Everyone's Comparing This Affordable Skincare Brand to The Ordinary

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(Image credit: @ashleygraham)

Let's play a game: Name the most minimal, most buzzworthy and most affordable skincare brand available right now.

If you shouted The Ordinary, we commend you. The brand does, indeed, offer up a spectacular lineup of skin heroes, and some of the brand's main talking points are simplistic, in-demand formulas clocking in at very impressive (i.e., budget-friendly) price points. However, as much as we love The Ordinary, it's actually not the holy-grail skincare brand we're referring to. Beauty lovers everywhere, meet The Inkey List—the under-the-radar brand that delivers sleek and minimal product formulas for under £15 each. Yep, you read that right!

Founded by former Boots' branding and product developers Colette Newberry and Mark Curry, the British company has been garnering lots of talk and excitement about its unique M.O.: formulating whip-smart products made with the most well-known—and wanted—skincare ingredients. (Think rosehip oil, hyaluronic acid, collagen, retinol and more.) That said, there are a few exceptions, as its Polyglutamic Acid, Multi-Biotic Moisturiser and Heptapeptide Serum are touted by the brand as "innovation" formulas due to the very causal fact there's nothing else on the market quite like them. Cool, no?

Of course, as we mentioned, people can't help but compare The Inkey List to The Ordinary since they contain common denominators like single-ingredient-oriented product formulas, high-efficacy actives and non-terrifying price tags. After trying out almost all of the brand's offerings ourselves, we don't think it's quite fair to compare.

Since there are quite a few products to choose from all boasting very enticing claims and labels, we thought we'd give you a head start by listing some of the most-loved products from The Ordinary, and the most exciting counterparts or next-to-try bottles and tubes from The Inkey List. Keep scrolling for all of our recommendations.

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Beauty Director

Erin has been writing a mix of beauty and wellness content for Who What Wear for over four years. Prior to that, she spent two and half years writing for Byrdie. She now calls Santa Monica home but grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and studied writing, rhetoric, and communication at University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. She studied abroad in Galway, Ireland, and spent a summer in L.A. interning with the Byrdie and Who What Wear family. After graduating from UW, she spent one year in San Francisco, where she worked as a writer for Pottery Barn Kids and PBteen before moving down to L.A. to begin her career as a beauty editor. She considers her day-to-day beauty aesthetic very low-maintenance and relies on staples like clear brow serum (from Kimiko!), Lawless's Lip Plumping Mask in Cherry Vanilla, and an eyelash curler. For special occasions or days when she's taking more meetings or has an event, she'll wear anything and everything from Charlotte Tilbury (the foundations are game-changing), some shimmer on her lids (Stila and Róen do it best), and a few coats of the best mascara-type product on earth, Surratt's Noir Lash Tint.