Vegan ingredient checker
Paste an ingredient list and see which ingredients are vegan, which aren't, and which depend on the source. It covers E-numbers and about 13,000 ingredient names, mostly in English with common terms in other European languages.
How to read the results
Not vegan: the ingredient comes from animals, like whey, gelatin, honey, carmine (E120) or shellac (E904).
Depends on the source: it can be plant or animal, like E471, glycerin or natural flavors. See how to check one.
Vegan: plant, mineral, microbial or synthetic.
The checker works ingredient by ingredient. It doesn't know about shared equipment, animal testing, or processing aids that don't have to be listed, like bone char in some cane sugar or fining agents in wine. For those, a vegan certification is the only reliable signal.
Common questions
How does the vegan ingredient checker work?
It splits the list into single ingredients, including the ones inside brackets, and looks each one up in our database of about 13,000 ingredients, E-numbers and label terms in several languages. Each one is marked vegan, not vegan, or depends on the source.
What does “depends on the source” mean?
Some ingredients, like mono- and diglycerides (E471), glycerin, natural flavours or lactic acid, can be made from plants or from animals, and the label rarely says which. A vegan certification mark or the manufacturer can confirm it.
Can I trust a “vegetarian” label?
Not for vegan purposes. Vegetarian products can contain milk, eggs and honey. Look for a vegan mark or check the ingredients.
Is the checker free?
Yes. The WhatsVegan app does the same from a photo of the label, and it also handles ingredients that aren’t in the database.
Want to know which ingredients come up most often? Read what 14,411 scanned food labels show or browse all ingredients A–Z.