This site exists to show you that making your own syndet shampoo bar really is doable…if you can make a batch of biscuits, you can make a shampoo bar. Not hard. Not expensive. Not requiring any equipment you don’t already own.

But not everyone has the time, the inclination, or maybe even the budget to buy ingredients in bulk. Some people live alone and a batch of five bars is more than they need. Some people want to try a syndet bar before committing to making their own. Some people simply prefer to buy. All of that is completely fine, and this article is for you.

The challenge is that the shampoo bar market is confusing. Claims like “natural,” “plant-based,” “eco-friendly,” and “pH balanced” appear on products that range from genuinely well-formulated syndet bars to soap-based bars that will leave your hair waxy and your scalp unhappy. Reading the label is the only reliable way to know what you’re actually buying, and most people haven’t been taught how.

Here’s what to look for.

Step one: work out if it’s actually a syndet bar

This is the most important question before anything else, and the ingredient list on the shampoo bar packet answers it clearly once you know what you’re reading.

Signs you’re looking at a soap-based bar, not a syndet:

Soap-based bars list their ingredients using the names of the oils they were made from, preceded by the word “sodium.” You’ll see things like sodium cocoate (saponified coconut oil), sodium olivate (saponified olive oil), sodium palmate (saponified palm oil), or sodium tallowate (saponified tallow). Any ingredient following the pattern “sodium + oil name” is a soap salt and is therefore the product of a lye-based saponification reaction.

The word “castile” in the product name is also a clear signal. Castile soap is soap…traditionally olive oil-based, made with lye. A castile shampoo bar is a soap bar by another name.

If it’s soap based, the chemistry of the bar is well away from hair’s natural pH – read more about the importance of pH and hair.

Signs you’re looking at a genuine syndet bar:

A syndet bar’s primary ingredient will be a surfactant rather than a soap salt. Look for sodium cocoyl isethionate (SCI) near the top of the list. This is the most commonly used and most gentle surfactant in quality syndet shampoo bars, derived from coconut oil. You might also see sodium cocoyl methyl isethionate, sodium lauroyl methyl isethionate, or sodium lauroyl isethionate as the primary surfactant. These are all isethionate-family surfactants with similar mildness profiles to SCI.

CAPB (cocamidopropyl betaine) listed alongside the primary surfactant is a further positive signal; it’s a mild co-surfactant that improves lather and contributes to overall formula gentleness.

The label may also say “soap-free,” “pH balanced,” or “syndet” directly. Any of these confirm you’re in the right territory, though these claims can appear without the ingredient list to back them up. Always check the full ingredient list rather than relying on front-of-pack claims alone.

What to avoid

SLS and SLES. Sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate are effective cleansers (and they are genuinely good at removing oil and dirt) but their mechanism is indiscriminate. They clean so thoroughly that they can strip the scalp’s natural lipid barrier, leading to dryness, irritation, and a rebound oil-production cycle that makes hair greasier faster between washes (which further increases use of the product in a spiral). Neither belongs in a shampoo bar for regular use, particularly for anyone with a sensitive scalp. Their presence near the top of an ingredient list is a meaningful red flag. The sensitive scalp article covers this in more detail, and there’s a deeper dive in the best shampoo for sensitive scalps article.

Soap-salt ingredients alongside syndet claims. Some bars contain a mix of soap salts and surfactants (possibly marketed as “natural syndet” or “hybrid” bars). These can work, but they carry the hard water performance problems associated with soap, and the pH is harder to control. For straightforward performance in Australian conditions, a pure syndet formula is the cleaner choice. The hard water and shampoo bars article explains why this matters.

No ingredient list at all. Australian cosmetic regulations require ingredient lists on products sold as cosmetics. A bar without one is either mislabelled or not assessed for safety. Walk away.

The “natural” and “plant-based” question

These terms are worth approaching with some scepticism. Not because the products using them are necessarily bad, but because the terms have no legal definition in Australia and can be applied to almost anything.

SCI, the gentle surfactant in well-formulated syndet bars, is derived from coconut oil. It is genuinely plant-derived. It is also a chemically processed ingredient that has been through multiple reactions to reach its final form. “Plant-derived” tells you where it started, not how processed it became, not what was added along the way. The same is true of most surfactants and conditioning agents.

All this isn’t an argument against syndet bars, just further reason not to rely on front-of-pack language instead of reading the ingredient list. The ingredient list tells you what’s actually in the product. The front of the pack tells you how the brand wants you to feel about it.

On DIY versus retail, the practical advantage of making your own is control: you know exactly what’s in the formula because you put it there. Retail products can absolutely be good and many are. But the ingredient list remains the only reliable guide to what you’re buying.

Ingredient scanner apps: useful, but use them critically

Apps like Yuka and EWG Skin Deep have made ingredient literacy more accessible, which is truly valuable. They’re a useful starting point, particularly for identifying SLS, fragrance, and preservative concerns at a glance.

The limitation worth knowing: these apps typically flag ingredients as problematic based on the presence of substances on watchlists, without accounting for the concentration or formulation context, which is how real toxicology works. An ingredient flagged as a moderate risk at high concentrations may be perfectly safe at the low percentages typically used in a rinse-off shampoo bar. This is even true of essential oils.

CAPB is a good example of this. CAPB has received a variable hazard rating from EWG due to historical reports of allergic contact dermatitis linked to impurities in older manufacturing grades, but modern high-purity CAPB shows very low sensitisation potential and is considered safe at typical concentrations. An app might flag it without that context; a well-formulated bar using high-purity CAPB is a different matter from the older grades that generated the concern.

Use apps as a first filter, not a final verdict. If something flags, look into it rather than assuming the product is poor. Conversely, an “excellent” app rating doesn’t guarantee the product will work well for your hair…formulation performance and ingredient safety are different questions.

What a genuinely good syndet bar should cost

Pricing is one of the more reliable signals of formula quality in this category, and the maths is worth understanding.

From making my own bars, the ingredient cost for a 100g syndet shampoo bar, using quality cosmetic-grade SCI, CAPB, cetyl alcohol, kaolin clay, jojoba oil and glycerine, sits at approximately $3–4 AUD per bar when bought in reasonable home quantities. Full cost breakdown is here.

A contract manufacturer making these bars at commercial scale would have lower ingredient costs per unit but would add manufacturing, filling, quality assurance, regulatory compliance, and minimum order overheads. Packaging (even minimal cardboard) adds cost. Labels cost money. GST applies. A retailer taking a bar from a manufacturer to a shelf needs a margin to operate.

Conservatively, a well-made syndet bar at retail in Australia using quality ingredients, appropriate manufacturing standards, and honest labelling should cost somewhere between $12 and $30 AUD depending on the formula complexity, brand positioning, and retail channel. Contract manufacturing for solid bars typically requires minimum orders of 5,000 units, which means small Australian brands making genuinely good bars are paying premium per-unit costs that flow through to the retail price.

A bar priced at $5–8 AUD is almost certainly making compromises somewhere, cheaper surfactants, lower active percentages, home formulator without the QA mentioned above, or soap-based rather than syndet. That’s not automatically a bad product for every use case, but it’s useful context for managing expectations.

The Australian retail reality

Honestly, when I look for syndet shampoo bars in my local chemist or supermarket, (which is often because, y’know…Batch and Bubble exists for a reason) I can’t find them. Not one. The bars that do appear in mainstream Australian retail are almost exclusively soap-based, often marketed with language that implies something more modern.

This isn’t a comment on Australian consumers, it reflects a genuine market gap. Well-formulated, accessible syndet bars that everyday Australians can pick up without seeking them out online simply aren’t widely available yet. The category exists, products are out there, but they’re not on supermarket shelves.

It’s a gap I’d like to see filled by genuinely good products, without excessive packaging, that perform as well as the DIY versions I’ve been making at home. That’s not a small ambition for the category, but it’s a realistic one given what the formulations are capable of.

If you’d rather make your own

The DIY shampoo bar recipe is a tested, beginner-safe formula that takes about an hour and costs under $4 per bar in ingredients. If you can follow a recipe and weigh things accurately, you can make it. The ingredients are available from Australian suppliers including Heirloom Body Care.

Making your own means you control exactly what goes in, you can adjust the formula for your hair type, and you’ll never have to read another label to know what you’re using. It’s the option I’d always recommend first, not because buying is wrong, but because the results from a well-formulated DIY bar consistently outperform most of what’s available to buy. And you’re also not paying for all those hidden costs in a retail product.

The are shampoo bars good for your hair article gives the honest overview if you’re still weighing it up.

Find out what your hair type is and know exactly where to start with making your own:

Neets is a Brisbane-based home formulator and the founder of Batch and Bubble. She has an applied science degree, makes all her own bars, and is genuinely hoping the Australian retail market catches up with what’s possible in a well-made syndet bar.