Softmaxxing vs Hardmaxxing: What's the Difference?

Softmaxxing is improving your looks with changes you make yourself and keep up, like skincare, sleep, training, grooming and style. Hardmaxxing is procedures a qualified professional does to your body, from injectables, which wear off over months, to surgery, which is permanent. The test is who does it, and whether it stops when you stop.

The difference between softmaxxing and hardmaxxing is who does the work. Softmaxxing is everything you do yourself and keep up: skin, sleep, training, grooming and style. Hardmaxxing is a procedure a professional does to your body, and its result outlasts your effort, for months with an injectable and for good with surgery.

In practice, the community starts soft. In our survey of forum members, about three in four groomed, trained and watched their diet, while 3% had had surgery.

Softmaxxing vs hardmaxxing at a glance

Where the line falls

The line falls between what you do yourself and what a professional does to your body. Guides online disagree about the middle: fillers and Botox count as hardmaxxing on most of them and as softmaxxing on others, and almost nobody places braces. Two questions settle nearly every case:

1. Who does it? You, or a professional working on your body.
2. Does it stop when you stop? If it lasts only while you keep it up, it’s soft.

A prescription sits on the soft side: you take it yourself, but a doctor decides whether you should and manages it.

Surgeons file Botox and filler as nonsurgical procedures, separate from operations.[3] The community still counts them as hardmaxxing, because someone else does them to your body, and that’s the line this guide uses.

What softmaxxing changes

Softmaxxing changes how lean, healthy and rested you look, and each of these has rating research behind it:

• Body fat, in the face too. Faces carrying less fat were rated healthier and more attractive,[4] and a review found a robust link between facial fat and both.[5] The body fat calculator gives you a number to track.
• Even skin and sunscreen. Our skinmaxxing guide ranks every skincare step by its evidence. In men, more even skin color was rated younger, healthier and more attractive.[6] In a randomized trial, daily sunscreen for four and a half years left skin aging about 24% lower than using it when people felt like it.[7]
• Sleep. After 31 hours awake, the same people were rated less attractive and less healthy,[8] and a night without sleep showed most around the eyes, the area our hunter eyes guide covers.[9]
• Training. Resistance training added about 1.5 kg of muscle on average in healthy adult men,[10] and in men’s bodies, the waist-to-chest ratio was the main driver of how women rated them.[11] The shoulder-to-waist ratio calculator measures your side of that.
• Grooming. Beards were rated more attractive than clean-shaven faces for long-term relationships, though not short-term ones.[12]

What hardmaxxing changes

Hardmaxxing is where the biggest changes are. It’s the only way to change bone and cartilage or move a hairline, and its results hold without daily effort. Softmaxxing works within the face you have; a procedure changes the face itself.

• Injectables are temporary and mostly low-risk in experienced hands. Botox reduced wrinkles within four weeks but probably raised the risk of a drooping eyelid.[13] At one large clinic group, serious complications from filler happened in about 4 of every 100,000 injections.[14]
• Hair transplants last: 85 to 93% of transplanted grafts survived, depending on technique.[15]
• Surgery changes bone and cartilage permanently. Satisfaction after aesthetic surgery climbed from about 71% at one month to 92% at a year.[16] In a small study, after jaw surgery for an underdeveloped upper jaw, patients were rated more attractive, friendlier and more trustworthy from their photographs.[17] Our guides to the gonial angle and a flat maxilla cover what jaw surgery can and can’t move.

Procedures carry real risk and recovery, so choose a qualified, board-certified surgeon or injector. A good one will also ask why you want it: about one in five people asking for cosmetic surgery has body dysmorphic disorder,[18] and patients screened first were more satisfied afterward.[16]

What the looksmaxxing community actually does

Mostly softmaxxing. Our community survey asked 175 forum members in March 2025 what they had tried:

• Grooming: 78.7%
• Fitness: 75.9%
• Diet: 75.3%
• Non-surgical procedures: 9.2%
• Surgery: 3.4%

Interest runs the other way: 49.1% were considering surgery and 42.9% non-surgical procedures. Softmaxxing is what three in four already do, and hardmaxxing is what about half are thinking about.

Which should you do first?

The general consensus in the looksmaxxing community is to softmax first, then hardmax what’s left. Soft changes cost little, still lift how you’re rated, and change what a surgeon would be working with: a face carrying less fat looks different before anyone touches it.

But softmaxxing has a ceiling. It can’t move a jaw, reshape a nose or rebuild a hairline. For structural features, hardmaxxing is the only route, and it’s where the largest changes happen.

What counts as neither

Bonesmashing, unprescribed drugs and mewing count as neither:

• Bonesmashing is a dangerous online trend of deliberately striking the face to try to alter bone. It is injury, not a technique, and nothing supports it.
• Unprescribed drugs, peptides and steroids sold online for looks have no place on either side. Anything that changes your hormones or skin pigment is a decision for a doctor.
• Mewing is a posture habit, not a bone treatment. No trial shows it moves the jaw.

Frequently asked questions

What does hardmaxxing mean?

Hardmaxxing means changing your looks through procedures a qualified professional does to your body. It runs from injectables like Botox and filler, which wear off, to permanent changes like braces, hair transplants and nose or jaw surgery.

Do braces count as hardmaxxing?

Yes, by the usual test: an orthodontist moves your teeth, and the change is meant to last. Braces are often a dental treatment first.

Is Botox softmaxxing or hardmaxxing?

Hardmaxxing, at its temporary end. Surgeons class it as nonsurgical,[3] but someone else injects it, and it lasts about four months.[1] Filler sits beside it and often lasts one to two years.[2]

What is a softmaxxing routine?

Daily sunscreen and a simple skincare routine, enough sleep, resistance training, losing body fat if you carry extra, a haircut that suits your face, grooming and clothes that fit. Dermatologists usually reassess skincare at two to three months; training takes longer.

Is hardmaxxing worth it?

For structural features, it’s the only thing that changes them, and satisfaction a year after aesthetic surgery runs above 90%.[16] Getting the softmaxxing done first means you know exactly what’s left to fix.