IngrediLens at a glance

Updated 29 October 2026

Who it is for

• People with food allergies or coeliac disease who check every pack.
• Parents and carers shopping for a child with allergies, or for several family members.
• Travellers reading labels and menus abroad, and people buying imported food.
• People with sensitive skin who check cosmetic INCI lists for fragrance allergens, preservatives or nut oils.
• People following a diet such as vegan, vegetarian, halal, kosher or alcohol-free.

Key facts

What it does

• Scan a label with the camera, pick a photo, type or paste text, share text from another app, or look up a barcode.
• Highlights your chosen allergens live in the camera view, then lists every ingredient with the reason it was flagged.
• Shows “contains”, “may contain” and “free from” statements separately, so you can see whether an allergen is in the recipe or only in a warning.
• Food allergen filters for the 14 EU allergens and the 9 US major allergens (plus lactose, sulphites and carmine), diets, phenylketonuria (PKU) and cosmetic sensitivities such as fragrance, parabens or methylisothiazolinone.
• Checks a photo of a restaurant menu for dishes whose name or description suggests one of your allergens.
• Free restaurant allergy card in 15 languages to show staff, available offline.
• E-number guide that explains food additive codes.
• Scan history on the device; works with Siri and Shortcuts.

IngrediLens Premium

• Unlimited filters and your own custom keywords
• Family profiles: one scan checks everyone
• Child mode with a big, simple answer
• Safe list and favourites
• School & caregiver card and doctor & dietitian report as PDFs
• Reaction diary that looks for ingredients common to products you reacted to

What it does not do

• It is not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition, and it never tells you to start or stop anything.
• It never calls a product “safe”. No match only means that none of the ingredients it could read matched your filters.
• It cannot detect cross-contact or measure trace amounts. It only reports what the label says.
• It has no restaurant database and gives no product scores or ratings. The menu check only points at dish names and descriptions.
• It does not read labels in languages other than the six listed, and it can misread blurred or curved text.
• There is no Android or web version.

How matching works

1. Reading the label. Apple’s on-device text recognition reads the label. The image and text are not uploaded.
2. Splitting the list. The ingredient list is found and split into single ingredients; “contains”, “may contain” and “free from” sentences are read separately.
3. Matching. Each ingredient is compared with the built-in database, including other names and label names in six languages (for example casein, whey and suero de leche for milk). A low-confidence match is shown as uncertain and never as a high-severity warning; unknown words are shown as not recognised instead of being hidden.
4. Explaining. Each flag says which of your filters it matched and links to its source.

The database has more than 24,000 entries. Most are cosmetic ingredients (INCI names and functions from the European Commission’s CosIng database); the rest are food ingredients, additives and the names they appear under on labels. Each entry that can raise a warning cites a source. The references the app cites are:

• European Commission – CosIng database
• Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 (food information, allergens)
• Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 (cosmetic products)
• Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 (food additives)
• U.S. FDA – Food Allergen Labeling (FALCPA)
• U.S. FDA – FASTER Act (sesame)
• 21 CFR 101.100 (food labeling exemptions)
• U.S. FDA – Cosmetics
• NIH MedlinePlus, NIH DailyMed and PubMed (skin-sensitivity entries)
• PubChem
• Open Food Facts / Open Beauty Facts (optional barcode lookup)

Updates

The ingredient database ships inside the app and is updated with App Store releases. Version 1.4 was released on 28 October 2026. Each guide on this site shows the date it was last updated.

Who makes IngrediLens

IngrediLens is designed and built by an independent app developer, who also writes the food allergy and label guides on this site, citing official sources such as EU regulations, the FDA and national food agencies. The developer is not a doctor; the app and the guides are general information, not medical advice.

Contact

Questions, corrections or press: Instagram @ingredilensapp. Support and FAQ: IngrediLens support page. Privacy policy.