It’s a face lift in a bottle! A filler alternative! Nature’s Botox! You’ve likely heard the eager testimonials or even seen the slogans slapped on product labels themselves.

In the beauty industry, these promising claims are often met with an eye roll—they’re hyperbolic at best, potentially problematic at worst. Even the most sophisticated topicals can rarely replicate the effects of a cosmetic procedure, so if one promises to manually lift the skin? Meh, likely folklore.

But the industry is constantly evolving, and right now marks an exciting time in the firming topical space. Recently, a slew of innovations has caught our attention: patented peptides, epidermal growth factor technologies, topical exosome therapies, and so on. And it turns out, their firming capabilities are not so far-fetched.