How to Get Free Lipstick Samples [An Honest Guide for 2025]

We’re talking free lipstick samples and even some full-size products, with zero scams or fake “just pay for shipping” traps.

I’ll show you the quick and easy ways to get free lipstick samples right now from places like Sephora and MAC, and I’ll give you my secrets for the long game (the same strategies I use to get all kinds of free beauty samples).

We’ll cover everything from product testing programs to insider tips that will score you a steady supply of free lipstick mailed right to your door.

Free Lipstick Samples You Can Get Right Now

Okay, let’s start with the fun stuff.

If you want to get your hands on a free lipstick sample today or this week, these are the places you need to check.

These deals are happening right now, but they can disappear fast, so you gotta jump on ’em when you see ’em.

Where to Look Right Now (I’ve Checked!)

These major beauty brands and retailers are the most reliable sources for getting free samples with your online orders.

Their offers change frequently, so it’s always worth a look before you check out.

• Sephora: A consistent source for samples. Sephora’s official policy allows you to add 2 free samples to any online order. The selection changes all the time and frequently includes lipsticks from top brands like Giorgio Armani and Fenty Beauty.
• MAC Cosmetics: MAC almost always has an offer where you can select a free sample with any purchase. Keep an eye on this page, as lipsticks (both sample-size and full-size) are a very common freebie.
• Estée Lauder: Known for their generous promotions, Estée Lauder maintains an active page of free samples you can add to your order. It’s a great place to find free lip products and other deluxe skincare samples.
• Smashbox: This brand consistently offers a selection of free deluxe samples with any purchase. Check their offers page to see if any lipsticks or lip glosses are currently available.
• NYX Cosmetics & e.l.f. Cosmetics: Keep an eye on the “Promotions” pages for more affordable brands like NYX and e.l.f. Cosmetics. They regularly run “free gift with purchase” deals where you can score a free lipstick kit or other full-sized products once you hit a certain spending threshold.
• National Lipstick Day (July 29th): Mark your calendar! This is the single best day of the year for brands to offer free full-size lipsticks, often with any purchase.

Let’s Talk About What “Free” Actually Means

So as you start hunting for these freebies, you’re gonna notice a few different types of deals.

Here’s a quick and dirty breakdown so you know what you’re looking at:

• 100% Free Sample: This is a true freebie where a brand will mail you a sample just for signing up or filling out a form, with no purchase needed. These are rare but awesome when you find them.
• Free Sample with Any Purchase: This is the most common deal you’ll see, the kind Sephora and MAC are famous for. You have to buy something, but then you get to pick your free sample at checkout. My pro-tip is to just buy something super cheap to unlock the good freebie.
• Gift with Purchase (GWP): This is when you have to spend a minimum amount of money (like “$35 on any Clinique stuff”) to get a free gift set that’s usually packed with goodies. And these sets almost always have a full-size lipstick. This is a great way to score expensive stuff for free when you were already planning to buy your foundation or whatever anyway.

Free Lipstick Samples by Mail (No Purchase Required): How to Get Them All Year Long

Okay, those “quick wins” are awesome for getting a sample right now.

But if you want a steady, year-round supply of free lipsticks and other beauty products?

These next methods are the real key. This is the secret a lot of beauty insiders use to get freebies delivered all the time.

Join a Product Testing Panel

This is one of the best ways to get full-sized, high-end products for free.

Seriously!

Brands are desperate for real-world reviews from real people and they use product testing panels to get them.

So, they send you a free product, you try it out, and you just have to write an honest review about it.

The trick is to be active and fill out your profile completely so they can match you with the right products.

• Influenster: This site is HUGE. You sign up, and they’ll send you a “VoxBox” filled with free stuff (we’re talking brands like Dior and Maybelline). All they ask is that you share your honest thoughts about the products online.
• BzzAgent: This works the same way. They team up with big brands like L’Oréal and will mail you products to test out and review if you’re a good fit for their campaign.
• PINCHme: This one is super fun. Every month, they have a “Sample Day” where you can log on and pick a bunch of samples you want, and they mail them to you for free. They almost always have makeup and beauty stuff to choose from.

These product testing panels are also one of the best ways to get other high-end beauty freebies. For more, read my guide on how to get free perfume samples.

Sign Up for Free Sample Boxes

These websites are all about sending you a surprise box of different free samples every month or so.

You never know what you’re gonna get, but they very often include beauty products and lipstick samples.

• Daily Goodie Box: Just like the name sounds, this company sends out boxes of freebies every single day. The stuff inside is always changing, but they feature beauty and makeup products a lot.
• TryProducts: This is another totally legit sample box company. You sign up, and you can get free products from all kinds of different brands. All they want in exchange is your real opinion.

Get Rewarded with Recycling & Loyalty Programs

Okay, some of the best beauty brands will actually reward you with free products just for being a loyal customer and for recycling.

These are awesome programs that a lot of people don’t even know about.

Back-to-MAC

This is the most famous program of its kind, for real. Through their Back-to-MAC Program, when you return six empty MAC product containers to a store or mail them in, you get to pick out a free MAC lipstick of your choice.

It’s an amazing way to get a high-end lipstick for free just for turning in your empties.

Retailer Loyalty Programs

Signing up for the free rewards programs at your favorite stores and brands is a no-brainer.

If you’re buying makeup anyway, you should be earning points that you can cash in for free products, including full-sized lipsticks.

Here are some of the best loyalty programs to join:

• Sephora Beauty Insider
• Ulta Rewards
• Elf Beauty Squad
• MAC Lover Loyalty Rewards Program
• CVS ExtraCare
• Bobbi Brown Club Loyalty Program

How to Get Full-Size Lipsticks (Not Just the Tiny Samples)

Okay, those little sample-sized lipsticks are great for trying a new color.

But the real prize is getting a brand-new, full-sized lipstick for free.

And yeah, it’s totally possible.

Here are the two best ways to make it happen.

Master the Gift-with-Purchase & National Lipstick Day Deals

This is my number one secret for getting free, full-sized, expensive lipsticks from fancy brands. It takes a little planning, but the payoff is huge.

Gift-with-Purchase (GWP)

You gotta keep your eyes glued to the beauty counters at stores like Macy’s and Nordstrom, and especially Ulta.

Brands like Clinique and Lancôme are famous for these GWP deals.

You spend a certain amount (like, “$35 on any Clinique stuff”), and you get a whole free makeup bag that almost always has a free full-size lipstick in it.

The pro move is to wait to buy your regular foundation or face cream until one of these GWP deals is happening.

Timing your purchases this way is a key strategy that works for more than just makeup; you can use the same mindset for finding all the best ways to save money on clothes and accessories.

National Lipstick Day (July 29th)

You need to put this in your phone calendar right now. This is like the Super Bowl for lipstick lovers.

On this day, brands go crazy with the freebies. MAC, for example, is famous for giving away a free full-size lipstick (sometimes with any purchase, and sometimes with no purchase at all)!

Just follow your fave brands on Instagram and sign up for their emails so you know what deals are coming.

Pro Tip: The absolute best way to stay on top of all these deals is to get on the email lists for your favorite brands and follow them on social media. They will always announce their best GWP events and promotions there first.

Some great ones to join are:

• Fenty Beauty: Sign up for 10% off and exclusive offers.
• L’Oréal Paris: They are known for sending out alerts for product samples and valuable coupons.
• Maybelline: Another great list for getting notifications about new deals and potential freebies.

For Bloggers: How to Get Free PR Lipsticks

If you have a blog, an Instagram following, or you make videos for YouTube or TikTok, you can get a steady supply of free full-size lipsticks sent right to you from the brands.

It’s called PR outreach.

The deal is super simple: a brand mails you their new lipstick for free, and they hope you’ll talk about it to your followers.

To make this happen, you just have to be a little professional.

You’ll want to make a simple “media kit”, which is just a fancy name for a one-page sheet that says what your blog is about and how many followers you have.

Then you can use the email script I put in the “Toolkit” section below to politely ask the marketing people at your favorite brands if they’d be willing to send you some stuff.

How to Get Free Lipstick Samples Near You (In-Person!)

Okay, some of the absolute best free lipstick samples aren’t even online. They’re just sitting in the store, waiting for you to ask for them.

If you know how to ask politely, you can walk out of a store with a sample of almost any lipstick you want to try.

Here’s how to do it.

What to Say at Sephora & Ulta (Here’s a Script That Works)

Stores like Sephora and Ulta are the best places to do this.

For real. The people who work there are literally trained to help you, and that includes giving you samples you can try out at home.

The only trick is to be polite, know what you want to try, and just be cool about it.

Walking up to the counter and just being like, “Can I have free stuff?” is not gonna work.

Instead, try this super simple script:

“Hi there! I’m looking for a new lipstick and I’m super interested in this one. But I’m not really sure how the color will look on me in natural light. Would it be possible to get a little sample of it to try at home before I buy it?”

This is the perfect way to ask. It’s nice, it shows you’re actually interested in buying something eventually, and it’s a totally normal question for them.

Nine times out of ten, they’ll happily scoop a little bit of the lipstick into a tiny sample jar for you to take home.

It’s the best way to test-drive a fancy lipstick before you actually spend $30 on it.

Find Local Beauty Events & Free Sample Giveaways

Here’s another awesome way to get free lipsticks.

You gotta keep an eye out for in-store beauty events. You know, when places like Macy’s, Ulta, or Sephora have a special day for a specific brand?

They’ll usually have makeup artists on-site, and they give out really good deluxe samples (and sometimes even full-sized products) just to the people who stop by.

So, how do you find out about these events?

It’s pretty simple:

• Sign up for your favorite brand’s emails. Seriously. They will almost always send you a heads-up when they’re having an event in your town.
• Follow your local store on social media. This is a pro-tip! The specific “Sephora at the Town Center Mall” often has its own Facebook or Instagram page where they post about events and freebies happening only at that location.
• Check the store’s website. Both Sephora’s and Ulta’s websites have an “Events” page. You can just pop in your zip code and see everything that’s coming up at the stores near you.

An Insider Tip: Use Reddit to Find the Newest Offers

The world of free makeup samples changes daily, and sometimes the best way to find a brand new, unadvertised giveaway is to check where beauty fans are talking.

The r/makeupfreebies subreddit on Reddit is a fantastic community where users share the latest free stuff they find in real-time.

It’s a great place to discover new offers before anyone else.

How to Avoid the “Free Lipstick” Scams

Before adding any link here, I personally checked that it comes from an official brand domain or a verified partner.

But because everyone loves a good freebie, there’s a lot of scammy junk out there trying to trick you into giving up your info.

If you know the red flags, you can stay safe and stick to the real, legit offers.

• The “Just Pay Shipping” Trap: This is the oldest scam in the book, and you’ve gotta watch out for it. You’ll see an ad for a “free” lipstick from a fancy brand, but right at the end, they ask for your credit card to pay some crazy high shipping fee, like $9.95. Listen, a real free sample is either 100% free, or it comes with an order you were already placing. That’s it.
• Fake Social Media Pages: Scammers will create a fake Instagram or Facebook page that looks just like the real MAC or Fenty Beauty. Then they’ll post about a “giveaway” to get you to click on a weird link and enter all your personal info. Always, always make sure you’re on a brand’s official page (look for the little blue checkmark!) before you ever click a link.
• The “They’re Asking for Too Much Info” Red Flag: To mail you a lipstick sample, a company needs your name and address. That is it. If a sign-up form for a “free” sample ever asks you for your credit card number, your Social Security number, or anything like that, it’s a scam. End of story. Just close the window.

Also before signing up for any “free lipstick” offer, do a quick credibility check.

Look up the brand on sites like the BBB or Trustpilot.

A few bad reviews are normal (no company pleases everyone) but if there’s a pattern of complaints or no verified presence, that’s a red flag.

Checking these sites gives you a clearer picture of how trustworthy the company really is.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Your Freebie Toolkit: Resources & Actionable Templates

Okay, let’s put it all together.

Here are the most important resources from this guide and a simple script you can use to start requesting your own freebies today.

Top Resources for Free Lipstick

• For Samples with Purchase: Keep a close eye on the official free sample pages for Sephora and MAC Cosmetics.
• For Product Testing: The top platforms to sign up for are Influenster and BzzAgent.
• For Recycling Rewards: The best and most famous program is the Back-to-MAC Program.

A Simple Email Script for Contacting Brands

If you want to contact a brand that isn’t running a public promotion, the best way to do it is with a short, polite email. You can adapt this simple script to use on any company’s “Contact Us” page.

Subject: A quick question from a big fan of your lipsticks!

Hello [Brand Name] Team,

I just wanted to send a quick note to say how much I love your lipsticks. Your [Name of a lipstick line, e.g., “Satin Lipstick”] is my favorite, and I recommend it to all my friends.

As a loyal customer, I was wondering if you ever offer free samples for fans to try out different shades? I would be so excited to test and provide feedback on any new colors you have coming out.

My mailing address is:

[Your Full Mailing Address Here]

Either way, thanks for making such fantastic products!

Best,
[Your Name]

The Bottom Line

As you can see, you never have to pay full price to find your new favorite lipstick.

Whether you’re politely asking for a sample at the Sephora counter or you’re just being smart about timing your purchases with those “gift with purchase” deals, there are so many legit ways to get awesome, high-quality lipstick for free.

The most important things to remember are to always keep an eye on the “Offers” page for your favorite brands and sign up for the free rewards programs at the stores you’re already shopping at.

And seriously, don’t ever be afraid to just politely ask!

By using the strategies in this guide, you now have a complete plan for how to get free lipstick samples and build an amazing makeup collection without breaking the bank.

Found a new free lipstick sample?

Leave a comment below so I can verify it and add it to the list of free lipstick samples.