How Mallang works — scoring, evidence grades & neutrality

We don't sell anything

Every "Shop" button leaves our site and goes to a retailer. Some links pay us an affiliate commission at no cost to you — that's our only consumer revenue, and it's the reason we can stay neutral about where you buy: we show every retailer's true landed cost side by side, including the ones that pay us nothing.

The match score

Your match score is decomposed into three axes, always shown separately:

Personal fit — how the product's concerns, skin-type fit, texture-for-climate, tone considerations (white cast, PIH) and your avoid-list add up. Every point is explainable and we show the reasons under the bars.
Evidence — the product's A/B/C grade (below), independent of your profile.
Korea signal — current Olive Young Korea ranking and domestic repurchase reputation, because a product Koreans actually rebuy is a different signal from a product marketed for export.

Evidence grades (A/B/C)

Each product is graded on four weighted components:

Clinical substantiation — 25%
Certifications (e.g. MFDS functional-cosmetic listing) — 15%
Cross-platform rating consistency over time — 35% (viral spikes don't count as evidence)
Formula transparency (disclosed concentrations, full INCI) — 25%

Neutrality policy: brands cannot pay to change a grade, a ranking or a match score — not with advertising, affiliate terms or anything else. Sponsored placements, if we ever run them, will be labeled and kept out of editorial rankings. If we get a fact wrong, use the report link on any product page and we'll correct it publicly.

Skin-twin reviews

A review from someone with your skin type, a tone within one step of yours, or a shared concern tells you more than a five-star average. We tag every review with the reviewer's skin profile and filter to "skin like yours" by default once we know yours. Current reviews are seeded from creators with disclosed profiles; your worked/didn't-work votes (with your anonymous profile) become the dataset that makes matching smarter.

Landed cost

Since the U.S. ended the de minimis exemption (Aug 2025), Korea-shipped orders owe ~15% import duty — the top complaint on Korean shopping sites is the surprise fee. We show price + shipping + estimated duty as one number for every retailer, plus official-seller status and accepted payment methods. Try the calculator →

What we're not

Not medical advice — for persistent skin conditions see a dermatologist. Not a marketplace — we hold no inventory. Not a review aggregator that scrapes other sites — Korean review context is quoted as short, attributed translations or summary statistics only.