Also: acetyl hexapeptide-3 (older INCI name) · Ac-EEMQRR-NH2 · Argirelox (The Ordinary's argireline-containing complex) · The Ordinary Argireline Solution 10% · 'Botox in a bottle'
SupplementTopical
SNAP-25-mimic 'topical Botox' for expression lines; real but mild softening for about half of users.
Safety tier
Caution
strict bar
Positive
48%
of 25 reports
Per month
≈ €4–13
estimate
Rank
#11
of 23 supplements
At a glance
Access
Supplement
TopicalFelt in 7 days – 4 weeks
15 min1 h6 h1 day1 week1 month
Builds over days or weeks of regular use rather than with each dose.
Best effects
Softer forehead lines and 11s (dynamic, expression lines) · fewer fine lines around the eyes · mild 'frozen' feel, brow harder to lift for hours · may extend the interval between Botox appointments
Downsides
Headaches with each application in a minority (dose/area dependent) · cold-like sinus/ear pressure or eyelid swelling in a few, clearing on stopping · lines can look worse or 'sagging' when overused on the forehead (a few reports) · occasional breakouts or stinging · stops working within days of stopping; watery texture · inactivated by direct acids and strong vitamin C applied together
Typical use
A few drops of a 10% solution (10% of a dilute raw-material solution, not 10% peptide) on forehead, glabella and crow's feet, once or twice daily on dry skin before other serums; keep it a few millimetres off the lid margin and start with a small area if prone to headaches.
Stacked with
Stacked with
Matrixyl: The standard Reddit pairing: argireline first on expression lines, Matrixyl over the whole face. · Botox: Used between injections; several users say it stretches the interval by a few weeks. · tretinoin: Common base; apply at a different time from acids and vitamin C.
Safety
Watch
Allergic-type reactions (periorbital swelling, sinus and ear symptoms) reported first-hand by a few users, one needing steroids; these resolved after stopping, and no lasting harm has been reported
Tier by safety barStrict CautionBalanced CautionEvidence only Caution
Splits users roughly in half. The positive half describe softer forehead lines, 11s and crow's feet within days to weeks, a 'mini-Botox' feeling of a slightly harder-to-raise brow, and Botox lasting a few weeks longer; several only noticed it when they stopped. Before-and-after posts on r/SkincareAddiction and r/30PlusSkinCare (1,500 and 540 upvotes) drive much of the enthusiasm and are usually paired with Matrixyl or tretinoin. The other half used up a whole bottle and saw nothing, and long-term users who stopped often looked the same. A recurring minority get headaches each time they apply it (worse when spread over the whole forehead), and a few describe cold-like sinus and ear pressure, or swollen eyelids, that recurs on rechallenge and clears when they stop. Felt nothing: ~20% of reports (5/25), more in 'has anyone tried it' threads.
I ordered The Ordinary’s Argireline and apply it LIBERALLY twice a day. I am extremely stoked at these results but do believe there’s some beginner gains happening here
This duo totally changed my skin. Early 30s, so lines are minimal but saw big improvement in the forehead and 11 lines in 3x months of daily use 1-2x a day.
Over-the-counter cosmetic: The Ordinary Argireline Solution 10% (now 'Argireline Solution 10%'), 20% serums from Skin Deva, Innocosvate and others, and many multi-peptide serums (Buffet, Naturium).
No listing can be priced, so the researchers estimate ≈ €4–13 a month.
No trusted shop in the EU lists it; every listing is on the buy page.
Studies
Evidence
Human RCTs — one placebo-controlled RCT (n=60, Chinese subjects) plus the developer's small 30-day study; FDA in-vitro work found almost none of a 10% cream gets past the stratum corneum (0.01% reached the epidermis, none the dermis), so a Botox-like action at the muscle is doubtful and much of the effect may be surface hydration
Caveat
The molecule itself has a clean record (non-toxic orally, CIR safety review, mass-market use since the early 2000s) and barely penetrates intact skin. The headache and sinus reports are a real, recurring minority pattern without a known mechanism; they are unpleasant and reversible rather than a harm path, so treat a headache after applying it as a sign to apply it to a smaller area or stop. 'Sagging' worries come from a handful of anecdotes and have no documented case. SNAP-8 (acetyl octapeptide-3) is Lipotec's longer analogue with the same mechanism and is tracked as its own entry.
The peptide's chain of amino acids from its start (the N-terminus) to its end, one bead and one letter for each: A alanine, C cysteine, D aspartic acid, E glutamic acid, F phenylalanine, G glycine, H histidine, I isoleucine, K lysine, L leucine, M methionine, N asparagine, P proline, Q glutamine, R arginine, S serine, T threonine, V valine, W tryptophan, Y tyrosine. A modification such as an N-acetyl cap or a C-terminal amide changes how long it lasts in the body. Length tells related peptides apart, from a two-residue dipeptide like carnosine to a 43-residue protein like thymosin beta-4, and predicts neither effect nor safety.
Report grades
Every first-hand Reddit or X report is graded on its own, from glowing through positive, mixed, nothing and negative to bad reaction, and the bar shows how those grades split. Posts that look vendor-adjacent stay on the peptide's page but are left out of the counts.
GlowingPositiveMixedNothingNegativeBad reaction
% positive
The share of a peptide's graded Reddit and X reports that are glowing or positive, vendor-adjacent posts left out. A peptide with few reports is pulled toward the average of all reports, as if it had eight average ones besides its own, so two glowing posts cannot top the list. Peptides rank by this figure, those with no graded report yet after those with one, and Avoid ones after every other entry.
Researcher estimate
No first-hand report of this peptide has been graded yet, so the figure is the researchers' own rating out of 10 from what they read about it. It ranks after every peptide with graded reports until its own arrive.
Safety tier
Each peptide is tiered Clean, Caution or Avoid from its five risk axes under the chosen safety bar. An Avoid peptide carries a real risk of harm, a plausible route to serious harm rather than mere unpleasantness, so it stays listed with the reason but ranks behind every other entry, however good its reviews.
Safety bar
The safety bar sets how much risk it takes to rate a peptide Avoid. Strict: out on any serious mechanism with little human data, or any documented serious harm. Balanced: out on documented serious harm (unless it is obvious, reversible and from a regulated product), or a serious mechanism whose harm would be silent with no human data at all. Evidence only: out only on documented serious harm in humans that is lasting, delayed or from grey-market product.
Seen harm
Documented serious adverse events in humans, from 0 for none despite real exposure to 3 for deaths or several well-documented serious harms. Serious means a hospital or emergency visit or harm lasting weeks, so a headache or a bad night does not count.
Mechanism
A plausible biological route to serious harm at the doses people use, such as growth-factor signalling, hormone-axis suppression, heart or blood-pressure effects or immune activation. It runs from 0 when none is known to 3 when a dangerous pathway has been shown in living animals.
Data gap
How little human safety data exists for the molecule actually sold, from 0 for an approved drug with large trials and years of use to 3 for no human safety data at all. A modified analogue does not inherit its parent's trials.
Silent harm
Whether the feared harm would show quickly or stay hidden, from 0 when it is obvious and goes on stopping to 3 when it is silent and delayed, like tumour promotion or slow organ damage. User reports cannot reveal a harm that takes years to appear, so a high score here limits what good reviews can tell you.
Product
The risk of what people actually buy, from 0 for a regulated pharmacy or supplement product taken by mouth or on the skin to 3 for a grey-market injectable. In one dataset of 6,441 grey-market samples, 42–71% failed basic quality criteria and 15% carried endotoxin; taken by mouth or in the nose, a pack avoids the injection risks.
Evidence
The strongest kind of study behind the peptide's effects, from an approved drug through human controlled trials and small human studies to animal work or nothing of its own. Animal results often fail to carry over to people.
Access
How people get it: as an approved drug, a compounded prescription, an over-the-counter supplement or from the grey market, where nobody checks the vial. The channel decides both the legal position and the risk of a bad batch.
Price per month
Thirty days of the typical dose, from its low end to its high end, priced at the listing a careful buyer would choose: in stock, from a shop scoring 4 of 5 on trust (third-party tested where no score is set), failing that 3, a pure pack before a blend, a European shop first, then the cheapest per mg. The range is the dose's, not the shops'. A per-dose amount counts once a day unless the dose says otherwise. Prices are in euros at ECB rates of 2026-10-29, before shipping; the shop table keeps each listing's price per mg, per gram for bulk supplements. Where no listing can be priced the researchers' own estimate stands in, and says so.
Dose users report
The middle half of the daily doses stated in at least five first-hand reports, vendor posts left out. Where its middle sits more than twice above or below the declared dose, the month is priced at it as well, since what people take is what they pay for.
Shop trust
Each shop's trust on a 1–5 scale, read from its testing and its reputation: 1 for serious red flags (fabricated COAs, scam reports, impersonation, a closed shop), 2 for no public testing, a new shop or active complaints such as seized parcels, 3 for its own COAs or a short track record, 4 for verified third-party testing or a strong reputation, and 5 for third-party batch reports that name the shop, with years of good independent reputation. A shop without a score counts third-party batch testing as 4, its own COAs as 3 and no public tests as 2.
Best value
Within a category or a goal, a peptide that no other beats on both counts: none is rated more positively for the same or a lower monthly price, and none costs less for the same or a higher rating. The chart joins these into the best-value line; the cheapest of them and the best-rated of them both make it, so the line spans the trade-off from cheap to best. Avoid entries never count, and a peptide needs both a % positive and a price to be compared.
Testing
Whether the shop publishes lab results: third-party tested means an independent lab checks each batch, own COA means the shop's own certificate of analysis, and no public tests means neither. A certificate shows purity, not safety.
Added peptide
Some packs sold under one peptide's name hold a second one, such as 5 mg GHK-Cu in a nasal kit, stated only in the description. Sprayed in the nose or injected it reaches the blood like an injection, so it carries the risk of that route and is tiered as the injectable form, whatever its tier on the skin. A pack whose page gives no contents list may hold more than its name.