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How to Download CosIng Data (and What Is Actually in the Files)

Posted by Cosing Checker

What the European Commission's CosIng pages offer today, what the classic file names mean, the fields to expect, and pitfalls in the data.

Anyone who has typed "cosing database download" or gone looking for COSING_Ingredients-Fragrance Inventory_v2.xls has probably ended up on a forum post, a third-party mirror, or a dead link. This is a plain account of what the European Commission's CosIng pages offer today, what the old file names meant, what the fields mean, and the pitfalls that catch people who work with this data directly.

What CosIng is

CosIng (Cosmetic Ingredient Database) is the European Commission's online tool for cosmetic substances and ingredients under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 and the earlier Cosmetics Directive 76/768/EEC, plus the glossary of common ingredient names used for INCI labelling. The Commission's own cosmetic ingredient database page states this directly and adds a disclaimer that matters more than anything else in this article: "CosIng database has informative purpose and no legal value." Only Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 and its Annexes, as published in the Official Journal and consolidated on EUR-Lex, determine whether and under what conditions a substance may be used in a cosmetic product.

That single sentence should shape how anyone uses CosIng data: as a discovery and identity tool (is this the substance I think it is, what is its CAS or EC number, which Annex entry does it sit in), not as a verdict on legality. This site takes the same stance: a CosIng or Annex record is identity evidence, not permission, and the absence of a rule for a substance is not proof it is allowed.

What the Commission offers today

CosIng now runs as an online search and browse tool at ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/cosing, reachable from the Commission's cosmetics ingredient database page. It lets you look up substances by name, CAS number, EC (EINECS/ELINCS) number, function, or Annex, and it lists Annex entries (II through VI) as browsable pages.

The historical file names people still search for, COSING_Ingredients-Fragrance Inventory_v2.xls and COSING_Annex_II_v2 (and the matching III, IV, V and VI files), belonged to an earlier version of the interface, which published the inventory and each Annex as a static spreadsheet. Those fixed files are no longer offered under those names. The current service generates exports on request instead of publishing static files: its annex export address, api.tech.ec.europa.eu/cosing20/1.0/api/annexes/export, returned a freshly generated PDF when checked on 10 September 2026, and cosingchecker.com's sources page cites the same service as its reference for verifying records. For the legally binding Annex text, read the consolidated Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on EUR-Lex. Do not rely on third-party mirrors of the old .xls files as a source of current data; the Commission does not maintain or vouch for them, and they stop updating the day the mirror was made.

What the classic file fields mean

Even though the Commission's current interface is browse-only, the field structure of the old export files is the same structure CosIng still exposes per entry, and it is the structure this site's own database mirrors from CosIng. Knowing what each field means is useful whether you are reading a CosIng page, an Annex table on EUR-Lex, or a dataset someone built from either.

  • Reference number (ref_number) — CosIng's own internal identifier for an ingredient inventory entry. It is not a CAS or EC number and is not used anywhere outside CosIng.
  • INCI name — the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients name, the label name the Cosmetics Regulation requires on packaging.
  • INN / Ph. Eur. name — where an ingredient also has an International Nonproprietary Name (a WHO pharmaceutical identifier) or a European Pharmacopoeia name, CosIng records it alongside the INCI name. Most ingredients have neither; these fields are usually blank.
  • CAS number — the Chemical Abstracts Service registry number. Some entries carry no CAS number (complex natural extracts, UVCB substances), and some carry more than one, described below.
  • EC number — the EINECS or ELINCS number from the EU's chemical substance inventories. Like CAS, this can be absent, or more than one can appear on a single row.
  • Description — a short chemical or botanical description, sometimes a synonym list rather than a formal definition.
  • Restriction — for ingredient inventory entries, a pointer to the Annex and entry number that restricts or regulates the substance (for example III/88). For Annex entries themselves, the restriction fields carry the maximum concentration, product-type limits, and wording conditions set out in the Regulation.
  • Function — the cosmetic function(s) CosIng assigns, such as ANTIOXIDANT, PERFUMING or SKIN CONDITIONING. A substance can carry several.
  • Update date — the date CosIng's own record was last revised. It reflects when the Commission updated the database entry, not necessarily the date of the underlying legal act.

A live example makes the CAS/EC point concrete. This site's own mirror of CosIng records Limonene (ref_number 57187) with CAS 138-86-3, but an EC number field reading "205-341-0/931-893-3" — two EC numbers in one field, separated by a slash, because Limonene has been assigned identifiers under both EINECS and the later REACH-related ELINCS listings. Its restriction field reads "III/88, III/167, III/168", pointing to three separate Annex III entries that all touch different isomers of the same substance.

The legal status: informative, not binding

This is worth restating precisely because it is the most common misunderstanding. The Commission's cosmetic ingredient database page says CosIng "has informative purpose and no legal value", and that inclusion of a substance in the CosIng inventory "does not mean it is to be used in cosmetic products nor approved for such use." The legally binding text is Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 and its Annexes, in the form published in the Official Journal of the European Union and consolidated on EUR-Lex. When CosIng and EUR-Lex appear to disagree, or when CosIng has not yet caught up with a recent amending Regulation, the EUR-Lex text controls.

Reuse terms

Content on European Commission websites, including ec.europa.eu and its single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu pages, is covered by the Commission's legal notice, which applies the reuse policy set out in Commission Decision 2011/833/EU of 12 December 2011 on the reuse of Commission documents. Unless stated otherwise, EU-owned content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): reuse is allowed provided appropriate credit is given and any changes are indicated. This does not extend to third-party material, logos, or industrial property rights (patents, trademarks, registered designs) that require separate permission from the rightholder.

Pitfalls people hit when working with CosIng-derived data

  • Duplicate or near-duplicate INCI names. CosIng's ingredient inventory carries tens of thousands of entries built up since 1976, and it is not unusual for closely related names (a base substance, a hydrogenated form, a fermentation extract) to share most of the same wording. Match on the exact INCI string and the ref_number, not a partial name.
  • Several CAS or EC numbers on one entry. As with Limonene above, a single ingredient can carry more than one CAS or EC number in the same field, separated by a slash, usually because different registration routes (EINECS vs ELINCS, or successive REACH registrations) assigned separate identifiers to what CosIng treats as one substance. A script that assumes one CAS per row will silently drop or mis-split these.
  • No CAS or EC number at all. Complex natural extracts, fragrance mixtures, and UVCB substances are frequently listed with both fields blank. Absence of a CAS number is not an error in the data and is not evidence the substance is unregulated.
  • Encoding and special characters. Botanical names, French- and German-origin entries, and degree/micro symbols in descriptions have historically been a source of mojibake when files are opened with the wrong character encoding (older exports were not always clean UTF-8). If you are working from an old mirrored file rather than a current source, check the encoding before trusting non-ASCII text.
  • Update dates lag legal changes. CosIng's update_date reflects when the Commission's own database record was revised, which can trail the entry into force of an amending Regulation by weeks or months. For anything time-sensitive, check the amending Regulation's own dates on EUR-Lex rather than relying on the CosIng date alone.

An alternative: querying structured data instead of parsing files

Rather than parsing spreadsheet exports, this site's own JSON API lets you query the same Annex and ingredient-inventory data as normalised records, with pagination and field-level structure already handled. The API is covered in depth in a separate post (cosingchecker.com/blogs/cosing-api-query-eu-cosmetic-ingredient-data-json); this is a short pointer with real examples, not a repeat of that coverage.

A search for BHT against the ingredient inventory endpoint returns two records, distinguishing the base substance from a derivative that shares three letters of its name:

curl "https://cosingchecker.com/api/v1/ingredients/?q=BHT"
# -> 2 results: "BHT" (CAS 128-37-0) and "TRIS-BHT MESITYLENE" (CAS 1709-70-2)

The same query against the INCI glossary endpoint returns the two official label names and the EU decision that most recently confirmed them, with the date the entry currently applies from:

curl "https://cosingchecker.com/api/v1/inci-glossary/?q=BHT"
# -> "BHT" and "TRIS-BHT MESITYLENE", source EU 2025/1175, applies_from 2026-07-30

And a single ingredient record exposes both its CosIng inventory fields and links to the Annex evidence and per-jurisdiction rules attached to it, without needing a second lookup:

curl "https://cosingchecker.com/api/v1/ingredients/57187-limonene/"
# -> ref_number 57187, CAS 138-86-3, EC "205-341-0/931-893-3",
#    restriction "III/88\nIII/167\nIII/168", 7 linked jurisdiction rules

As of this writing, this site's own mirror (cosingchecker.com/statistics/) holds 28,712 ingredient inventory records and 2,353 Annex entries across Annexes II through VI, last synced from the Commission's published files on 29 August 2026. Those are counts from this site's own database, not an official Commission figure, and they will move as the Commission updates its source data; check cosingchecker.com/statistics/ for the current numbers rather than treating this figure as fixed.

Practical takeaway

If you need to confirm what a substance is called, its CAS or EC number, or which Annex entry mentions it, CosIng's search interface (or a structured mirror of it) is the right tool. If you need to know whether a substance is currently permitted, restricted, or banned, and under what conditions, go to the Regulation and its Annexes on EUR-Lex, or to the specific amending Regulation, not to CosIng's own disclaimer-carrying inventory. Treat any spreadsheet file named COSING_Annex or COSING_Ingredients-Fragrance Inventory that you find outside an official Commission page as an undated, unverified copy, however old or well-known the file name is.

Sources

  • Cosmetic ingredient database — European Commission, Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs — https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/cosmetics/cosmetic-ingredient-database_en
  • CosIng — Cosmetics — European Commission (search interface) — https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/cosing/
  • Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on cosmetic products (consolidated text) — https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02009R1223-20250311
  • Commission Decision of 12 December 2011 on the reuse of Commission documents (2011/833/EU) — https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32011D0833
  • Legal notice — European Commission — https://commission.europa.eu/legal-notice_en
  • CosIng Checker — data sources and methodology — https://cosingchecker.com/sources/
  • CosIng Checker — statistics — https://cosingchecker.com/statistics/
  • CosIng Checker — API documentation — https://cosingchecker.com/api/
  • CosIng Checker — querying the API (companion post) — https://cosingchecker.com/blogs/cosing-api-query-eu-cosmetic-ingredient-data-json/

About this article

This article is part of the CosIng Checker blog, where we publish guides, notes and practical explainers about EU cosmetic ingredients, Annex II–VI restrictions, warnings, preservatives, UV filters, colorants and related compliance topics.