Best Natural Deodorant for Women

One of the hot topics lately is about the best natural deodorant for women. I think I got 5 DMs on Instagram about this yesterday alone! With the breast cancer scare years ago, this is one of those items that is in the back of every girl’s mind. But do you have to sacrifice smelling good for safety? Here are the best natural deodorants.

As you know, I’m really big on safe beauty. I kicked off my Ingredient of the Week series that breaks down one chemical at a time in an easy to understand way this year. I also have been talking about the best Beautycounter products and call out where I incorporate safe beauty products into my skincare and makeup routines regularly.

Of course, I always caveat that it’s important to make the switch to safer when it’s best for you. It’s a personal decision that everyone can make for themselves! Even I don’t have a makeup bag that’s 100% safe – most of the products that I use daily are, but safe beauty brands just haven’t found a way to create products that work as well in every category. At least, not that I’ve found yet! But keep following along and I promise to find them all eventually!

One of the less sexy but most common personal care products is deodorant. I’ve been wearing natural deodorant for 6 months and am honestly, really impressed with the ones I’m talking about today. Brands have made leaps and bounds since I last tried to go au naturel. You can’t go wrong with any of them. However, I will say that I have a clear winner.

So just like my ranking of the best eye creams, I’ve laid out how the natural deodorants that I’ve been testing have worked out. I’ll keep updating this post as I try new ones too so you can see where they rank! If you’re thinking about making the switch to safer, I strongly recommend using this body wash in conjunction. It helps fight odor, decreasing your chances of smelling. Both my husband and I use it and whenever we travel, I notice we both emit more odor.

1. Type A Deodorant

Type A is my personal favorite because it doesn’t go on like a stick! It’s comes in a tube where you press up the cream-like product and slide it over your skin. If you’ve found deodorant easily irritates you, the abrasiveness of a stick deodorant may be the cause. One deodorant doesn’t work for everyone but based on DMs from you guys, this one has been the one that has worked the best for the most number of people! I also feel like the citrus called The Visionary flavored one works the best to fed off odor.

Added bonus, one of my ex-coworkers at Beautycounter (my favorite safe beauty brand) now works at Type A so that makes me trust the brand!

2. Schmidt’s Natural Deodorant

This is tied with Type A as favorite natural deodorant. I alternate using them and I feel like that’s also key for it to be effective and not irritate your skin. I have the Lily of the Valley scent and love that it’s for sensitive skin. I’ve used just about ever scent and Matt uses the Charcoal one. It doesn’t contain aluminum (which causes those unsightly yellow stains), parabens, phthalates, or artificial fragrance.

Why do I love it? First, it’s affordable. Sure, it’s a little more expensive than the value pack of Dove you get at Costco but safer products will ultimately make a healthier you. A healthy you pays fewer doctor’s bills over the course of your life. Second, it lasts over 24 hours. I put this on in the morning and this is the only natural deodorant I found that lasted through my workout the next morning (depending on how intense my workout was). Third, the scent is amazing. This is personal to me but I also liked that the wax in this is sourced from plants versus beeswax (aka cera alba or cera bellina).

I only have 2 critiques. The first is that the product is a little hard in its stick form (which is also why I love Type A). You need to leave the stick on your skin for a few seconds to let it melt from your body warmth. In all honesty, I rarely spend the time doing this and I’m fine but if you have sensitive skin, you may be irritated otherwise. The second is that it contains “natural fragrance”. While that’s better in theory than plain fragrance, it’s tough to know what that contains as brands often put chemicals in there they don’t want the public to know. They label it a “trademark” since it’s part of the signature scent but fragrance can sometimes include toxic chemicals (it’s how brands sneak them in). However, their website calls out that they don’t use artificial fragrance so I’m hoping it’s just because the scent is truly a trademark.

You can find this at Target, Walmart, Amazon, or Costco.

3. Vapour Organic Beauty AER Next Level Deodorant

This was my second favorite deodorant. I loved the palo santo blood orange scent for a little something different. This product isn’t a stick – it has little perforated holes in the top of the tube like a gel deodorant. The consistency is something between a stick and a gel and it applies really well. Their website describes it as a gel to powder and that’s probably the best description. For this reason, I’d say it applies better than Schmidt’s. It’s truly luxurious. This product also lasted until my next workout like Schmidt’s.

Vapour’s Deodorant is also aluminum, paraben, and phthalate free. What I really liked is that it’s also fragrance free – it just contains a blend of Vapour’s proprietary essential oils. While that doesn’t disclose exactly what’s inside, it’s similar to Schmidt’s disclosure message.

The downside is that this product is also very expensive. At about $25, it’s triple the price of the other two but if you love the feeling of luxury beauty or blood orange, this might be the deodorant for you.

4. Native Deodorant

This is one that came highly recommended from you! However, I have to admit it did fall a little short of the other two. Don’t get me wrong, Native was still a really good deodorant. I just probably wouldn’t repurchase it as long as I had Schmidt’s as an option. If you’re new to the brand, I’d recommend trying the sample pack. It’s $30 for 5 mini sized deodorants and is a great way to sample multiple scents.

So far, I’ve tried the Unscented, Lavender & Rose, and Coconut & Vanilla. None of them lasted through the day. A few of you reached out and said I needed to detox my armpits but I’ve been wearing natural deodorant for months, I’m vegan-ish, and I drink chlorophyll. Plus, I tried these after Schmidt’s and Vapour.

Native applied better than Schmidt’s but not as well as Vapour – it was right on par with a regular deodorant. It’s a little pricier than Schmidt’s if you buy the full size but it’s still half the price of Vapour.

Again, I saw “fragrance” on the label. As I mentioned above, this is usually how brands get chemicals into their products that they don’t want to disclose or don’t want you to know about. However, upon further research, the Native website describes this as a proprietary blend of essential oils. Just like the other two deodorants, we don’t really know what’s inside of that proprietary blend. We can only hope the brand is being responsible with it’s claims of the product being “natural” although Native didn’t go so far as to describe the fragrance as “natural” like Schmidt’s did.

The only other thing I found which was a minor concern was stearyl alcohol. When I questioned Native’s ingredients on Instagram, it wasn’t so much that it was bad for you – just that it does contain this skin irritant (stearyl alcohol). I had quite a few people say that it irritated their skin so this makes sense especially if you’re sensitive! If it doesn’t irritate you, don’t worry! You’re good to go! It still ranks really low on EWGs toxicity scale.

If you’re new to EWG, the site is generally, directionally correct. Quite a bit of the data is out of date and a lot of products are missing. There aren’t enough resources to constantly update and refresh all the products. It’s a great starting point but I always love to do my own research too!

Brands that Didn’t Work

I don’t think you can go wrong with anything above but I can’t say that for every brand unfortunately! I bought a sample size of Lavanila and it really did not work well on my skin. The stick was so hard that it ended up being too abrasive during application for me to even continue using the sample size. I ended up tossing it!

Do you have a vote for best natural deodorant for women? If you have one that isn’t listed, add it below!