Is coconut oil comedogenic?

Short answer

Not recognised or insufficient evidence

The sources reviewed for this project contain no verified ingredient-level comedogenicity assessment for coconut oil. It appears on nearly every pore-clogging list in circulation, usually near the top of the scale, but this project could not trace those ratings back to a source it was able to check. The record here is therefore that the evidence is not established — which is not a finding that coconut oil clogs pores, and not a finding that it does not.

Recorded as Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil · dataset record coconut-oil · reviewed 2026-08-06

What the evidence actually is

Insufficient evidence

No source in this dataset assesses this ingredient's comedogenicity. The entry exists to record that the question is open, not to imply an answer to it.

What the sources report

Coconut oil appears on many popular pore-clogging lists, but the peer-reviewed sources included in this dataset do not contain a verified ingredient-level comedogenicity assessment for it. Rather than repeat an unsourced rating, this checker records the evidence as not established.

What this does not cover

An absence of evidence in this corpus is not evidence that the ingredient is harmless, and it is not a contradiction of your own experience with it. It means this tool has nothing citable to show you.

Why people ask about Coconut oil

Coconut oil is unusual in carrying two strong and opposite reputations at once. It is promoted as a natural facial moisturiser and warned against in acne communities as one of the most reliable ways to break out, and both positions are typically argued with a comedogenic rating rather than a study. It is the most looked-up ingredient of its kind, which is exactly why the gap between its reputation and the citable record is worth stating plainly.

Where the circulating rating for Coconut oil comes from

Coconut oil is normally listed at the high end of the 0–5 comedogenic scale. That scale traces back to a rabbit ear assay published in 1984, which screened materials by applying them to rabbit ear skin. Coconut oil is not among the ingredients this project could confirm were assessed in the sources it reviewed, so the number in circulation is reproduced here neither as correct nor as incorrect. It is reproduced as unverified.

Names Coconut oil appears under

A label may declare coconut-derived materials under several distinct names, and they are not interchangeable. Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil is the whole oil. Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, often sold as fractionated coconut oil, is a different declared ingredient with its own record here. Names such as Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate and Cocamidopropyl Betaine are coconut-derived surfactants rather than the oil, and are not in this dataset at all. Matching is by declared name, so which of these is printed on your label changes the result.

Recognised in this dataset as Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, and through the recorded aliases coconut oil, cocos nucifera oil, cocos nucifera (coconut) oil. Matching is exact: there is no fuzzy matching anywhere in this tool, so a name not listed here is reported as unrecognised rather than guessed at.

Questions about coconut oil

Does coconut oil clog pores?

This tool cannot answer that, and neither can any ingredient list. The sources reviewed here contain no verified comedogenicity assessment for coconut oil. Even a clear ingredient-level finding would not settle the question, because human testing of finished cosmetics formulated with ingredients previously identified as comedogenic found that those products were not necessarily comedogenic.

Is fractionated coconut oil the same as coconut oil?

Not on a label. Fractionated coconut oil is usually declared as Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, which is a separate name with its own record here. A decision you have made about coconut oil does not automatically transfer to it.

Why does this page not give coconut oil a comedogenic rating?

Because this project could not verify one. Printing a number that cannot be traced to a checkable source would make the page look more certain than the evidence is, which is the failure mode this site exists to avoid.

Sources cited on this page

These are the sources attached to this record. Nothing on this page is drawn from anything else.

  • Cosmetic ingredient database (CosIng)

    European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, 2026. Regulator.

    Used only to establish that an INCI name refers to a recognised cosmetic ingredient. Presence in CosIng does not mean an ingredient is approved, safe, or non-comedogenic, and this dataset never treats an identity citation as evidence about comedogenicity.

  • A re-evaluation of the comedogenicity concept

    Draelos ZD, DiNardo JC. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2006. Peer-reviewed. doi:10.1016/j.jaad.2005.11.1058

    Applied a modification of the Mills and Kligman human assay to finished cosmetic products formulated with ingredients previously identified as comedogenic. Reported that finished products using comedogenic ingredients are not necessarily comedogenic. This is the single most important source in this dataset: it is the direct evidence that an ingredient-level match cannot be converted into a finished-product conclusion.

Record reviewed 2026-08-06 by pore-checker prototype dataset compilation (not clinically reviewed).