Rogaine vs Regaine

If you’re dealing with hair loss, then you really have to make a decision. You can either choose to accept it and resign yourself to shaving your head (nothing wrong with that, I do it!). Or, you can choose to fight your hair loss by using a hair loss formula designed to help hinder the attack on your hair. Minoxidil, most commonly referred to as Rogaine, is many peoples first choice. But what is Regaine? Is it any different than Rogaine, or is it similar?

The answer is that Regaine is simply the UK version of the same product. They’re both owned by the same company. Despite this, some users did notice a difference between the products.

Although this isn’t for certain, the likelihood is that there is some legal complications that do not enable Rogaine to use their brand name in the UK. Much like Tefal is rebranded as T-Fal throughout the UK and Europe because they aren’t allowed to use the ‘Tef’ (because it’s similar to Teflon), this is probably a similar case for Rogaine too.

If you email the company directly to find out the differences between the two brands, then they’ll simply tell you that they’re the same product – just in different packages. Though this doesn’t explain the users that have found a difference when switching between Rogaine and Regaine. Even though they are supposedly the same product, many people do report differences between the two.

Now, this is true for the liquid version of Rogaine – they are both made from exactly the same ingredients. But this isn’t true for the foam versions of these products. If you look at the ingredients list, they actually use different ingredients.

Rogaine vs Regaine – Ingredients

Although the difference in ingredients of these two products in minor, there’s certainly a difference between the two. Here’s a list straight from the ingredients on both products.

Regaine foam
Ethanol anhydrous. purified water, butylated hydroxytoluene (E321), lactic acid, Citric acid anhydrous, glycerol, cetyl alcohol, stearyl alcohol, polysorbate 60, propane, butane, isobutane, nitrogen.

Rogaine foam
Butane, Butylated Hydroxytoluene, Cetyl Alcohol, Citric Acid, Glycerin, Isobutane, Lactic Acid, Polysorbate 60, Propane, Purified Water, SD Alcohol 40-B, Stearyl Alcohol.

It’s pretty clear to see that both of these products have different ingredients. This will give them a different feel and texture – many Regaine users note that they prefer Regaine, although it’s decidedly more expensive in the UK than it is in the US.

Rogaine foam is ‘more foamy’ than Regaine, although this is possibly down to the drastic difference in temperatures between the two countries. There is the possibility that the texture of Rogaine changes whilst in transit, though in my opinion it’s more likely to just be the difference in ingredients that makes the difference.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s easy to see that these products are both pretty much the same thing. Many people in the UK do choose to order Rogaine in bulk however, to help avoid the extortionate prices of Regaine in the UK (it tends to run at about half the price in the US than the UK).

Essentially at their core, both of these products are 5% minoxidil like any other minoxidil (unless you opt for 2%), so there isn’t any drastic difference between the two.