Is it halal?
Photograph the ingredients on any product — or paste them in from wherever you found them — and we will tell you what is in it: which ingredients are settled, which cannot be resolved from a label, and which to avoid. With the reasoning, not just a verdict.
How it works
- The ingredient list gets extracted. From a photo, a model transcribes it — that is all it does, it reads the text off the picture. From a paste, there is no model at all: we strip out the links, headings, nutrition figures and stray prose and keep the list. Neither step is asked whether anything is permissible, because a model asked to apply a religious standard will answer confidently and sometimes wrongly.
- The ruling comes from our code. Every ingredient we flag sits in a fixed table, each entry tied to a written guide. The same answer every time, and you can read the reasoning behind each one.
- Where scholars differ, we say so. Carmine, bone char sugar, vanilla extract, machine slaughter and several others are genuine disagreements. We give both positions and tell you which one our own screen applies.
What this is not
It is not a certification. It reads a label; it cannot audit a factory. An ingredient list also cannot tell you how an animal was slaughtered, what solvent a flavour house used, or what a vitamin premix was carried in — so for meat and for anything where the question is about process rather than contents, a certifier’s mark is what settles it and this tool is not a substitute.
We would rather tell you we do not know than guess. If you photograph a label and get back “we recognised nothing in it”, that is an honest answer, not a failure.
The ingredients people ask about most
GelatinCarmine & shellacGlycerinMono- & diglyceridesRennet & wheyL-cysteineVanilla extractE numbersAll guides →
Questions
Is it free?
Yes, and there is no signup. Photo checks are capped at 20 an hour per person so the tool stays free for everyone. Pasted ingredients cost us nothing to check, so that limit is five times higher.
Do you keep my photos?
No. The photo is read and discarded — it is never written to disk. We keep only the verdict and the names of the ingredients matched, so we know which guides to write next. No account, no phone number, no IP address, nothing that identifies you.
Is this a halal certification?
No, and it is important that it is not read as one. This reads an ingredient list and tells you what is in it. Certification means an auditor traced a supply chain, which no tool reading a photograph can do.
Why does it say 'needs checking' so often?
Because a great many ingredients genuinely cannot be resolved from a label. Glycerin, mono- and diglycerides and stearates can each be plant or animal derived, and US labelling law does not require the source to be stated. Saying so is more useful than guessing.
Can I paste the ingredients instead of taking a photo?
Yes — switch to the paste tab. It does not need to be tidy: paste the whole thing off whatever page you found it on, links, headings, nutrition table and all. We pull the ingredient list out and tell you how many lines we ignored, so you can see what was dropped. On a computer you can also press Ctrl+V anywhere on this page to paste a screenshot straight in, without saving it first.
What if it reads the label wrong?
It shows you exactly what it read, whether that came from a photo or from what you pasted, so you can see it was read correctly before trusting the answer. If a transcription is wrong, retake the photo straight-on in good light; if a paste came out short, paste just the ingredient list.
Who decides the rulings?
The rulings are not generated by an AI — they come from a fixed table in our code, each entry linked to a written guide explaining the reasoning and, where scholars differ, saying so. The AI does one job: transcribing the text off the photo.