Jojoba Oil
Jojoba is not chemically an oil at all but a liquid wax, which is why the fatty-acid reasoning behind almost every other rating on this list does not apply to it — and why the score of 2 that follows it around is the top of a range its own source called borderline.
Fulton 1989 printed 0-2*, the asterisk meaning results depend on the source of the raw material.
What it is
A liquid wax pressed from the seed of Simmondsia chinensis, a shrub native to the Sonoran desert. It is sold, shelved and labelled as an oil, and it is not one. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review's 2008 safety assessment puts it at roughly 97% wax esters — long straight-chain monounsaturated fatty acids joined to long straight-chain monounsaturated alcohols, mostly C20 and C22 on both halves — with under 1% of the triglycerides that make up the whole of a vegetable oil. That distinction is not pedantry. Every other oil on this list is a triglyceride, and the entire fatty-acid logic that produced their comedogenic scores is a logic about triglycerides and the free fatty acids they carry. Jojoba has almost none. Formulators reach for it because it is a light, non-greasy emollient with unusual oxidative stability — there are no polyunsaturated triglycerides in it to go rancid — and because it is close, in chemical class, to something the skin already makes. Human sebum is about a quarter wax esters, and wax esters are found almost nowhere else in the body. On a label it is Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil.
Why we rate it Clear
We rate it Clear at Moderate confidence, and the case rests on three things, none of them a human trial. First, the number. Jojoba's legacy score of 2 traces, like nearly everything on the internet, to James Fulton's 1989 paper in the Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists — ingredient diluted to 10% in propylene glycol, 1 ml applied daily to the inner ear of New Zealand albino rabbits five days a week for two weeks, three rabbits per assay, follicles then measured under a micrometer. Read the actual table and jojoba oil is not in the section headed Oils. It is in the section headed Waxes, and its entry is not 2. It is "0-2", carrying Fulton's asterisk for "results depend on source of raw material". The 2 that every list republishes is the worst end of a range, reported as a range because different commercial batches behaved differently. Second, what a 2 is worth even if you take it. Fulton set out his own reading of his own scale in the methods section — a grade of 0 to 1 "is not considered significant", 2 to 3 is "borderline", and only 4 to 5 is "uniformally reproduceable and considered positive". So the number that worries people about jojoba is the number its author placed at the bottom edge of "borderline", with a footnote saying the material varies. Third, mechanism, which here runs the same way as the data. Fulton's model of comedogenicity was about small molecules getting into a follicle — he put the danger zone at a molecular weight of 200 to 300 with an HLB around 10 to 12, and his headline finding was that medium-chain fatty acids and their small esters are the potent ones. Jojoba's wax esters are roughly twice that molecular weight and it has virtually no free fatty acids. Fulton said so directly: "Among the waxes, the hydrocarbon chains appear too long to penetrate unless the wax is modified, such as in sulfated jojoba oil." Sulfated jojoba oil — modified, smaller, more polar — scored 3 in the same table. Unmodified jojoba did not. And Fulton held that a low score is the direction his assay could be trusted in, writing that materials found non-comedogenic in the rabbit "appear to be noncomedogenic in the human model", while whether a high score transfers to humans "still remains uncertain". Jojoba's is a low score, from an assay whose author thought low scores were the reliable half. That is the whole argument. It is a rabbit assay and a structural inference, and Moderate is as far as it can honestly carry us.
What the evidence doesn’t tell you
Nobody we can find has run jojoba oil through the human comedogenicity model. That model exists — Mills and Kligman built it in 1982, applying the material to the backs of people with large follicles and reading the result by follicular biopsy — and as far as we can find, jojoba was never put through it. So the claim "jojoba does not clog pores", which is stated flatly across the internet, has never actually been tested on human skin. The one human study anyone cites does not test it either. Meier and colleagues, in Forschende Komplementärmedizin in 2012, had 194 people apply a clay-and-jojoba facial mask two or three times a week for six weeks; 133 returned usable lesion counts, and total lesions fell 54% on average, comedones by about 39%. It is an open, uncontrolled, unblinded pilot study in which participants applied the mask themselves and counted their own lesions on a questionnaire, with no comparison group and no way to separate the jojoba from the clay — the authors say as much. It is not evidence that jojoba is non-comedogenic, and it is not evidence that jojoba treats acne. Three further gaps. Fulton's asterisk is a real finding, not boilerplate: he thought the variation between jojoba batches pointed to "more contaminants or irritants in some of the preparations", which means the word on the label does not fully determine the material in the bottle. Derivatives are not the parent ingredient, and labels blur them — the CIR's own 2008 summary states that jojoba seed *wax* was "moderately comedogenic in tests using rabbits" while jojoba esters were not, and the report does not set out those tests in a form we could read, nor does it state a comedogenicity result for the seed oil at all. And the mechanistic story that circulates most widely — that jojoba's molecules are simply too large to enter a pore — is not quite what the evidence says. The same CIR report notes that jojoba seed oil readily penetrates nude-mouse skin and increases the penetration of other agents through it; a 2018 review of plant oils in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences says the same. A substance that crosses skin and carries other molecules with it is not inert, and whether it enters a follicle is a question we can find no answer to, either way. The "just like your sebum" line has the same problem in reverse: the resemblance is real at the level of chemical class, since sebum is roughly a quarter wax esters and vegetable oils have none, but sebum's wax esters are built mostly on a 16-carbon fatty acid where jojoba's are C20 to C22 on both halves, and no study has shown that resembling sebum does anything at all to a pore. The related claim that jojoba "tricks" the skin into producing less oil has no trial behind it, and acne.org — which sells jojoba oil — concedes in the same breath that it is "theorized, but not yet proven". Behind all of this sits the field-wide problem: a 2006 re-evaluation in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that rabbit-ear results do not reliably predict human skin, and a 2025 review in JAAD Reviews found that no standardised comedogenicity test exists at all and that "non-comedogenic" remains an unregulated label. Everything above points one way. None of it was measured on a face.
Where you’ll see it
Facial oils and serums, where it is frequently the first ingredient and the carrier for everything else; cleansing oils and balms; eye-makeup removers; lip balms; hair and scalp oils; massage oils; and a very large proportion of products marketed as natural or clean. The CIR records it in use at concentrations up to 100% in hand and body creams, so unlike most ingredients on any comedogenic list it is often not a trace component but the bulk of the product. Look for Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil. Several relatives appear on labels and are not the same material — Jojoba Esters, Hydrogenated Jojoba Oil, Jojoba Alcohol, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Wax, Synthetic Jojoba Oil — and where they have been tested separately they have not all behaved the same way.
Sources
Each source says what it actually is. Several widely-cited “sources” for comedogenic ratings are republishing the same 1989 assay, and counting them as independent agreement is how a thin evidence base gets made to look thick.
- Fulton JE. "Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products." J Soc Cosmet Chem 40:321–333 (1989) The primary source, read in full for this page rather than taken from a list that quotes it. The rabbit-ear assay behind the 0–5 scale nearly every comedogenic rating online still uses, including ours — 10% in propylene glycol, applied daily to the inner ear of New Zealand albino rabbits for two weeks, three rabbits per assay. Three things in it matter here and are almost never reported. Jojoba oil is filed under Waxes, not Oils. Its entry is "0–2" with the footnote "results depend on source of raw material", not the flat 2 that circulates. And Fulton's own methods state that 0–1 "is not considered significant" and 2–3 is "borderline". Sulfated jojoba oil, a chemically modified derivative, scored 3 in the same table.
- Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel. "Final Report on the Safety Assessment of Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Wax, Hydrogenated Jojoba Oil, Hydrolyzed Jojoba Esters, Isomerized Jojoba Oil, Jojoba Esters, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Butter, Jojoba Alcohol, and Synthetic Jojoba Oil." September 23, 2008 An industry-funded but independently constituted expert panel's review of the safety data, and the closest thing to a second opinion that exists. Source of the composition figure used on this page (roughly 97% wax esters of monounsaturated straight-chain fatty acids and alcohols, high molecular weight) and of the in-use concentration (up to 100% in hand and body creams). It is cited here for two inconvenient findings as much as for any reassuring one: it states that jojoba seed *wax* was "moderately comedogenic in tests using rabbits" while jojoba esters were not — without detailing those tests, and without giving a comedogenicity result for jojoba seed oil itself — and it records that jojoba seed oil readily penetrates skin and enhances the penetration of other agents, which is not what an inert, too-large-to-enter molecule does.
- Gad HA, Roberts A, Hamzi SH, et al. "Jojoba Oil: An Updated Comprehensive Review on Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Uses, and Toxicity." Polymers 13:1711 (2021) Peer-reviewed chemistry review, and the reference for what jojoba actually is: almost 98% waxes, negligible triglycerides, wax esters formed from C20 and C22 monounsaturated acids and alcohols. Reliable on composition. Its short "anti-acne" section is not reliable and we do not use it: the clinical claims there rest on uncontrolled reports from the 1970s and 80s, not on trials, and one of them asserts that jojoba dissolves comedones — a claim with nothing resembling a controlled study behind it.
- Meier L, Stange R, Michalsen A, Uehleke B. "Clay jojoba oil facial mask for lesioned skin and mild acne — results of a prospective, observational pilot study." Forsch Komplementmed 19:75–79 (2012) The only human study on jojoba and acne, and it is not the study people think it is. 194 participants applied a clay-and-jojoba mask two to three times weekly for six weeks; 133 returned complete counts; total lesions fell 54%, comedones about 39%. It is open, uncontrolled and unblinded, participants counted their own lesions on questionnaires, there is no comparison arm, and the mask contained healing clay as well as jojoba — the authors themselves flag the clay as a likely contributor. It measures neither comedogenicity nor jojoba in isolation. Cited because it is the paper the internet points to, and because saying plainly what it can and cannot support is more useful than the citation itself.
- Lin TK, Zhong L, Santiago JL. "Anti-Inflammatory and Skin Barrier Repair Effects of Topical Application of Some Plant Oils." Int J Mol Sci 19:70 (2018) Peer-reviewed review of plant oils in skin, independent of the comedogenic-list literature. Cited for one specific thing only — that jojoba oil is documented to enhance the absorption of topical drugs — which corroborates the CIR's penetration finding and undercuts the popular "too large to get into a pore" explanation. It makes no comedogenicity measurement.
- Picardo M, Ottaviani M, Camera E, Mastrofrancesco A. "Sebaceous gland lipids." Dermatoendocrinol 1:68–71 (2009) Peer-reviewed review of what human sebum is actually made of — roughly a quarter wax esters, with squalene and wax esters found essentially nowhere else in the body, and the wax esters built predominantly on a 16-carbon fatty acid. Cited to hold the "jojoba is just like your sebum" claim to a specific standard: the family resemblance is real, the molecules are not the same, and neither fact has been shown to change what happens in a pore.
- Draelos ZD, DiNardo JC. "A re-evaluation of the comedogenicity concept." J Am Acad Dermatol 54:507–512 (2006) Peer-reviewed rebuttal of the assay every comedogenic rating rests on, including ours. Argues that rabbit-ear results do not reliably predict comedogenicity in human skin and that testing an isolated ingredient says little about a finished formula. We apply it in both directions: it is why our Clogging ratings are held loosely, and it is why a near-zero rabbit score is not proof that jojoba is safe either.
- "Comedogenicity in cosmeceuticals: A review of clinical relevance, regulatory gaps, and future directions." JAAD Reviews (2025) Recent peer-reviewed review of the whole field, covering literature from 1972 to 2025. Finds that no standardised comedogenicity test exists and that "non-comedogenic" is an unregulated claim. It is a synthesis of the legacy literature, not a new measurement, and independent of Fulton only in authorship, since the corpus it surveys includes his.
- acne.org — comedogenic ingredient list and jojoba oil page Listed for disclosure, not corroboration. Its comedogenic list republishes the legacy assay scores and is not an independent measurement, and the same is true of CosDNA, Face Reality, Banish and Sofie Pavitt — they are not five sources agreeing, they are a handful of old papers quoted many times. Two things about its jojoba page are worth a reader knowing. It declares jojoba non-comedogenic on a mechanism it does not measure — "large molecules that do not enter pores" — which the penetration data above contradict. And at the bottom of the page it sells jojoba oil. That does not make it wrong. It does mean it is not a neutral referee, and no one else appears to say so.
Others in the same family
Oils behave similarly enough that the evidence for one is often wrongly read across to the others. These are its structural relatives, not a guess. What the evidence says about oils as a family ›
Last reviewed 2026-08-20 · How we decide