What is Cranberry Seed Oil?
Cranberry Seed Oil (INCI name: Vaccinium Macrocarpon Seed Oil) is a plant- or seed-derived oil. A cold-pressed berry-seed oil valued for an unusually balanced omega-3 to omega-6 ratio and a high tocotrienol content. It is named on the CLEARSTEM and AcneClinicNYC pore-clogging ingredient lists, but neither publishes a 0-5 comedogenic score for it and no Fulton-derived table we cite carries one. We therefore leave it unrated rather than invent a number — treat the listing itself as the signal.
You may see it on labels as Cranberry Seed Oil, Vaccinium Macrocarpon Seed Oil, Cranberry Oil, so it can hide under more than one name in an ingredient list.
Where Cranberry Seed Oil shows up
You'll most often find Cranberry Seed Oil in facial oils, cleansing balms, moisturisers, hair products, and many products marketed as natural.
Is Cranberry Seed Oil bad for acne-prone skin?
Because no reliable comedogenic score exists for Cranberry Seed Oil, judge it by how your own skin responds rather than by a number.
Worth flagging: Cranberry Seed Oil's rating is disputed. Credible sources land on different numbers, which is why we show a range rather than a single score — and why your own experience is the best tiebreaker.
Note for fungal-acne (malassezia) sufferers: Cranberry Seed Oil is commonly avoided in fungal-acne routines, since it falls into the fatty-acid or ester families the yeast can feed on. The evidence there is looser than for comedogenicity — see our fungal-acne checker for context.