ComfiSkin vs AI face-scan apps
Apps such as Lovi, Skan and Skinner photograph your face, give it a score, and bill you by the week. ComfiSkin scans the product label instead and checks it against your skin, for free, with no trial to cancel.
| App | Week | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Skinner | $12.99 | $675 |
| Lovi | $7.99 | $415 |
| AI Skin Scanner | $7.99 | $415 |
| Skan | $5.99 | $311 |
| ComfiSkin | $0 | $0 |
Top weekly price on each listing. Yearly plans, where offered, cost less.
The short answer
Most AI face-scan apps work like subscription traps: a free trial, then $8 to $13 a week, extra charges for individual results, and reviewers say cancelling is made deliberately hard. On top of that, skin AI is only as good as the faces it learned from, and those often barely included darker skin.
What that means: you can end up paying over $400 a year for a guess. If you’re in a trial, cancel it now. ComfiSkin checks products against your skin for free and never needs your face.
Side by side
| ComfiSkin | AI face-scan apps | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Nothing | Weekly plans from $5.99 to $12.991,2,3,4 |
| Needs a photo of your face | Never | Every time |
| Charges per result | Never | Skinner does, from $6.993 |
| Easy to cancel? | Nothing to cancel | Reviewers say no3,4 |
| Tracks you across other apps | No | All four apps we checked say so1,2,3,4 |
| Guesses your skin age | No | Yes |
Weekly pricing is built to add up
These apps lead with a weekly plan, usually after a short free trial. Lovi lists $7.99 a week,1 Skan $5.99,2 AI Skin Scanner $7.99,4 and Skinner $9.99 and $12.99.3 A weekly price is chosen because it looks small. At $7.99, it’s about $415 a year. At $12.99, it’s $675, more than many people spend on skincare in that time.
Skinner also sells results one at a time: one result for $6.99, five for $9.99, and a PDF report for $12.99.3 Your own face, sold back to you as a document. The scan is the hook. The subscription is the product.
ComfiSkin has no plans, no trials and no per-result charges. Scanning, explanations, routine checks and reminders are free.
What that means for you: forgetting one trial can cost you more than a year of skincare.
Getting out is harder than getting in
Reviewers describe the same story again and again: an easy trial, then a struggle to stop paying.
“It is intentionally difficult to stop.”
“They will not allow you to unsubscribe once you subscribe.”
It’s a well-worn trick. When the US Federal Trade Commission and its partners reviewed 642 subscription websites and apps in 2024, nearly 76% used at least one design trick to push people into choices they didn’t mean to make, and hiding how auto-renewal works was among the most common.6 These apps make money when you forget. ComfiSkin has no subscription, so there’s nothing to hide and nothing to cancel.
What that means for you: assume getting out will be harder than getting in, and plan for it before you tap “Start free trial”. Or skip the trial altogether.
The AI may never have seen skin like yours
Skin AI learns from photos. In 2021, Oxford researchers looked at the image collections used to build skin-cancer AI. Of 106,950 images, only 2,436 recorded the person’s skin type, and of those, just 11 came from people with the two darkest skin types.5
That study was about medical AI, not beauty apps, but the lesson carries over: if the training photos don’t look like you, the result is a guess. People with darker skin can pay exactly the same weekly price and get a less reliable answer, and the app won’t tell them so.
ComfiSkin works from the ingredient list and the skin type and concerns you tell it, which works the same for every skin tone.
What that means for you: if you have darker skin, a face-scan verdict may be less reliable, and you’d have no way of knowing.
What to do if you’ve tried one
- Check whether you’re still paying. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions. On Android, open the Play Store, tap your profile, then Payments and subscriptions.
- Never start a trial without a reminder. Set one for the day before it renews, or cancel straight away. You usually keep access until the trial ends.
- Check products, not your face. Scan what you use in ComfiSkin to see whether it suits your skin, for free.
Sources
- Lovi, AI Skin Care Scanner, on the US App Store: in-app purchases and App Privacy label. apps.apple.com
- Skan, on the US App Store: in-app purchases and App Privacy label. apps.apple.com
- Skinner: Analyze your skin, on the US App Store: in-app purchases, rating, App Privacy label and reviews. apps.apple.com
- AI Skin Scanner: mole, rash id (SWIFTTOUCH Apps), on the US App Store: in-app purchases, App Privacy label and reviews. apps.apple.com
- The Hospitalist, on Wen et al., Lancet Digital Health, 2021, “AI: skin color underrepresented in datasets used to identify skin cancer”. the-hospitalist.org
- TechCrunch, “FTC study finds dark patterns used by a majority of subscription apps and websites”, 10 July 2024. techcrunch.com
More comparisons
Keep your face. Keep your money.
Check products against your skin from their labels.
- Free, all of itNo plans, trials or paywalls. Every feature, for everyone.
- No sign-upNo account, no email, no password to lose.
- No ads, no trackingNothing about you is sold, shared or followed around the web.
- Your notes stay on your phoneWith a password-protected backup that only you control.
- Never asks for your faceIt reads the label, not you.
- Answers for your skinYour skin type, concerns, avoid list and routine, every time.