Vegan Perfume: Every Certified Brand We Cover

Smart Shopping 5 min read Updated
The short answer

Unlike "clean" or "natural", vegan means something specific: no animal-derived ingredients, so no musk, civet, castoreum, ambergris, beeswax, honey, lanolin or carmine. It is also one of the few claims in this corner of the category that somebody independent will certify, and The Vegan Society runs the register that does it.

Perfumes from certified vegan brands

Drawn from brands whose claim covers their whole range. Each perfume's page names the certifying body and links to the register, so you can check it yourself rather than taking our word for it.

Browse all 962 vegan perfumes

Vegan brands we cover

Certified

Brand-declared

These brands make the claim themselves. We found no third-party register listing to confirm it, so it is their word rather than an audited certification.

The other things you can check

None of these words is regulated, so nobody can verify them. Three things sitting right next to them can be verified, though, and between them they cover most of what people are after when they search for one of these terms.

  • Certified vegan No animal-derived ingredients, confirmed by a register such as The Vegan Society rather than by the brand itself. Browse 962 perfumes PETA vegan certification mark
  • Certified cruelty-free A no-animal-testing policy audited by Leaping Bunny, Cruelty Free International or PETA. Browse 3972 perfumes PETA Beauty Without Bunnies certification mark Cruelty Free International certification mark
  • Alcohol-free by format Oil and solid perfumes carry no alcohol, because those formats have no alcohol carrier. Nothing to take on trust. Browse 644 perfumes

What makes a perfume not vegan

Perfumery has used animal materials for centuries and a few are still in circulation: musk (deer), civet, castoreum (beaver), ambergris (whale), beeswax, honey, lanolin and carmine. Most modern houses reach for synthetic reconstructions of the first four, partly on ethics and partly because the synthetics cost less and behave the same way batch after batch. But "mostly synthetic" will not get a brand onto a vegan register, and in any case there is nothing on the bottle that tells you which way a given formula went.

Hence the register. A brand carrying The Vegan Society's trademark has had its ingredients and its testing policy checked against a published standard, instead of deciding for itself what the word ought to mean.

How we record a vegan claim

Two tiers, and we never blend them. A certified claim has a third-party register behind it, so we name the body that issued it and link straight to the listing; you can check us rather than trust us. A brand-declared claim is the brand saying so on its own site with nothing independent behind it. We publish those too, attributed to whoever said it, but they never earn a badge.

We also never publish the negative. A brand with no row here is a brand we hold no record for, which is a very different thing from one whose perfumes contain animal ingredients. Most brands have never applied to any register.

Common questions

Does vegan mean the same as cruelty-free?

No. Vegan covers ingredients; cruelty-free covers testing. A cruelty-free brand can still use beeswax or honey, and in principle a vegan formula could come from a company that tests on animals. Two separate claims, recorded separately.

Is vegan perfume all synthetic?

Largely, and that is the point of it rather than a compromise. Synthetic musks stand in for deer musk, and the modern ambergris and castoreum substitutes come out of a laboratory. Most flower and citrus naturals are vegan anyway, so in practice vegan perfumery is a mix that happens to rule out a handful of animal-derived materials.

Which animal ingredients turn up in perfume?

Musk from deer, civet, castoreum from beaver, ambergris from sperm whales, plus beeswax, honey, lanolin and carmine. The first four are now overwhelmingly synthetic in commercial perfumery, for cost and consistency as much as ethics - but "usually synthetic" is not the same as "certified vegan".

More on what is in the bottle

The houses behind these claims, certified and brand-declared, are gathered on one hub: ethical perfume brands.

Cruelty-Free Perfume

Every certified cruelty-free brand we cover

Natural Perfume

What the word actually means

Clean Perfume

What the word actually means

Non-Toxic Perfume

What UK labelling actually tells you