The Best Tatcha Dupes

The closest Tatcha dupe is Anua Rice Enzyme Brightening Cleansing Powder for The Rice Polish: both are powders you foam with water, and both ingredient lists include rice powder and papain, the papaya enzyme. Next is e.l.f. Liquid Poreless Putty Primer for The Silk Canvas, two pore-smoothing primers that both contain dimethicone and squalane. Third, Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel stands in for The Water Cream, the dupe our own review of that jar names. For The Dewy Skin Cream it’s e.l.f. Holy Hydration! Face Cream, and for The Camellia Cleansing Oil it’s DHC Deep Cleansing Oil. A dupe gets you the product type, a few shared ingredients and the job. It doesn’t get you Tatcha’s fermented rice, green tea and algae complex, which appears on all seven Tatcha labels here and on none of the dupes.

The seven at a glance

Prices are approximate and change often.

1. Tatcha Rice Polish dupe: Anua Rice Enzyme Brightening Cleansing Powder

The Rice Polish: Classic is a dry powder. You pour half a teaspoon into wet hands, rub it into a creamy foam and massage it over your face for 15 seconds. Tatcha’s featured ingredients are Japanese rice bran for physical exfoliation, papaya enzymes for the enzymatic kind, and silk extract. It’s fragrance-free.

Anua Rice Enzyme Brightening Cleansing Powder is used the same way, and its list has rice powder and papain too. The base isn’t the same. Anua opens with corn starch, kaolin clay and sodium bicarbonate, then adds alpha-arbutin, a ceramide, and lactic and tartaric acid low on the list. There’s no silk. The bottle is smaller, 1.41 ounces to Tatcha’s 2.1, and it still comes to about a third of the price per ounce. Tatcha sells four versions of the Polish, so if you use Gentle or Calming, compare labels before you switch. Our guide to the signs of over-exfoliating is worth a look with any daily exfoliant.

2. Tatcha Silk Canvas dupe: e.l.f. Liquid Poreless Putty Primer

Tatcha calls The Silk Canvas a makeup-perfecting balm. It comes with a spatula, and the brand says a rice-sized amount covers the whole face. Dimethicone is the first ingredient, with water and glycerin right behind it and squalane, silk powder and silk extracts further down. It contains fragrance.

e.l.f. Liquid Poreless Putty Primer shares more of that list than you’d guess from the price: water, dimethicone, glycerin, the same polymer (HDI/trimethylol hexyllactone crosspolymer), squalane and green tea extract. No silk, and no fragrance on e.l.f.’s list. The difference you’ll feel is texture. This is a liquid, not a balm, so its nearest relative in texture is Tatcha’s own Liquid Silk Canvas. e.l.f.’s bottle is 0.94 fluid ounces to the balm’s 0.7 ounces, at a fifth of the price. Not sure you need a primer at all? We covered that in do you need makeup primer.

3. Tatcha Water Cream dupe: Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel

The Water Cream is Tatcha’s lightweight moisturizer, recommended by the brand for combination to oily skin. The label starts with water, rice ferment, dimethicone and glycerin, and the featured botanicals are Japanese coix seed, wild rose and heartleaf.

Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel is the dupe our Water Cream review names, and the labels back it up. Neutrogena’s first three ingredients are water, dimethicone and glycerin, sodium hyaluronate appears on both lists, and Neutrogena pitches it at normal to oily and combination skin. The jars are the same 1.7 ounces, at a bit over a quarter of the price. What’s missing is every botanical and the ferment. Both contain fragrance, and Hydro Boost is tinted with Blue 1.

4. Tatcha Dewy Skin Cream dupe: e.l.f. Holy Hydration! Face Cream

The rich one. Tatcha recommends The Dewy Skin Cream for dry and combination-to-dry skin and features hyaluronic acid with red algae, Japanese purple rice and squalane.

e.l.f. Holy Hydration! Face Cream is the pick in our Dewy Skin Cream review. Glycerin, squalane and sodium hyaluronate are on both labels, and e.l.f. adds niacinamide and two peptides. Same 1.7 ounce size, under a fifth of the price. The catch is weight: e.l.f. describes its cream as lightweight, and Tatcha describes its own as rich. Very dry skin may find the dupe isn’t enough in winter. Both contain fragrance, though e.l.f. sells a fragrance-free version of this jar. Our moisturizer dupes roundup has more pairs like it.

5. Tatcha Camellia Cleansing Oil dupe: DHC Deep Cleansing Oil

The Camellia Cleansing Oil goes on with dry hands over a dry face, one or two pumps, then rinses off with warm water. Rice bran oil is second on the list and Japanese camellia oil is fifth. It’s fragranced.

DHC Deep Cleansing Oil is another Japanese cleansing oil with the same routine: dry hands, dry face, add water until it turns milky, rinse. The oil itself is different. DHC’s list is eight ingredients long and starts with olive fruit oil, with no camellia or rice bran anywhere. DHC calls it fragrance-free, though rosemary leaf oil gives it a rosemary scent. This is the smallest gap in the table per bottle, but DHC’s is 6.7 fluid ounces to Tatcha’s 5, so it works out to under half the price per ounce. Our double cleansing guide covers what follows an oil.

6. Tatcha Dewy Skin Mist dupe: Pixi Hydrating Milky Mist

Luminous Dewy Skin Mist is closer to a sprayable lotion than a toner. Glycerin and squalane are the second and third ingredients, with camellia oil and sodium hyaluronate behind them. Tatcha says to shake it, then use it before makeup or over the top as a finishing spray.

Pixi Hydrating Milky Mist is a milky mist too, which Pixi describes as featherlight and deeply hydrating. Its list has glycerin and hyaluronic acid, plus bamboo water and an oat extract. It has no squalane and no camellia oil. Pixi uses caprylic/capric triglyceride instead. Both are fragranced. Pixi’s bottle holds 2.7 fluid ounces, twice Tatcha’s 1.35, at about a third of the price. If squalane is why you buy Tatcha’s, the dupe doesn’t match it on that point. Our face mists guide sorts out which kind of mist does what.

7. Tatcha Rice Wash dupe: The Face Shop Rice Water Bright Foaming Cleanser

The Rice Wash is a soft cream cleanser that foams when you add water. Tatcha describes the base as pH-neutral and amino-acid-based, and the list bears that out, with sodium cocoyl glutamate as the first cleansing agent listed, alongside rice powder and sodium hyaluronate. Fragrance is on the list.

The Face Shop Rice Water Bright Foaming Cleanser is the pair our cleanser dupes roundup names, and it’s last here for the reason given there: rice is in both, but the cleansing base is a different kind, and that roundup’s advice was that dry skin should stay with Tatcha. The tube is 5 fluid ounces to Tatcha’s 4, at under a third of the price. For oily or normal skin that mostly wants a rice-themed foaming wash, it’s a reasonable trade.

When the expensive one is still worth it

When the ferment is the reason you’re buying. Saccharomyces/rice ferment filtrate, green tea and Okinawa algae run through every Tatcha label on this page, and none of the seven dupes has that trio. Whether it’s worth the gap is a judgment call a label can’t settle for you.

Texture is the other case. The Silk Canvas is a balm and its dupe is a liquid. The Dewy Skin Cream is rich and its dupe is light. If the feel is what you love, a shared ingredient list won’t replace it.

If I Were You

• If you only swap one thing, I’d swap the primer. It’s one of the closest matches on the label and the biggest gap in price per ounce.
• If your skin is oily or combination, I’d try Hydro Boost before paying for The Water Cream. Same gel idea, same size.
• If your skin is dry, I’d keep The Dewy Skin Cream and The Rice Wash, and save on the cleansing oil and the mist.
• If fragrance bothers your skin, I’d read every label here first. Six of the seven Tatcha products list it, and so do at least three of the dupes. For ongoing redness or stinging, see a dermatologist.
• If you’re new to exfoliating, I wouldn’t use either rice powder daily at first. Start with a couple of times a week and watch how your skin responds.

Bottom line

Tatcha is easiest to dupe where the product is a familiar type with a familiar base: a silicone primer, a water gel, an enzyme powder, a cleansing oil. Swap those. Keep the jar or bottle where the texture is the whole appeal, or where the ferment is what you came for.