Best Sunscreen Under $25 According to AI (2026)
Tracked across 1 benchmark run from May 19, 2026 to May 19, 2026
The exact question we asked AI models
“I am a 32-year-old woman living in the US who is active and outdoorsy - I run, hike, and go to the beach regularly. I care about skin health and anti-aging. I am looking for sunscreen under $25 for everyday use. What are my best options?”
Brand Recommendations
Aggregated across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity over 1 benchmark run.
| # | Brand | Mentions | Top-3 | First Picks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | La Roche-Posay | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| 2 | CeraVe | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | Banana Boat | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Coppertone | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | Neutrogena | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 6 | Sun Bum | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| 7 | innisfree | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | Black Girl Sunscreen | 1 | 0 |
Model-by-Model Breakdown
Top brands each AI model recommends for this prompt.
chatgpt
- 1.Neutrogena
- 2.La Roche-Posay
- 3.Sun Bum
- 4.Coppertone
- 5.CeraVe
claude
- 1.CeraVe
- 2.La Roche-Posay
- 3.Blue Lizard
- 4.Coppertone
- 5.Banana Boat
gemini
- 1.EltaMD
- 2.Eucerin
- 3.La Roche-Posay
- 4.innisfree
- 5.Banana Boat
perplexity
Key Insights
Key Takeaway
For a health-conscious active woman, AI sunscreen discovery rewards clean-filter credibility plus proven sport performance, and Supergoop is the most-mentioned brand in the category - present in all four engines - anchoring the clean daily-wear position. But every engine tells the buyer to mix brands rather than trust one, so the winnable unit is a category slot (the daily-face slot or the sport-body slot) held consistently across all four engines, not brand-wide presence in a single answer. The decisive movement is the clean-ingredient bar hardening into a gate, alongside a persistent aspirational-versus-practical split that hands premium brands the ranking and mass-market brands the actual purchase recommendation.
Top Brands Summary
Supergoop, Neutrogena, Sun Bum, Blue Lizard, and EltaMD appear across all four engines, forming a five-brand full-saturation core for sunscreen. La Roche-Posay is named by three engines and matches that core on raw frequency (six mentions). Supergoop leads on breadth and volume - eight mentions, present in every engine - anchoring the clean daily-wear position. Below the core the field splits by prompt intent: premium skincare-forward brands (Supergoop, La Roche-Posay, EltaMD) dominate the open best-sunscreen question, while budget-framed prompts pull in mass-market sport lines (Neutrogena, Banana Boat, Blue Lizard, CeraVe, Coppertone). Nineteen distinct brands surfaced. Single-engine specialists fill the tail - MDSolarSciences and COOLA, Sky and Sol (a DTC sport-clean beachhead), plus Cetaphil, Eucerin, Coppertone, and Vacation. This is a full twelve-response capture, recovering from the prior sunscreen run where one engine's third prompt returned blank.
See the full Sunscreen benchmark
Cross-model rankings, trend data, and competitive landscape.
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