What it is made of

Seven materials are on the market. Three are worth buying. The gap between them is not comfort or price, it is whether the thing can be sterilized.

Tested and written by the editorial team · Updated 31 August 2026 · How we test

Short version. Buy platinum-cure silicone, borosilicate glass, or 316L stainless steel. Skip TPE, TPR, PVC jelly, and anything described only as “elastomer,” “cyberskin,” or “realistic material.” If a listing will not name the polymer, treat the omission as the answer.

Why porosity is the only question that matters

A non-porous material has a sealed surface. Fluid sits on top of it, soap removes the fluid, and boiling water or an autoclave removes anything the soap missed. The material returns to a genuinely clean state, and it does this indefinitely.

A porous material has microscopic channels running below the surface. Fluid and bacteria travel into those channels and stay there. Washing cleans what you can see and nothing you cannot. There is no household method that reaches into the pores without destroying the material, because the same heat that would sterilize it also deforms it.

That single property decides everything downstream. It decides whether an item is a permanent object or a consumable. It decides whether it can be shared or used with more than one type of contact. It decides whether the thing is still safe in year two. Comfort, firmness, weight, and finish are real considerations, but they are second-order. Porosity is first.

The three materials worth buying

Platinum-cure silicone

Silicone comes in two cure systems. Tin-cure (condensation cure) is cheaper, cures with a by-product, and continues to off-gas and degrade over time. Platinum-cure (addition cure) produces no by-product, is dimensionally stable, and is the system used for medical and food-contact silicone. The good manufacturers say platinum-cure explicitly because it costs them more and they want credit for it. Silence usually means tin.

Silicone is non-porous, can be boiled, tolerates a dishwasher on the top rack, and needs no plasticizer to stay soft — the softness is inherent to the polymer rather than added to it. That last point is the whole reason it is safer than jelly.

Its one real incompatibility: silicone lubricant chemically bonds to silicone surfaces and permanently degrades them, leaving a tacky, gummy finish that cannot be reversed. Use water-based lubricant with anything silicone.

Borosilicate glass

The same glass used in laboratory glassware and cookware. It is non-porous, chemically non-reactive, tolerates thermal shock far better than soda-lime glass, and is compatible with every lubricant type. It holds temperature, which some people specifically want, and it is completely rigid, which some people specifically do not.

Buy borosilicate, not annealed soda-lime glass. Soda-lime is the cheap window-glass formulation and it fractures under thermal stress. A reputable seller states borosilicate; a vague seller says only “glass.”

316L stainless steel

316L is the surgical and marine grade. The added molybdenum makes it far more corrosion-resistant than 304, which matters for something repeatedly exposed to moisture and salt. It is non-porous, fully sterilizable, indestructible in ordinary use, and heavy — often much heavier than people expect. The weight is the main reason people either love it or return it.

What to avoid, and why

PVC “jelly”

Polyvinyl chloride is rigid on its own. To make it soft and translucent, manufacturers add plasticizers, historically phthalates. Phthalates are not chemically bound to the polymer, which means they migrate out of it over time. That migration is what produces the oily film and the distinctive chemical smell on an older jelly item.

Several phthalates are restricted in children's products in the US under the CPSIA and more broadly across the EU under REACH. None of those restrictions apply to adult novelties in the US, because the category sits outside the regulation. The result is a material that would be illegal in a teething ring and is legal here.

TPE and TPR

Thermoplastic elastomers are the current default for cheap, soft, skin-textured products. They are a genuine improvement on jelly in that they typically do not rely on phthalate plasticizers. They are still porous. They still cannot be sterilized. They still degrade, going tacky and then sticky as they age.

TPE is a reasonable material for a low-cost, short-life, single-person item that you plan to replace. It is not a material to spend money on and it is not a material to keep for years.

Everything sold as a proprietary name

Cyberskin, UR3, Fanta Flesh, Futurotic, and the dozens of similar trade names are elastomer blends. They are marketed on how they feel, which is often genuinely impressive, and they are porous, short-lived, and require talc or renewal powder to stop them going sticky. Treat any invented material name as TPE until proven otherwise.

Comparison

Material properties. Sterilizable means the material survives a method that reaches below the surface.
Material	Porous	Boilable	Plasticizer	Realistic life
Platinum-cure silicone	No	Yes	None	Indefinite
Borosilicate glass	No	Yes	None	Indefinite
316L stainless steel	No	Yes	None	Indefinite
ABS plastic	No	No	None	Long, rigid only
Tin-cure silicone	No	Marginal	None	Degrades slowly
TPE / TPR	Yes	No	Varies	6–18 months
PVC jelly	Yes	No	Required	Replace, do not keep

How to catch a mislabelled listing

Sellers mislabel constantly, mostly because the marketplace listing was written by someone reselling a factory description they never verified. Four checks catch most of it.

Price

Platinum-cure silicone is expensive raw material and slow to mould. A full-size item in real platinum-cure silicone is difficult to produce and sell profitably below roughly $30, and most sit well above that. A $12 listing claiming 100% silicone is a blend. The price is a more reliable signal than the copy.

Weight

Silicone is denser than TPE. Two items of identical dimensions will differ noticeably in the hand. If a listing publishes a weight, compare it against a known-good product of similar size.

Smell

Cured platinum silicone is odourless. Glass and steel are odourless. A chemical or plastic smell out of the packaging indicates residual plasticizer or solvent, and it does not air out.

The burn test

Cut a small sliver from a concealed area and hold a flame to it. Real silicone chars to a white or grey ash and does not drip. TPE, PVC, and blends melt, drip, and produce black smoke. This destroys a small piece of the product, so it is a test for something you already own and suspect, not something you are deciding whether to buy. Do it outdoors, and do not inhale PVC combustion products.

The rule that covers all of it. Named polymer, named cure system, named grade. “Medical grade,” “body safe,” and “hypoallergenic” are unregulated marketing terms with no legal definition in this category. A seller who knows their material tells you what it is.

Where to buy

Retailers that curate for material are worth the small premium over marketplace pricing, because they have already run the filter you would otherwise have to run yourself.

Shop body-safe silicone affiliate link Shop borosilicate glass affiliate link

Is there such a thing as an organic dildo? The short answer is no, and the reason explains most of the other marketing terms in this category.

Questions

Is “medical grade silicone” a real standard?

Not as a certification anyone audits for this category. It usually refers to silicone that meets USP Class VI biocompatibility testing, which is a genuine standard, but nothing stops a seller from using the phrase without having done the testing. Platinum-cure is the more useful thing to look for because it describes the actual chemistry.

Does a condom make a porous item safe?

It substantially reduces the problem and it is the standard harm-reduction advice, particularly for anything shared. It does not sterilize the item underneath, and it does not stop the material degrading. It is a mitigation, not a fix.

My silicone item went sticky. Can I fix it?

No. A tacky surface on something sold as silicone means it was a blend, or it was tin-cure and has degraded, or it was exposed to silicone lubricant. None of those are reversible. Replace it.

Why do two identical products differ between the US and EU?

REACH restricts several plasticizers across consumer goods in the EU with no novelty carve-out. Manufacturers selling into both markets sometimes run a compliant formulation for the EU and the cheaper one for the US. Buying the EU-market version of a product is occasionally a real safety upgrade.