Korean Botulinum Toxins: What They Are and Why They Are Not Approved Here
Reviewed for medical accuracy against our Medical Review Board · Last updated 24 August 2026
Part of Botox vs Other Brands
Coretox, Innotox, Liztox, Neuronox and Rentox are Korean botulinum toxin products. None of them appears in the FDA's drug label database, which means none is approved for use in the United States. If a US clinic offers you one, that is the single most important thing to understand before you agree to anything.
These names come up a lot, usually attached to a price. The pitch is that they are the same thing as Botox for a fraction of the cost per unit. There are two problems with that, and the second one is worse than the first.
1. What is actually approved in the US
The FDA maintains a label database of every drug approved for sale in the United States. Querying it for botulinum toxin products returns these injectables:
| Product | In the FDA label database |
|---|---|
| Botox and Botox Cosmetic | Yes, onabotulinumtoxinA |
| Dysport | Yes |
| Xeomin | Yes, incobotulinumtoxinA |
| Jeuveau | Yes, prabotulinumtoxinA |
| Daxxify | Yes |
| Coretox | No |
| Innotox | No |
| Liztox | No |
| Neuronox | No |
| Rentox | No |
Being absent from that database is not a quality judgement. Several of these products are approved by Korea's own regulator and are used routinely there. It is a jurisdiction fact: no US approval means no US oversight of the manufacturing, no US-reviewed safety data, and no legal route for a US clinic to obtain them through normal distribution.
One honest caveat about our own method. Absence from the FDA label database is evidence a product is not approved here, not proof it never will be. Approvals happen: Jeuveau arrived in 2019, Daxxify in 2022. If one of these is approved later, this page will be wrong and will need updating. Check the current label yourself at accessdata.fda.gov before treating anything here as settled.
2. Why the per-unit price comparison is meaningless
This is the part that gets skipped, and it comes straight from Botox's own label:
The potency Units of BOTOX are specific to the preparation and assay method utilized. They are not interchangeable with other preparations of botulinum toxin products and, therefore, units of biological activity of BOTOX cannot be compared to nor converted into units of any other botulinum toxin products assessed with any other specific assay method.
Read that again with a price list in front of you. A unit is not a standard measure of anything. It is defined by each manufacturer's own assay, which means "$4 per unit" for one product and "$12 per unit" for Botox are not two prices for the same thing. They are two prices for two differently defined things.
This is not a technicality invented to protect Botox. The same rule is why Xeomin and Dysport are dosed differently from Botox despite all three being type A toxins, and it is why our units guide gives figures per product rather than one universal number. If someone quotes you a per-unit saving across brands without telling you how many units you will actually need, the number tells you nothing about what you will pay.
3. What "not FDA approved" actually costs you
In practical terms, four things:
- No manufacturing oversight you can rely on. FDA approval covers the facility and the process, not just the molecule. Without it you are trusting a supply chain no US regulator has inspected.
- No adverse event reporting you can look up. Approved products accumulate a public safety record. We use it constantly on this site: MAUDE reports for devices, labelled adverse reaction tables for drugs. For an unapproved product there is no equivalent US record to read.
- Counterfeit risk you cannot assess. A product with no legitimate US distribution route has, by definition, only illegitimate ones. You cannot verify what is in the vial, and neither can the person injecting it.
- No recourse. If something goes wrong with an unapproved product injected outside the labelled use, your position is materially worse than it would otherwise be. This is worth discussing with your own advisers rather than taking a website's word for, including ours.
4. If a US clinic offers you one of these
Treat it as information about the clinic rather than information about the product. A practice willing to inject something it cannot legally obtain through normal channels is telling you how it handles rules generally, and that is worth knowing before you let anyone put a needle in your face.
Reasonable questions, and you are entitled to ask all of them:
- What is the exact product name, and may I see the vial and its packaging?
- Where was it sourced, and through which distributor?
- Is it FDA approved for this use?
An answer along the lines of "it is the same as Botox but cheaper" is not an answer to any of those three. Our guide on verifying an injector's licence covers how to check who is actually treating you, which is the other half of the same question.
5. The cheaper options that are approved
If cost is what brought you here, that is a completely reasonable reason to be here, and there are approved answers to it. Botox is not the cheapest FDA-approved toxin on the US market and never has been. Jeuveau was priced as the value option from launch, Dysport is frequently cheaper per treatment once the different dosing is accounted for, and Letybo is a more recent arrival in the same space.
Our price guide sets out what people actually pay, and the brand comparison hub covers how the approved products differ. All of those routes leave you with a product that has a US label, a published safety record and a distributor who can be identified. That is what you give up to save money on an unapproved vial, and on any honest accounting it is not a good trade.
Frequently asked questions
Is Innotox FDA approved?
Is Korean Botox the same as real Botox?
Why is Innotox or Coretox so much cheaper per unit?
Is it legal for a US clinic to inject these?
What is the difference between Innotox and the others?
What should I use instead if I want to spend less?
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.
