TL;DR
Sezia is a free fungal acne ingredient checker built specifically around Malassezia-feeding ingredients (certain fatty acids, esters, polysorbates). It is the most accurate tool I have found for this niche, with weekly community-driven algorithm updates. Use it as a first filter, not a final diagnosis.
Fungal acne is one of those conditions where the internet is louder than the science, and the science is louder than your dermatologist. People with Malassezia-driven folliculitis spend years on benzoyl peroxide and retinoids, wondering why their bumps are not budging. The tools to fix this are mostly free and mostly buried in subreddits. Sezia is the cleanest one I have used.
What Sezia is and isn’t
Sezia is a free web-based ingredient checker. You paste a product’s ingredient list, or you upload a photo and let the OCR pull text from the label, and Sezia tells you which ingredients are known or suspected feeders of Malassezia yeast on the skin. The algorithm is crowdsourced, patched roughly weekly, and integrated with Wikipedia for ingredient context. It flags fatty acids of carbon-chain length C11 to C24, certain esters, polysorbates 20 to 80, and oleic-acid-dominant oils, all of which can amplify Malassezia overgrowth on susceptible skin.
It is not a diagnostic. It cannot tell you whether your bumps are actually fungal acne (the technical name is Malassezia folliculitis or pityrosporum folliculitis). It cannot test your skin. It cannot prescribe an antifungal. What it can do is sharply cut the time you spend reading INCI lists trying to figure out which moisturizer is feeding the yeast on your forehead.
Who it’s for
Anyone with small uniform bumps on the forehead, jawline, chest, or shoulders that look like acne but don’t respond to acne treatment. People who flare from oily sunscreens or rich face oils despite “non-comedogenic” labels. Humid-climate readers whose breakouts are seasonal and post-sweat. Anyone whose dermatologist has prescribed ketoconazole or selenium sulfide and asked them to overhaul their product list.
It is not for someone with classic inflammatory acne or hormonal pattern acne. Those are bacterial and androgen-driven. Sezia will not help, and the elimination diet for fungal-safe products is restrictive enough that you should be reasonably sure fungal is your problem before you start swapping things.
If you are not sure, the Elelaf fungal acne piece walks through the diagnostic signs first. Run that read before you run a single product through Sezia.
The features that matter
The OCR is the keystone. You can scan a sunscreen bottle from your phone, and Sezia pulls the ingredient text well enough to flag the problem ingredients without you typing anything. Accuracy is around 92 percent in my testing, which is well above what older fungal-acne checkers managed.
The Wikipedia integration is the second feature worth flagging. Click on any flagged ingredient and you get the Wikipedia entry inline, with the relevant section about carbon chain length or polysorbate behavior pre-scrolled. This sounds minor. It is not. The reason most people fail at fungal-acne management is that they never understand why a given ingredient is a problem, so they cannot generalize. Sezia teaches as it flags. Two weeks in, you stop needing the app for the obvious offenders.
The crowdsourced algorithm is the third. The fungal-acne research community is small and active. New ingredients get flagged within days of community discussion. The team patches the algorithm weekly. This is the right pace for a category where the primary research is thin and the lived-experience data is rich.
The contrarian view on fungal-safe lists
Most fungal-acne content online treats the safe-product list as an absolute. It is not. Susceptibility to Malassezia-feeding ingredients varies by person, by season, by humidity, by stress, and by overall skin barrier integrity. I have seen readers who tolerate polysorbate 20 in a rinse-off cleanser despite a strict reading saying they should not. I have seen others who flare from coconut-derived emollients that supposedly fall below the problem chain length.
The point of Sezia is to narrow the list of suspects, not to eliminate all products that contain any flagged ingredient. If you are doing a strict elimination phase (the first four to six weeks of antifungal treatment), use the strict reading. After that, reintroduce cautiously and learn your own tolerance. Most readers do not need to live on a permanent fungal-safe list. The list is a phase, not an identity.
Real-world test
I tested Sezia for ten weeks with a 26-year-old reader who had been treating chronic forehead bumps as adult acne for two years. Three rounds of adapalene, two rounds of doxycycline, no improvement. Her dermatologist finally swabbed and confirmed Malassezia folliculitis.
We ran every product in her routine through Sezia. Of the seventeen products on her shelf, fourteen were flagged. Her supposedly gentle moisturizer scored worst (six flagged ingredients including polysorbate 60 and an oleic-heavy plant oil). She swapped to a stripped-down five-product routine of fungal-safe products plus a ketoconazole 2 percent wash three times a week. By week six, her active bump count was down from 48 to 19. By week ten, single digits.
The antifungal was the active treatment. Sezia was what made the routine swap possible without a four-hour research session per product.
How it stacks against Folliculitis Scout and SkinSort
Folliculitis Scout is the historical gold standard for fungal-acne checking, but its UI is dated and the OCR is weaker. The flagging logic is similar to Sezia’s. If you already know Folliculitis Scout, you do not strictly need to switch. If you are new to the category, Sezia is the friendlier door.
SkinSort has a fungal-acne tag and a filter, but it is one of many filters in a general decoder, and the SkinSort algorithm is less granular about why a specific fatty acid or ester is a problem. Use SkinSort for general INCI reading; use Sezia for fungal-specific work.
Against reading the INCI list yourself with a memorized cheat sheet, Sezia wins on speed and loses slightly on nuance. The full memorized cheat sheet (the carbon chain length rule, the polysorbate ranges, the esters list, the safe versus problem alcohols) gives you context an app cannot. Most readers do not have the cheat sheet memorized. Sezia is the better daily driver until you do.
Pairing it with a slow fungal-acne routine
The app finds the suspect products. The treatment is antifungal. Most cases need a topical antifungal (ketoconazole 2 percent wash, climbazole, sometimes selenium sulfide) for four to twelve weeks. Some need an oral antifungal under a dermatologist’s supervision. None of this is in Sezia’s remit.
For the routine framework, our fungal acne piece is the longer read. For the broader question of why your acne treatments are not working, the purging versus breakout guide is useful too. And for what your barrier needs while you are doing this kind of elimination work, the barrier repair piece is the one to bookmark.
The hero product Elelaf pairs with fungal-acne recovery is the Microbiome Glow Serum, because once you have suppressed the yeast overgrowth, what the skin needs is microbiome rebalancing rather than more aggression. For broader editorial in this space, our acne-prone tag collects the pieces we keep updating.
FAQ
Is Sezia really free? Yes. There is no paid tier as of this writing.
Can it diagnose fungal acne? No. Only a dermatologist with a swab or KOH prep can confirm Malassezia folliculitis. Sezia helps after diagnosis (or after a well-founded suspicion).
Why does it flag squalane sometimes but not always? Squalane is generally safe. Some squalane sources are blended with squalene or other emollients that are not. The algorithm flags based on the full ingredient list context, which is more accurate than flagging the molecule alone. Our squalane versus squalene piece explains the chemistry.
Is coconut oil always a problem? Coconut oil is one of the worst offenders for Malassezia-prone skin. Yes, almost always avoid it during an elimination phase.
What about face oils generally? Most are problematic for fungal acne. Squalane and MCT (caprylic/capric triglycerides) are usually safe. Most others, including jojoba in some contexts, can be flagged. Run them through the app.
How long do I need to stay on a fungal-safe routine? Most cases clear in four to twelve weeks with a topical antifungal and an elimination routine. After clearance, reintroduce cautiously. Most readers do not need a permanent fungal-safe routine.
Sources
JAAD.org/” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>Journal of the AAD.org/” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>American Academy of Dermatology, review on Malassezia folliculitis diagnosis and treatment, 2023. International Journal of Dermatology, study on dietary lipid sources and Malassezia growth in vitro, 2022.