About Cosmetics Batch

Cosmetics Batch is a free tool that decodes the batch codes printed on cosmetics and perfumes, revealing the manufacture date, current age and estimated expiration of your products.

We built it because the existing batch-code tools feel dated and intrusive. Cosmetics Batch is fast, private, and mobile-first — codes are decoded instantly, with clear confidence levels so you know how much to trust each result.

Our estimates use manufacturer-specific algorithms where available and honest, well-documented heuristics elsewhere. Shelf-life figures are typical industry values and are informational only — they are not a guarantee of a product's safety.

A batch code is a production stamp, not an expiry date. For each supported brand we identify which manufacturer's coding family the product belongs to and read the manufacture date from it. Where a brand or its parent group uses a documented, verifiable scheme, the result is precise to the month or day. Where no public scheme is confirmed, we fall back to detecting a date embedded in the code and label the reading with a lower confidence level so you know how much to trust it.

We only publish a decoder once we have validated it against real code-to-date samples. Brands we cannot yet decode reliably are kept out of the picker rather than shown with a guess.

Every result shows a confidence level — high, medium or low. The date we return is the manufacturedate; the expiration is an estimate produced by adding the product's typical unopened shelf life, which varies by category (roughly 24–36 months for makeup and skincare, 3–5 years for fragrance). Once a product is opened, the period-after-opening (the open-jar symbol) becomes the real limit.

These figures are industry averages for guidance only and are not a guarantee of safety. If a product smells, looks or feels off — or is an eye or lip product past its prime — discard it regardless of what any date says.

Decoding happens on our server and the codes you enter are never stored or logged. No account is required, and nothing you type is saved — so checking a code stays completely private.