly. In September 2025, Which? tested 15 sunscreens to British and international standards. Two failed the same test twice and were named Don’t Buys: Ultrasun Family SPF30, at £28 for 150ml, failed the UVA test — in Which?’s words, “It didn’t meet the minimum required UVA level for an SPF30 product” — and Morrisons’ £3.75 Moisturising Sun Spray SPF30 failed its SPF test. Meanwhile Lidl’s Cien Sun Protect Spray SPF30 (£3.79) and Aldi’s Lacura SPF50+ Sensitive (£2.49) both passed. Which?’s conclusion: “our testing shows there’s no need to splash the cash to get effective protection.” Note the two-sided lesson — the £28 product failed and a £3.75 product failed. Price predicts performance in neither direction.

The larger studies agree. Xu and colleagues, writing in JAMA Dermatology in 2016, analysed 65 top-rated sunscreens on Amazon: prices ran from $0.68 to $23.47 per ounce — a roughly thirty-fold spread, around 3,000% — at equivalent labelled protection, and 40% of the products fell short of the American Academy of Dermatology’s criteria. Consumer Reports, which has run its own sunscreen testing in the United States for over a decade, has repeatedly found no connection between price and protection. Sunscreen happens to be where the independent testing is; there is no reason to assume the price–performance link suddenly appears in categories nobody tests.

Real things — just not, reliably, better results. A premium price buys finer textures, nicer packaging, fragrance, and the feel of the object on your bathroom shelf. Those drive satisfaction more than most people expect: in Xu’s analysis of what reviewers actually praised, “cosmetic elegance” — how a product looks, feels and smells — was the most-cited positive, appearing in 61% of comments, ahead of performance itself. There is nothing wrong with paying for pleasure. It is simply a different purchase from paying for effect, and it helps to know which one you are making.

You will sometimes read that a specific percentage of a product’s price goes on marketing and packaging. We looked for a verifiable source for any such figure and found none, so we won’t quote one. The structural point doesn’t need it: when equivalent labelled protection sells at a thirty-fold price spread, and independent tests repeatedly find budget products outperforming premium ones, whatever the premium is buying, it is not reliably more of the thing on the label.

Texture you’ll actually use every day. This is a reasoned argument rather than a trial result, so we’ll label it as one: sunscreen only works when it’s worn, and Xu’s data shows texture dominates what people like about products. If the £18 sunscreen is the one you’ll happily wear every morning and the £4 one sits in a drawer, the £18 one is doing more for your skin. Paying for a formulation you enjoy enough to be consistent with is one of the few premiums with a defensible mechanism behind it.

A specific tested formulation. Much of the evidence for actives comes from trials of one particular formulation. The best-known niacinamide results — improvements in pigmentation, lines and texture — come from studies of a specific 5% moisturiser, led by Bissett and published in 2004–2005; the trials were small and largely funded by the manufacturer, which is worth knowing, but paying for the formulation a trial actually used is rational. Paying more for a brand’s general tier, on the theory that expensiveness rubs off on results, is not.

Formulation quality — judged by criteria, not price. When NICE’s acne guideline advises on skincare, it specifies formulation properties: a non-alkaline (syndet) cleanser used twice daily, and moisturisers and sunscreen that are non-comedogenic. Both criteria are met by products at every price point. If a dearer product genuinely meets a criterion your skin needs and the cheap one doesn’t, that’s a reason to pay — but the criterion, not the price tag, is doing the selecting.

Wash-off products. A cleanser is on your skin for seconds and then rinsed away, which is why the properties that matter — NICE’s non-alkaline, syndet criterion — are about what a cleanser is, not what it costs. Those properties are available for a few pounds. Premium cleansers are the clearest case in skincare of paying for the experience rather than the outcome.

The percentage arms race. Labels increasingly compete on concentration, but the evidence sits at lower numbers than the marketing does. For niacinamide, the published results are at 2–5%: Hakozaki and colleagues found 5% reduced hyperpigmentation from around four weeks (British Journal of Dermatology, 2002), and Bissett’s trials used 5% over 12 weeks. Products advertising two, three or four times that concentration are selling a bigger number, not a bigger evidence base. Vitamin C behaves the same way: the review evidence (Al-Niaimi & Chiang, 2017) puts useful L-ascorbic acid concentrations at 8–20%, with no established benefit beyond about 20%. Paying extra specifically for a higher percentage is usually paying for the label.

Words that sound like properties. Some premiums are attached to claims that are citably meaningless. “Detox” skincare: Sense About Science’s review of detox products concluded that “‘detox’, as used in product marketing, is a myth”. “Chemical-free”: the Royal Society of Chemistry offered £1 million in 2010 to anyone who could produce a genuinely chemical-free product; the bounty was never claimed, because everything is made of chemicals. And hyaluronic acid is a humectant — it draws water to the skin’s surface for temporary hydration and plumping — so paying a premium for it on the promise of structural, lasting change is paying for a mechanism it doesn’t have.

Buy to criteria, then compare per millilitre. Decide what each product must be before looking at prices: for sunscreen, the NHS advises at least SPF30 with at least 4-star UVA protection (or the UVA circle logo); for cleansers and moisturisers on acne-prone skin, NICE’s syndet and non-comedogenic criteria above. Then choose the cheapest product that meets them in a texture you’ll enjoy using daily. Per-ml comparison matters more than it looks: our analysis of 11,929 products at UK retailers found moisturiser prices per millilitre spread 18-fold between the 10th and 90th percentile, and put the median price of a basic routine at £75.25 — with equivalents available for far less if you compare on contents rather than branding.

With sunscreen, remember that quantity beats quality of branding: the NHS advises six to eight teaspoons to cover an adult body, applied 30 minutes before going out and again just before, then reapplied every two hours. Using enough of a £4 sunscreen protects; rationing a £28 one doesn’t — and it is a lot easier to be generous with the £4 bottle. That is a practical argument rather than a trial finding, but the dosing advice it rests on is the NHS’s own.

Then let the money follow the evidence. Spend where products stay on your skin and the research is strongest — a sunscreen you’ll wear daily, a moisturiser whose texture you like, one well-evidenced active — and economise on anything that washes off. Add one new product at a time, and give it the roughly 12 weeks the trials themselves ran before judging it: NICE’s acne treatment courses are reviewed at 12 weeks, and the niacinamide results above took 4 to 12 weeks to appear. For what goes in which order and the evidence per ingredient, see our guide to building a skincare routine.