People compare these two because both scan a barcode and both put a number on what they find. The comparison usually ends quickly once you know one thing: Think Dirty does not rate food.
The short answer
- Think Dirty rates cosmetics, personal care, household, baby and pet products. Not groceries.
- Yuka rates food and cosmetics, with a separate scoring method for each.
- If you want one app for both, that is Yuka. If you only scan cosmetics, Think Dirty is built for exactly that and nothing else.
How each one scores
Think Dirty rates a product’s ingredients on a scale of zero to ten, drawing on peer-reviewed sources, with a methodology written for beauty products specifically. A low number is the good end.
Yuka scores food out of 100 from nutritional quality, additives and organic certification, and runs a different assessment for cosmetics. A high number is the good end, which is worth knowing if you use both and keep misreading one of them.
What each one costs
Both have a free tier and a paid one. Think Dirty’s paid tier adds custom ingredient alerts; Yuka’s adds a search bar, an offline mode and alerts over seven dietary preferences, and starts at $10 a year in the US. Neither charges to scan.
If what you actually want is groceries
Then Think Dirty is not in the running, and the real comparison is between the food scanners. There is a full page on Yuka, one on Olive and one on Fig, and a hub tying them together.
Kaibu is one of those food scanners. It reads the label against the diets and allergens you save rather than producing one score for everybody, scanning is free and unmetered, and like Think Dirty it has a deliberate scope: food, and not cosmetics.
None of these apps is a medical device, and none replaces the packet. Check the pack before you eat.