Luxury Beauty For A Fraction Of The Price — Is Beauty Pie Worth It & How Does It Work?

From Glossybox to Liberty's The Beauty Drop, subscription services are a seriously smart way for beauty obsessives to get a taste for shiny new brands and products. But it's fair to say that nothing has piqued our interest quite like the luxury beauty concept Beauty Pie — and we're not alone. According to our TikTok Discover page and a quick Google search, we all have questions: What is Beauty Pie? How does it work? Is it worth the money? And what are the best Beauty Pie products to shop first? To help answer these, I did my very own brand deep dive, testing out their very top skincare best sellers. Read on for my honest thoughts.

Beauty Pie is a beauty membership service which boasts skincare, haircare, makeup and body care products under the Beauty Pie brand. The products are luxury (sourced from 20 leading laboratories, which also produce formulas for big-name designer beauty brands) but are sold at a considerably lower price when you sign up for membership (up to 85% off).

There are two different levels of membership: £10 per month (payable monthly) or £59 per year (which works out at £4.95 per month, payable annually). It's perfect for beauty lovers who want to give multiple products a go at once. Unlike beauty subscription boxes, you get to choose your own products. There's a 14-day cooling-off period if you change your mind about membership and wish to cancel; outside that period, you can still cancel but you'll lose any membership fees you have already paid.

Not sure whether you want to join but still curious? Beauty Pie have just announced their new Access Pass: a 60-day free trial of full membership (including members' prices of up to 85% off). If you're happy, it will automatically roll into an annual pass at the end of your 60 days; if not, you can cancel at any time.

All products are high quality at Beauty Pie but beauty editors, influencers and shoppers almost always gravitate towards the skincare, thanks to transformative ingredients such as vitamin C, retinol and hyaluronic acid. That said, the choice is pretty endless. To help your decision, I tested out seven skincare fan-favourites (an entire Beauty Pie skincare routine!) for a month...

“I wouldn’t recommend this cleanser for removing make-up — rather as the second cleanse after a deep cleansing oil or micellar water. Why? It feels lovely to use. The gel-cream to milk formula leaves my skin feeling baby soft without stripping it of its moisture or leaving it feeling ‘tight’; in this sense, it is very similar to CeraVe’s Hydrating Cleanser, £11.25. However, it just isn’t tough enough to budge stubborn makeup, especially thicker and ‘greasier’ eye makeup like mascara and brow gel. As such, I like using this on days when I’m not wearing makeup for a quick and easy cleanse, but always double up with Pai Light Work, £33 for makeup days.”

"I love this stuff! Typically, I use Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Serum Crystal Elixir, £65 to satiate my dry skin, but Beauty Pie has easily blown CT out of the water. It's so soothing and calming for my dry skin and it's definitely reducing my allergy-induced puffiness and redness, plus calming my skin when using retinol. This is all thanks to the three sizes of hyaluronic acid in the formula, added to hydrate the skin at different levels. Hyaluronic acid is a skincare wonder product — it can hold over 1000 times its weight in water. However, hyaluronic acid is actually too large a molecule to pass through the skin, but by working with multi molecular weights, Beauty Pie has bypassed this issue. This serum is also formulated with other skincare saviours like peptides (helps boost collagen production) and ceramides (which help repair the skin barrier).

“Texture wise, it's on the thicker side (especially compared to other hyaluronic acid serums I’ve tried like those from The Ordinary, £8.80 and La Roche-Posay, £45), however it absorbs into the skin quickly. It does leave a slight tackiness but this disappears once I’ve added moisturiser. Though it looks pink in the bottle, it is actually a creamy white, and fragrance lovers will be glad to know that it's fragrance-free. ”

"First impressions: I wasn't a huge fan of how this smells (slightly like boiled spinach) or the texture (it's on the runny side though does absorb well after a minute or so. Plus, the genius push-top dropper bottle packaging helps a lot with this). I got over these minor issues quickly, though, because my skin loves it — its beaten out the Triple Hyaluronic Acid Lipopeptide Serum as my new favourite.

"The Youthbomb 360° Concentrate is made with something called polyglutamic acid which, though sounds rather daunting for those not in the know, is a humectant moisturiser just like hyaluronic acid; it’s just way more powerful and hydrating. Compared to hyaluronic acid, polyglutamic acid draws in up to ten times the amount of water. As such, it leaves my skin looking and feeling instantly plumper and — especially when I use this at night (you can use it twice a day) — I wake up to glowy skin.

“Do I think it’s worth the price though? Yes, but only if you were a Beauty Pie member. £44 for a bottle of serum (high quality as it is) is pretty steep. Luckily, thanks to its watery-formula, a little does go a long way. I’ve only just needed to replace my empty bottle after four-to-five months of using it on-and-off.”

"Even though I've dabbled in retinol before, I'm always tentative — especially when it comes to a product called 'Double-Retinol', that comes out as an unappealing light yellow cream. (My skin can be on the sensitive side and I’m well aware of the reactions to retinol if it's too strong, such as ‘skin purging’).

"As it turns out, this has been nothing but a dream for my skin; not irritating it at all. I think this is because although at 5%, this is the strongest dose I’ve tried, the Youthbomb Doub-Retinol uses encapsulated retinol. This means the product is designed to deliver the retinol in a time-released fashion, working throughout the day and night in a slow release that is less likely to shock the skin. Hydrating niacinamide is added to soothe the skin as it is resurfaced. Since using I've dramatically seen a change in my skin: my acne scarring is visibly reduced and the annoying sebaceous filaments (a little like black heads) on my nose are a lot clearer."

"After my colleague Venus raved about this cream, I knew I had to try it for myself. She's right — it really does transform dry skin. Recently, one particularly bad hay fever flare-up caused me to rub my nose raw. Using this morning and night for just a few days completely soothed and eased the dry patch. My makeup applies a lot better after using it, too, and I've noticed that I don't need as much coverage (less foundation needed).

“It reminds me a lot of Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Cream, £52, with an equally rich, thick and creamy texture, but it doesn't feel as greasy and sticky on the skin after applying.”

"This eye cream feels really soothing and moisturising, which means my concealer is applying a lot smoother. However, I’ve not seen any retinol-inspired difference to the fine lines and puffiness under my eyes — I had hoped that, over the month I tested this out morning and night, the retinol would also help me minimise a milia spot I had actually developed from testing out another eye cream (spoiler: Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Eye Rescue was way too thick for my delicate under eyes). No such luck. Once the month was up, I switched to Murad’s Resurgence Retinol Serum, £48, which did make significant changes to my fine lines and milia spot (compared to Beauty Pie, Murad visibly firmed up my skin and reduced the milia down to almost nothing, in the same amount of time: a month).”

"This SPF is almost perfect. It feels more like a moisturising milk than sunscreen, and so is great for my dry skin; it’s lightweight, absorbs quickly and seamlessly, and there’s no greasy sensation after. The problem is that this pills under makeup (I’ve tried it out under three different foundations or skin tints now to double check and each time its the same story). As such, I’ll be relegating this to no-makeup days and instead reaching for my trusty La Roche-Posay Anthelios UVMune 400 Invisible Fluid SPF50+, £20, which has no such problems.”