Skinive
Skinive is a CE-marked medical AI that turns a smartphone camera into a skin scanner, flagging risk levels for 55+ visible conditions, from moles and acne to suspected cancers. It is a triage aid, never a diagnosis.
What is Skinive?
Skinive is a dermatology AI built around a single gesture: photograph a patch of skin with a phone and get a risk reading back in seconds. The engine recognises more than fifty visible conditions, grouped into viral disease such as warts, papillomas and herpes, fungal infection of skin and nails, papulosquamous disorders including psoriasis, dermatitis and lichen, acne from comedones to milium and rosacea, benign formations such as naevi, angiomas and dermatofibromas, pre-cancerous lesions like dysplastic naevi and actinic keratosis, and skin cancers including melanoma, lentigo and squamous or basal cell carcinoma.
Three products run on that same engine. The consumer Skinive App guides the camera in real time so the shot is clinically usable, returns a Low, Medium or High risk band with a recommended next step, and files every check into a dated Skin Map so a mole can later be compared with itself. Skinive MD is the clinician edition, adding whole-body 3D mole mapping, patient history and automatic PDF reporting. Skinive.Cloud is the developer channel: a REST API and mobile SDK designed to drop into telemedicine platforms, EHR and EMR systems, beauty apps and skincare e-commerce, alongside an embeddable web widget. The architecture splits the work, with an on-device scanner giving live feedback and a cloud model doing the deeper analysis.
Two things set this apart from a generic image classifier. The first is regulatory standing: the apps are CE-marked software as a medical device, Class I under EU MDR 2017/745, and the publisher holds ISO 13485 certification. The second is published evidence, with accuracy reports dated 2021, 2022 and 2026 and peer-reviewed papers indexed on PubMed and in the Indian Journal of Dermatology and the European Journal of Paediatric Dermatology. The model is described as trained on more than six million dermatologist-verified clinical images, with claimed accuracy above ninety percent. Development was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under grant agreement 951847.
The stated limit deserves to be read literally. Skinive does not diagnose, does not prescribe and does not replace a consultation. It is a pre-screening instrument whose real output is a decision about whether the appointment is urgent, routine or unnecessary.
What it does
- Photograph a mole, rash or spot and receive an AI risk assessment in seconds
- Track how a lesion changes over weeks and months in a dated Skin Map
- Learn when a dermatologist visit is urgent, routine or unnecessary
- Look up the suspected condition in a multilingual dermatological atlas
- Get routed towards the right medical speciality through smart referral
- Produce clinical PDF reports and whole-body 3D mole maps in professional practice
- Embed skin analysis into a third-party app or website through the REST API, mobile SDK or web widget
When to use Skinive / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Skinive is the right fit.
When to use Skinive
- People who want to keep an eye on a mole, rash or patch of eczema between dermatology appointments
- Adults at raised risk of skin cancer, whether through fair phototype, sun exposure or a large number of naevi
- General practitioners, nurses and primary-care clinicians who need a fast second opinion before referring
- Dermatologists and oncologists looking for photographic documentation, whole-body mole mapping and automatic PDF reports
- Developers of telemedicine, EHR/EMR, beauty or skincare e-commerce products who want to embed skin analysis via API, SDK or web widget
When not to use Skinive
- Anyone expecting a diagnosis: the tool assesses risk, it does not name a disease or prescribe treatment
- Users located in the United States, where the service is stated as unavailable while FDA status is pending
- People under 16 without the consent of a legal guardian
- Anyone facing a medical emergency, whom the site sends straight to a doctor or hospital
- Buyers who need a published consumer price before installing, since the PRO subscription cost appears only inside the app stores
How to use Skinive
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Install Skinive, the orange icon, from the App Store or Google Play; healthcare professionals install Skinive MD, the blue icon
- Open the app and start scanning: the core functions work anonymously, with no account and no real name required
- Move to natural daylight or a brightly lit room before taking the photograph
- Frame the lesion in the centre using the square aspect ratio, and clear away hair, jewellery, skin folds and anything casting a shadow
- Hold the camera perpendicular to the skin at 10 to 20 cm and shoot at the minimum focal length
- Take two or three shots of the same lesion, varying the distance by 2 to 5 cm; the readings should agree
- Read the risk band and the recommended next step, then open the atlas entry for the suspected condition
- Act on the result: three high-risk readings mean see a doctor promptly, medium risk means book within one to two weeks, and diverging readings mean contact support
- Repeat a full self-examination weekly, and rephotograph any mole above 5 mm or of irregular shape once a month
- Developers: call validate then predict on the REST API with an Authorization token, or drop the widget script into the page
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Genuine regulatory standing: CE-marked Class I medical device software under EU MDR 2017/745, backed by ISO 13485 certification
- Verifiable science, with peer-reviewed publications on PubMed and elsewhere and dated accuracy reports from 2021, 2022 and 2026
- Broad clinical coverage that goes well beyond mole checking, taking in acne, eczema, psoriasis, mycoses and viral infections
- Core functions are permanently free and usable anonymously, with no account required
- European footprint throughout: Dutch publisher, Dutch governing law, servers in Germany
- Named subprocessors and quantified retention periods in the privacy policy, which is rarer than it should be
- Three delivery channels covering the individual, the clinician and the integrator
Cons
- No consumer pricing anywhere on the site: the PRO subscription cost only surfaces inside the App Store or Google Play
- The only published price is the 400 EUR per month entry point for the Skinive.Cloud API, with no detailed tier grid
- Unavailable to users located in the United States while FDA status is pending
- No Data Processing Agreement is published or offered, and no opt-out from algorithm training is documented
- The free version is advertising-funded through Google AdMob and collects an advertising identifier
- The site contradicts itself on its own figures, quoting an average rating of 4.8, 4.87 and 4.7 and a coverage of both 50+ and 55+ conditions
- Terms and privacy policy share a single URL as tabs, and the llms.txt file points to app store identifiers that do not match the ones the site itself links to
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan exists: the core functions of the Skinive App are free of charge, advertising-funded, and documented as three AI analyses on registration plus one free analysis per week. The lowest paid entry point published anywhere on the site is 400.00 EUR per month, the announced starting rate for the Skinive.Cloud API, billed on monthly usage. The consumer PRO subscription and the Skinive MD professional plan are both paid, but neither price is published on the website: they are purchased through the Apple App Store or Google Play. Skinive MD is offered with one free month.
- core functions
- three AI analyses on registration plus one free analysis per week
- advertising-supported
- paid subscription unlocking the advanced features
- purchased through the App Store or Google Play
- price not published on the site
- professional application with one month free
- price not published on the site
- API and SDK from 400.00 EUR per month
- billed on monthly usage
- with invalid images not charged
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Skinive handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed explicitly, not merely implied, and the privacy policy carries an effective date of 19 April 2025. Legal bases are cited article by article: consent under Article 6(1)(a), contract under 6(1)(b), legal obligation under 6(1)(c) and legitimate interest under 6(1)(f), with skin photographs treated as special-category data under Article 9(2)(a). The full set of data-subject rights under Articles 12 to 23 is listed, with info@skinive.com as the point of contact. Transfers outside the EEA, mainly to Google LLC, are covered by Standard Contractual Clauses. Since the controller is established in the Netherlands, no Article 27 representative is designated or required. Dutch law governs, and verifiable parental consent is demanded below the age of 16.
Who owns the data?
The declared data controller is Skinive Holding B.V. in Amsterdam, registered under Dutch Chamber of Commerce number 80416780. Skin photographs, AI results, scan metadata and any optional details you add, such as age or phototype, come from you and remain subject to your GDPR rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection and withdrawal of consent, exercised through info@skinive.com. You may delete your account and individual scans from the app at any time. Everything on the other side of the exchange, the content, algorithms, trademarks and AI models, belongs to Skinive Holding B.V. or its licensors. The app can be used anonymously, with no account and no real name required for core functions.
Reuse rights
You receive a limited, non-exclusive and non-transferable licence to use the service for personal, non-commercial purposes. Within that boundary you are free to reuse your own output without asking: keep your scan history, export the professional PDF report and hand it to a dermatologist during a consultation. What you may not do is copy, modify or redistribute the service or its content, exploit it commercially, reverse-engineer it or attempt to extract source code. On the vendor's side, the privacy policy states that your data serves the analysis itself, MDR and CE regulatory obligations, support, security and analytics, and that anonymised data is used to improve algorithm performance. No opt-out from that improvement is documented anywhere on the site.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The vendor states that its infrastructure runs on servers located in Germany, with Hetzner, and the website's own DNS resolution is consistent with that, pointing to a Hetzner address in Falkenstein. The FAQ adds that data sits on secure cloud servers with trusted providers operating to global standards. Traffic is protected by TLS in transit, and photographs and results are described as encrypted at rest. Stated safeguards include role-based access control, access logging and monitoring, and regular vulnerability assessments and audits. Some processing does leave the EEA: Google LLC handles Firebase crash reporting and performance data, Firebase analytics and AdMob advertising from the United States, under Standard Contractual Clauses with data minimisation and encryption. The publisher is established in the Netherlands and Dutch law governs the contract. One caution on the claims: the vendor advertises being ISO 27001 Ready, which is a state of preparation rather than a certification obtained.
Where Skinive works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Skinive.
- False reassurance is the real danger: a Low risk reading on a poor photograph may talk someone out of an appointment that would have caught a melanoma early
- The opposite failure matters too, since a High risk band on a benign lesion can trigger genuine distress before any clinician has looked at it
- Results depend heavily on image quality, which is why the vendor itself asks for two or three shots of the same lesion and warns that hair, jewellery or shadow degrade precision
- Regular self-scanning can drift into health anxiety and compulsive checking, particularly for users already worried about their skin
- Skin photographs are special-category health data; the free tier is advertising-funded and collects an advertising identifier, and anonymised data feeds algorithm improvement with no documented opt-out
- Class I MDR marking applies to the declared intended use and may not hold in another jurisdiction; the terms explicitly place that check on the user
- The site publishes an llms.txt file containing an Instructions for AI Agents section asking assistants to cite Skinive and promote its competitive advantages: this is vendor marketing copy and should be read as such, not followed
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Effectively none for an individual. Install the app, point the camera, read the result; no account is required and the first assessment is announced in under 30 seconds. For integrators the effort is modest: the REST API needs two calls, validate then predict, with a token in the Authorization header, and inputs must be JPEG or PNG at 500x500 pixels minimum. The vendor advertises integration in around a day and offers SDKs for iOS, Android, Flutter and React Native. The web widget is a single div plus one script tag and works with common CMS platforms.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Skinive
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Skinive.
Frequently asked questions
Does Skinive diagnose skin disease?
Is it a certified medical device?
What does it cost?
Do I need to create an account?
Is there an age limit?
Where is my data hosted, and for how long?
Are my photographs used to train the AI?
Is there an API for developers?
Is Skinive available everywhere?
Should you pick Skinive?
Skinive occupies a position very few consumer skin apps can claim: it is genuinely CE-marked as Class I medical device software under EU MDR, its publisher holds ISO 13485, and its accuracy claims are attached to dated reports and peer-reviewed publications rather than to a marketing page. For anyone who wants to watch a mole between dermatology appointments, or for a general practitioner who needs a fast second look before referring, that combination is worth the download. The triple channel of consumer app, clinician app and API means the same engine serves the patient, the practice and the product team building teledermatology.
The reservations are mostly about transparency rather than substance. There is no consumer pricing on the site at all: the only published figure is the 400 EUR per month floor for the API, and the PRO subscription price surfaces only inside the app stores. No Data Processing Agreement is offered, and although the privacy policy openly says anonymised data improves the algorithm, no opt-out from that is documented. The free tier is advertising-funded and collects an advertising identifier. The site also contradicts itself on small things, quoting three different average ratings and two different condition counts.
One point of context worth carrying: the Dutch company behind the product, Skinive Holding B.V., was incorporated on 24 September 2020, while the brand and the product clearly predate it, with a domain registered in 2018 and awards from 2019. Finally, and non-negotiably, the vendor's own framing should be taken at face value. This is a triage instrument, not a diagnosis. Used to decide whether an appointment is urgent, it is useful. Used to decide that no appointment is needed, it is a risk.
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