Coming soonThis aisle is not open yet and nothing on it is for sale. The page below explains the standard the range will be held to when it launches.
A peptide serum's front label is the most misleading number in skincare. Ours won't be.
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that signal skin to do something — build collagen, relax a crease, calm inflammation. The good ones have real published work behind them. The problem is not the ingredient. The problem is how much of it is actually in the bottle, and how the industry writes that number down.
The trick, in one paragraph
Most peptides are not sold to brands as pure powder. They arrive as a pre-diluted trade-name blend — Matrixyl 3000, Argireline, SNAP-8 — and those blends are mostly water, glycerin and butylene glycol. A serum that says “10% Matrixyl 3000” on the front sounds like a tenth of the bottle is peptide. It isn't. Matrixyl 3000 is roughly 0.05% active peptide by weight, so 10% of it puts about 0.005% actual palmitoyl tripeptide-1 in your serum. That is the same sleight of hand as a magnesium bottle shouting 1,000 mg when 141 mg is the part your body uses.
What we will print instead
- The peptide by its INCI name — palmitoyl tripeptide-1, acetyl hexapeptide-8, copper tripeptide-1 — not just the trade name.
- The concentration of the actual peptide, in parts per million or percent, alongside the blend percentage. Both numbers, so you can see the gap yourself.
- Where it sits in the ingredient list. If a peptide is below the fragrance, we will say so rather than hope you don't check.
- What the published work actually used. If a study ran at 3% and the product is at 0.3%, that belongs on the page.
The peptides we're bringing in
All of these are standard cosmetic ingredients with INCI names, legal to sell and legal to buy in the United States, applied to the skin:
- Palmitoyl tripeptide-1 and palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7 (the Matrixyl 3000 pair) — collagen signalling, the most studied pairing in the category.
- Palmitoyl pentapeptide-4 (Matrixyl) — the original, for firmness and fine lines.
- Acetyl hexapeptide-8 (Argireline) — expression lines, sold on a neuromodulating mechanism that is real but far milder than the marketing implies.
- Copper tripeptide-1 (GHK-Cu) — wound healing and skin remodelling, the peptide with the deepest literature behind it.
- Palmitoyl tripeptide-38 — a newer collagen and hyaluronic acid signal.
What we will not sell, and why we're saying it out loud
There is a second world of peptides — injectable research compounds like BPC-157, TB-500, ipamorelin and the GLP-1 class. Those are not legal to sell as dietary supplements or cosmetics in the United States, whatever the sites selling them “for research use only” imply. We will not stock them, at any margin. Every peptide on this site is topical, cosmetic, and on the right side of that line.
If you came here looking for the injectable kind, we'd rather lose the sale than pretend the rule doesn't exist.
When
The range is being sourced now, and slowly, because the standard above is the hard part. Most suppliers in this category will quote a blend percentage and then go quiet when asked what the actual peptide concentration is. We would rather open this aisle late than open it with numbers we cannot stand behind. When it lands, every product page will carry both figures — the same way every supplement on this site carries its elemental dose.
Cosmetic products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Patch test any new active. If you are pregnant, nursing, or under a dermatologist's care, check before starting.