Birchbox Review

Thursday, March 27th

2025 Beauty Box Subscription Reviews

Birchbox

• Costs $17 to $20 per month
• 1 box style
• Design your own box
• Valued at $20 to $40 per box
• One-stop beauty shop
• Anyone can shop from online store
• Eco-friendly

Birchbox promises to be a standout in the beauty box community by delivering "Bespoke beauty at your doorstep". Unlike other beauty boxes that limit your choices or send the same products to everyone, this company gives you the power to choose exactly what you want from samples, travel-size, and full-size options.

Kudos for promoting and celebrating women

The company also focuses on making eco-friendly, sustainably-minded choices easy for you. As a woman-run, led, and founded business, Birchbox is dedicated to uplifting and celebrating women in the beauty industry, honoring their accomplishments. The intentional partnerships with women-founded, owned, and run beauty brands make it easy for the community to shop with their values while finding products best suited for women's needs.

Design your own box

Birchbox is a one-stop shop beauty box, and since you get to pick your own items, you can decide what your monthly surprise will hold. You can choose between makeup products, hair products, skincare, and body care. You can expect to find products from companies like Dr. Botanicals, Benefit Cosmetics, OUAI, Sunday Riley, Oribe, Kiehl's, Living Proof, Peter Thomas Roth, Milk Makeup, Tarte, and more. Since each box is tailored to your desires, there aren't example boxes to look at, but you can expect 4-6 different items in each box that you choose.

Lower-value sample sizes

With this design-your-own method, there's only "one” box available at Birchbox, but it's basically infinitely changeable. However, the value per box is a little lower at Birchbox than with other companies. Since most of the items included in the box are sample size, the average value of each box is around $20 to $40 according to reviewers. Birchbox itself doesn't estimate a per-box value.

Prices from $17 to $20 per month

You can choose three different payment cycles at Birchbox. First, you can choose the Monthly Membership, priced at $20 per month. If you prefer something a little longer, you can try their quarterly option with the 3-Month Membership at $19 per box: you'll enjoy everything from the Monthly Membership, plus a 5% discount each billing period. This plan renews at $57 every 3 months. Finally, you can choose the 12-month Membership at $17 per box. It includes all the benefits of the Monthly Membership, with a 15% savings each billing period. As with the other plans, customization of your box is included, and it renews at $204 per year.

Support for POC customers and brands

Like with many competitors, you can buy full-size items from the shop on Birchbox's website. As another extra, Birchbox intentionally collaborates with BIPOC-founded, owned, and operated beauty brands, providing an effortless way for their customers of color to align their shopping choices with their values and discover products made for them.

Reviews warn customers away

While we'd love to support a company that's working with POC brands and helping the environment, the company's reputation shows that this may not be a trustworthy place to put your money (even for those good causes). Birchbox has an "F” rating from the Better Business Bureau. On top of that, reviews show that customers are highly dissatisfied with the beauty box overall, with an average rating of 1.5 stars out of 5 from third-party review sites. Customers are complaining that despite promising "full-size” items in the boxes, Birchbox sends tiny samples not worth the fee of the box. Customers also complain about late shipping and slow responses from customer service. Overall, most of the reviews are warning potential customers to stay away.

Bottom of the list

While there are a lot of pros promised on Birchbox's site, the reality of the company's reputation is staggeringly poor. Given the repeated warnings from past customers to stay away from Birchbox due to item size and price vs. value (as well as poor customer service), we unfortunately can't recommend the company in any capacity.