The 5 Best Sephora Alternatives

There’s likely no bigger name in retail beauty than Sephora, but it’s not the only name in the market. And who isn’t rooting for an underdog?

While Sephora has plenty of locations, brands, and products, the store can feel overwhelming for some, myself included. Products are mostly grouped by brand instead of by type, so finding something as simple as a moisturizer can mean walking every aisle.

Add in bright lights, loud music, busy tester stations, and dozens of near-identical options, and it’s easy to walk out with nothing (or way too much). Sephora also doesn’t have a specific focus, so if you have specific needs, like clean beauty or products for sensitive skin, a more specialized store might be a better fit.

If Sephora feels like too much, or you just want to see what else is out there, you’ve got options. Some of these stores are easier to shop, some carry brands you won’t find anywhere else, and some focus on clean or luxury beauty. Either way, you’re bound to find one that helps you break up with Sephora.

The Best Sephora Alternatives At a Glance

	Best for	Focus	Variety of Products/Brands	Popular brands carried
Ulta	Best for drugstore and high-end in one place	Variety of brands and nationwide stores for the average consumer	Over 30,000 products from over 600 brands	The Ordinary, Fenty, MAC, Charlotte Tilbury
Thirteen Lune	Discovering new global brands	Founder-led brands across the globe	Hundreds of products from over 160 brands	Born To Stand Out, Goop Beauty, Kitsch, Maude
Bluemercury	Luxury	High-end skincare, makeup, and spa services	Hundreds of products from over 100 brands	SkinCeuticals, La Mer, Laura Mercier, Diptyque
Credo	Clean beauty	Clean makeup and skincare with strict standards	Over 2,000 products from 130 plus brands	Ilia, Osea, Innersense Organic Beauty, Westman Atelier
Space NK	International shipping	Luxury brands with shipping to most countries	Thousands of products from over 180 brands	Phlur, Saltair, Tatcha, Rare Beauty

What People Love About Sephora

Even if it’s not for everyone, there’s a reason Sephora is so popular. The stores are set up so you can try almost anything before you buy, with testers and mirrors at nearly every station. If you know what brands you like, it’s easy to head straight to them and browse. Also, staff don’t work on commission, so they’re not there to push products, but they’re happy to help if you want advice.

Sephora’s selection is huge. It carries over 35,000 products from nearly 340 brands, which is more variety than most shoppers will ever need.

They also have international reach, with over 2,700 stores in 35 different countries, including 1,813 locations in the US. You’ll find a Sephora in just about every shopping mall in America, which is convenient for the average beauty shopper.

In general, it’s a one-stop shop for beauty lovers of all levels of experience around the world.

What Sephora Could Do Better

When you have an empire as big as Sephora’s, you’re bound to run into some concerns and issues.

Over the years, customers have complained about Sephora’s customer service, citing everything from rude employees to racial profiling and prejudiced behavior. Online shoppers have had their share of issues too, with many saying their orders arrived with missing items or damaged products.

So, with that all in mind, let’s look at some stores and online retailers in the beauty space that may solve some of the issues that Sephora seems to have.

Where to Shop Instead of Sephora

Each of these stores fixes at least one of Sephora’s weak spots. Here’s what makes each one worth a look.

Ulta

Best for drugstore and high-end in one place

If you love shopping for beauty products in person, Ulta is one of the easiest Sephora alternatives to get to. It has over 1,500 locations in the US, plus a few in Mexico and the Middle East. While Sephora has over 1,800 US locations, many of those are small shops inside Kohl’s. Ulta’s are mostly standalone stores, often in strip malls with parking right out front, so a quick trip is easy.

Ulta is also more accessible on price. It carries both drugstore and high-end brands, so you can grab NYX or Maybelline on the same trip as Tarte, MAC, or Benefit. With about 600 brands and over 30,000 products, it has even more variety than Sephora.

Just keep in mind that the stores are big. If Sephora feels overwhelming, Ulta can too, but the wider aisles and mix of price points make it easier to browse.

Like Sephora, Ulta has a rewards program, an online store, and its own line of beauty products. If you want lots of choice at every price point, Ulta is the Sephora alternative to try.

Thirteen Lune

Best for discovering new global brands

For Sephora fans (or skeptics!) who want to explore unique brands from all over the globe, Thirteen Lune is an exceptional place to get introduced to international brands you may not be acquainted with.

Where Sephora (and Ulta) offer as many products as possible, Thirteen Lune is a bit pickier, carefully curating the founder-led brands it features on its site. This market is focused on brands from Seoul to Nairobi that put an emphasis on regional ingredients and the heritage behind the products of their featured brands.

Keeping things fresh, Thirteen Lune adds new brands to their site approximately every 10 days, with new products on a weekly basis. This includes larger-named brands like Maude, Ami Colé, and Danessa Myricks Beauty, but also smaller, lesser-known international brands like Macabalm and Relevant.

It doesn’t have a ton in common with Sephora, but Thirteen Lune has an extensive online store and one flagship brick-and-mortar location in Los Angeles. Thirteen Lune currently features 160 brands on its site, which, while not quite at Sephora’s level, is halfway there, which is pretty good for a smaller indie retailer.

If you want more curated, international brands than Sephora’s huge list of random beauty products, give Thirteen Lune a try for more mindful beauty.

Bluemercury

Best for luxury beauty

For luxurious, hard-to-find beauty that you can’t get at Sephora, Bluemercury is the biggest high-end competitor.

Again, the biggest differentiating factor here is the more specific selection process for which brands and products to carry. Sephora offers a huge catalogue of brands at every price point, while Bluemercury chooses to focus instead on more niche, luxury brands that Sephora and other larger retailers don’t carry.

Bluemercury carries hundreds of luxury brands, featuring Augustinus Bader, Chantecaille, and Lune + Aster. The variety of products they offer spans niche brands in skincare, makeup, hair, and fragrance.

Bluemercury, like Sephora, has physical locations and an online marketplace. They have 185 brick-and-mortar stores across the country, and their site ships to the USA, excluding Hawaii and Alaska, so both Sephora and this competitor have shopping options both in-person and online.

Credo Beauty

Best for clean beauty

A cleaner, health-conscious alternative to Sephora is Credo Beauty, a beauty marketplace with strict standards for the products and brands it offers.

Sephora isn’t known for having restrictions on the ingredients in its products. Credo Beauty, on the other hand, vets its brands and products to make sure their ingredients, formulas, and even business practices are clean and ethical, which makes them a better option for the mindful customer.

For example, they ban over 2,700 ingredients from their shelves, for reasons ranging from skin irritation to links to more serious health risks. They also carry over 130 clean brands, including Ilia, Marie Veronique, and OSEA.

Credo Beauty and Sephora both have online and brick-and-mortar shopping options, with Credo’s physical locations laid out similarly to Sephora’s. Both also stock popular, well-respected brands in the clean beauty space like Tower 28, Kosas, and Westman Atelier.

It’s no surprise Credo is often compared to Sephora. It was co-founded by Annie Jackson and the late Shashi Batra, who both helped build Sephora in the US.

For a clean-focused beauty retail alternative, Credo Beauty is your best bet.

Space NK

Best for international shipping

Sephora has stores in about 35 countries, many with their own local websites. But that still leaves a big part of the world without a Sephora nearby. And since each country’s site has its own product lineup, you can’t always get the same brands you’d find in the US. Sephora’s US site doesn’t help much either, since it only ships within the US.

Space NK, on the other hand, offers shopping with Global-E, which allows customers to pay in their own local currency, use local payment systems, and work with local delivery systems for an easy shopping experience internationally. They carry over 100 brands, including popular brands like Charlotte Tilbury, Beauty of Joseon, PHLUR, Tatcha, and more.

Space NK has many brands in common with Sephora, with internationally popular brands available with shipping. It also has a few brick-and-mortar stores, with around 90 physical locations in addition to its vast online store, primarily concentrated in the UK ( no stores in the US, yet).

If you live outside of the US and want access to some of the most popular brands that Sephora offers, Space NK offers easy shopping and shipping internationally.

Which Sephora Alternative Is the Best?

The best Sephora alternative depends on what you love about Sephora and what you’re looking for that’s different from what Sephora does.

For drugstore and high-end brands in one place, Ulta is an easy pick. If you want access to more curated international brands with a focus on local ingredients, try Thirteen Lune.

Bluemercury offers a high-end alternative with over a hundred local locations for “neighborhood luxury,” while Credo Beauty offers a similar Sephora experience with a focus on clean beauty.

And if you live outside of the US but want access to popular international brands, try Space NK.

Happy shopping!