Chin Filler: The Three FDA-Approved Products, and What Their Trials Actually Found
Reviewed for medical accuracy against our Medical Review Board · Last updated 31 August 2026
Part of Dermal Fillers
Three hyaluronic acid fillers hold an FDA approval for the chin. Ask the FDA's approval database for statements mentioning the chin and you get five results, of which one is an eye laser system that happens to have a chin rest and one is a labelling revision, leaving three actual chin fillers.
All three approvals are Panel Track supplements, which is the most demanding class the FDA has for a change to an approved device and requires new clinical data. So each of these three has a real trial behind it. Those trials, read side by side, say something quite different from what the marketing does.
The two things worth knowing before anything else. First, two of the three are approved only for mild to moderate chin retrusion, so if yours is severe, two of the three are being used outside their approved indication on you. Second, the three published success rates, 56%, 81% and 84%, cannot be compared, because the three trials used different scales, different timepoints and, in one case, asked an entirely different question.
The three approved products, and the wording that limits two of them
| Product | FDA approval | Approved | Approved for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juvéderm Voluma XC | P110033/S047 | 12 June 2020 | Chin augmentation, adults over 21. No severity limit stated |
| Restylane Defyne | P140029/S027 | 29 January 2021 | Adults over 21 with mild to moderate chin retrusion |
| Restylane Lyft with Lidocaine | P040024/S142 | 4 November 2025 | Adults over 21 with mild to moderate chin retrusion |
That difference in wording is not a technicality. An approved indication describes the population in whom the product was shown to work. Voluma's says "chin augmentation ... in adults over the age of 21" and stops there. Both Restylane products name a severity band.
Using a filler outside its approved indication is legal and routine, and sometimes it is the right clinical decision. But you are entitled to know when it is happening, and a practitioner proposing Defyne or Lyft for a markedly recessed chin is working beyond what those trials tested. The honest question to ask is what they expect it to achieve, not whether they are allowed to do it.
Restylane Lyft's approval is also very recent, November 2025, so most of what is written about chin filler online predates a third of the available options.
Why 56%, 81% and 84% are not a league table
Each manufacturer ran its own trial, and here is what each reported.
| Product | Success rate | Control | Scale | Measured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voluma XC | 56.3% (71/126) | 27.5% (11/40) | ACRS, from 2D images | Month 6 |
| Restylane Defyne | 81.3% (87/107) | 6.1% (2/33) | GCRS, live assessment | Week 12 |
| Restylane Lyft | 83.6% | active comparator | GCRS, live assessment | Month 3 |
Three separate problems make that middle column uncomparable.
Different rulers. Voluma used the Allergan Chin Retrusion Scale; both Restylane products used the Galderma Chin Retrusion Scale. The clearest evidence they are not equivalent is what happened to the people who received nothing. In Voluma's trial the untreated group was scored as improved 27.5% of the time. In Defyne's, 6.1%. Neither group had any treatment, so nothing about their chins improved. What differed was how readily each instrument recorded an improvement that was not there, and the gap is four and a half fold.
Different timepoints. Defyne's headline figure is at Week 12. Voluma's is at Month 6, roughly double the interval, and filler results decline with time. Comparing a 12-week number with a 6-month number flatters the shorter follow-up.
Different assessment method. Voluma's evaluators scored 2D photographs. Defyne's scored patients live, in front of them. Those are not the same task.
And the third trial asked a different question entirely. Restylane Lyft's study was a non-inferiority trial against an active comparator, randomised 2:1, 115 patients on Lyft against 60 on the comparator. A non-inferiority design sets out to show a product is not worse than an existing one. It never asked whether Lyft beats no treatment, because that question was already settled for the category. So its 83.6% is not evidence that Lyft outperforms Voluma. It is evidence that Lyft is not meaningfully worse than whatever it was tested against.
The defensible conclusion from all three trials is that each produced a clear, statistically significant benefit in the population it was tested in, and that no evidence exists ranking them against each other for the chin. If someone tells you one of the three is the best chin filler, ask which trial showed that. There isn't one.
What the before and after actually looks like, in numbers
Photographs are the usual way this question gets answered, and they are the least reliable, because you are seeing someone else's chin, chosen by whoever is selling the treatment. The trials give a more useful picture of what proportion of people saw a visible change and how big it was.
The measure in all three trials is a one-grade improvement on a four-point retrusion scale, judged by an evaluator who did not know whether that patient had been treated. That is a real but modest bar: one grade, not a transformation. In Defyne's trial, 46.5% of patients in the per-protocol population reached grade 0, meaning no measurable retrusion at all, at Week 12.
Patient-reported results ran higher than blinded evaluations throughout, which is worth knowing before you read testimonials. In Defyne's trial, between 84.8% and 99.0% of patients described their chin as improved across Weeks 12 to 48, against 0% to 3.7% of the untreated group. In Restylane Lyft's trial, patient-assessed responder rates reached 94.5% at Month 3 while the blinded evaluator recorded 83.6% for the same patients at the same visit. People consistently rate their own result more generously than an independent assessor does. Neither number is wrong; they measure different things.
How long it lasts
Voluma's trial followed patients furthest. The responder rate was 56.3% at Month 6 and 57.6% at Month 12, essentially holding, with 73.9% responding one month after a repeat treatment at the twelve-month visit. Notably, the most common reason patients gave for declining that repeat treatment was that they were still satisfied with the original result.
Defyne remained statistically better than no treatment at Weeks 24, 36 and 48, so out to approximately eleven months. Neither trial establishes a duration for you personally, and the chin is a mobile, muscular area, but a year is a reasonable planning assumption rather than an optimistic one.
Side effects, including the number nobody quotes
This is the figure that should be in every article about chin filler and is in almost none. In Restylane Defyne's own pivotal trial, the most common reactions were tenderness in 89.6% of patients and pain in 73%. Not rare, not a minority: close to nine in ten.
Those reactions are expected, temporary and not dangerous. But if you were picturing a lunchtime procedure with a bit of redness, the manufacturer's own data says otherwise, and knowing that in advance is the difference between a normal recovery and a frightening one. Our guide to what filler recovery actually looks like covers the timeline.
The serious risk is the same one that applies to every filler: injection into a blood vessel, causing vascular occlusion, with skin necrosis and, in reported cases, more severe consequences. All three products are hyaluronic acid, which means hyaluronidase can dissolve them if something goes wrong or you simply dislike the result. That is a genuine advantage of this category over fillers that cannot be undone. Our filler complications guide sets out what needs an urgent call.
What chin filler costs
No manufacturer publishes a patient price for any of the three, and we do not publish figures we cannot source. What is reliable is how the area is priced and what actually moves the number.
Chin filler is sold by the syringe, and the chin generally needs more product than the under-eye does, frequently one to two syringes for a visible profile change. So the question at consultation is how many syringes your chin is likely to need across the whole course, not the price of one.
From the verified prices we collect on our city pages, three patterns move injectable pricing more than the brand does: who injects, whether the quoted rate is a first-visit price, and whether a minimum spend applies. One Denver clinic publishes a 23 per cent premium for the physician over the nurse injector for the same product. In Chicago the lowest published rate we found rises 44 per cent on the second visit.
What to ask before you book
- Which of the three, and is my retrusion mild, moderate or severe? If it is severe and they propose Defyne or Lyft, that is outside the approved indication. Ask what they expect it to achieve.
- How many syringes across the full course, and what does each cost? A per-syringe price without a syringe count is not a quote.
- Would a chin implant suit me better? For significant skeletal retrusion, filler is a different intervention with a different ceiling. A practitioner willing to say so is a good sign.
- Do you keep hyaluronidase on site? All three can be dissolved. Confirm the clinic can actually do it.
- What should the first week feel like? Given tenderness affected nearly nine in ten patients in one trial, you want their answer to resemble that rather than "nothing at all".
If your concern is a horizontal crease under the lip or a dimpled chin rather than a recessed profile, the tool is probably different. Our comparison of Botox against fillers covers which problem each one addresses.
Frequently asked questions
Which chin filler is best?
Is chin filler approved for severe chin retrusion?
How long does chin filler last?
Does chin filler hurt?
Can chin filler be dissolved?
Why do before and after photos look better than the trial results?
Sources
Every figure on this page was read from the documents below rather than from a clinic or a manufacturer's marketing. They open in a new tab so you can check any claim here against its source.
- Summary of Safety and Effectiveness Data, P110033/S047, Juvéderm Voluma XC chin augmentation, US Food and Drug Administration
- Summary of Safety and Effectiveness Data, P140029/S027, Restylane Defyne chin, US Food and Drug Administration
- Summary of Safety and Effectiveness Data, P040024/S142, Restylane Lyft chin, US Food and Drug Administration
- Dermal fillers (soft tissue fillers), US Food and Drug Administration
- Dermal fillers, American Society of Plastic Surgeons
Know the count before the quote. The unit count is half the bill, and a low per-unit rate recovered by a high unit count is the commonest way a deal is not one. How to tell.
Deciding which area, not how many units? Botox by facial area covers what each zone actually achieves, which four are FDA approved, and the things Botox cannot fix at all.
