Is nail polish vegan? 6 brands checked, and the guanine catch

Nail polish is vegan when its ingredient list has no carmine (CI 75470), guanine (CI 75170) or shellac. On a US label, guanine is the one to put back without a second thought: the color additive the FDA permits in cosmetics is defined as crystalline material obtained from fish scales.

An earlier version of this page said guanine could be fish or synthetic and told you to email the brand. For a bottle sold in the US, that was wrong. The federal identity for the color additive guanine is the crystalline material obtained from fish scales, mostly guanine and hypoxanthine, varying with the fish and tissue it came from, and the cosmetics listing points straight back to that identity. So the pearly nude is not a mystery after all. If guanine is on the list, it came from a fish.

Carmine is just as easy to catch, for the opposite reason. An FDA final rule published on January 5, 2009 requires cochineal extract and carmine to be declared by name on the label of all food and cosmetic products in the United States, and even a cosmetic outside the usual ingredient-labeling rule must declare carmine “prominently and conspicuously at least once in the labeling”. The general method for the rest of your bathroom cabinet is in our guide on telling whether a beauty product is vegan.

What actually makes a polish not vegan

Three animal ingredients are the ones to know on the nail shelf. Carmine is a red made from cochineal insects, so it belongs to the reds and pinks. Guanine is about finish rather than shade: it is the pearly shimmer. Shellac is a resin from the lac insect, and it has its own page on why shellac isn’t vegan.

Sparkle does not need a fish. essie’s Baby Carats, a shimmer shade, gets its glitter from synthetic fluorphlogopite and calcium aluminum borosilicate, a lab-made mica and a glass, and lists no guanine at all. OPI’s Berry Pickin’ Season is a full red and gets there with Red 6 Lake and Red 7 Lake, not carmine.

I have stood in a drugstore aisle long enough with a champagne-colored bottle to know that the ingredient list is printed in a size designed for ants. That is the whole case for knowing the three words you are scanning for before you go in.

Which nail polish brands are vegan?

Six brands, each read from its own US pages in October 2026, ranked by how much of the question the page settles.

Brand or line	Vegan?	What it rests on	Full ingredient list on the page?	Price on the maker’s store
essie	Yes	essie calls itself “a vegan brand” with no animal-derived ingredients	Yes	Not shown on the page we read
OPI Nature Strong	Yes	US pages mark the line vegan, “No animal-derived ingredients or by-products”; UK blog cites Vegan Society certification	Yes	$12.99 a shade
Sally Hansen Good. Kind. Pure.	Yes	“100% vegan”, animal-derived ingredients on its free-from list	Yes, under the Ingredients tab	Not shown
Holo Taco	Yes	“vegan, cruelty-free” on its about page	Yes	$14.50
ella+mila	Yes	No animal-derived ingredients in its 17-free list; “PeTA-certified”	No, the product pages list claims, not ingredients	$10.50 for most single bottles
Zoya	Unclear	“vegan-friendly” on product pages	No	$14.00

essie

essie’s product pages say it is a vegan brand containing no animal-derived ingredients, and then do the thing most brands skip: they print the full ingredient list underneath. That is why it is our pick for an everyday bottle. You do not have to trust the claim, because you can check the shade you are holding for guanine and carmine yourself.

The catch is whose word it is. The statement is essie’s own, and the product pages we read name no certification scheme. If you only buy polish with an independent vegan mark, this is not your bottle.

OPI Nature Strong

OPI’s US collection page marks every Nature Strong shade “Vegan*”, and the asterisk reads “No animal-derived ingredients or by-products”. Each shade page carries the full ingredient list and a price of $12.99. OPI’s UK blog adds that the line carries the Vegan Society’s sunflower trademark, which makes it the only line here with an outside mark behind it.

The same blog post also contains the sentence “Nature Strong is not 100% vegan and we will never claim that”, two lines before it claims the certification. Read it as a copy slip, but it is a slip in the one paragraph meant to settle the question. The bigger flaw is scope. Nothing we read extends the vegan claim beyond Nature Strong, so a classic OPI shade outside the line is not covered. Don’t buy Nature Strong for the certification if the color you want only exists in the main range.

Sally Hansen Good. Kind. Pure.

Sally Hansen calls Good. Kind. Pure. its “first plant-based, 16-free*, 100% vegan nail polish”, in 44 shades. The footnote lists the 16 things it is formulated without, and “Animal-derived ingredients” is number 11, filed between triphenyl phosphate and styrene as if it were one more chemical. Fair enough as a formulation statement, and the Ingredients tab on the same page prints the full list, glitter from calcium aluminum borosilicate and synthetic fluorphlogopite included. It is still the brand vouching for itself, with no certifier named on the page, and it says nothing about Sally Hansen’s other lines, which you should treat as unchecked.

Holo Taco

Holo Taco says its polishes are “10-free*, vegan, cruelty-free and made in the USA”, and a bottle is $14.50. For a brand with holo in the name, the sparkle is the whole product, and the sparkle is exactly where guanine would sit. The brand’s word covers it, and its store pages now print the ingredient list as well. Sugar Dust Taco, a glitter topper, names aluminum powder and violet 2 for its color, and neither guanine nor carmine. What it lacks is an outside mark, since the pages we read name no certifier. If you want a list and a certifier on the same bottle, OPI Nature Strong is the one above with both.

ella+mila

ella+mila puts animal-derived ingredients on its 17-free list and says its polishes are “PeTA-certified”. Most single bottles are $10.50 on its own store, the lowest of the four prices we found. What is missing is the list itself. The “ingredients” panel on its product pages repeats the claims (17-free, vegan) instead of naming what is in the bottle. And “PeTA-certified” does not say which PETA program. Skip it if you want to read the guanine question off the label yourself.

Zoya

Zoya’s product pages describe its polishes as “vegan-friendly”. That is a softer phrase than vegan, and the pages we read carry no ingredient list to firm it up. At $14.00 a bottle, it costs about what a Holo Taco bottle does and gives you less to go on. Walk past it until Zoya says plainly what “friendly” means.

How to check a bottle yourself

Turn it over and read the full list, not the front. Carmine or cochineal on a US product means no, because the rule above makes the name compulsory. Guanine or CI 75170 also means no, because on a US label the color additive is fish-derived by definition. Mica and its lab-made cousin, synthetic fluorphlogopite, are minerals. The borosilicates are glass. Both are fine.

If the bottle has no list at all, the vegan claim on the front is all you have, so look at whose claim it is. A Vegan Society sunflower means the brand applied to an outside scheme. The word vegan on its own means the brand is vouching for itself, which can be true and is still a different thing.

For a polish whose list you can read in the shop, buy essie; for one with an outside mark, buy OPI Nature Strong. The rest of the makeup bag is in our list of vegan drugstore makeup brands.