Carrier oil comparison table: fatty acids, shelf life and use levels
A reference table of carrier oils with INCI names, Codex fatty acid ranges, the bis-allylic index that predicts oxidation, iodine values, skin feel and use levels.
This page is a dataset, so you can compare carrier oils side by side without opening twenty supplier tabs. The reasoning behind the choices, including how to weigh stability against skin feel, is in carrier oils compared.
Rank oils by linoleic percent plus twice linolenic percent, which counts the bis-allylic sites that oxidation attacks. Under 15 is a long-life base oil (jojoba, high-oleic sunflower, coconut). Above 58 is a short-life speciality (grapeseed, hemp, standard sunflower, rosehip). Oleic acid barely counts either way.
How to read the table
Columns are ordered so you can scan left to right and stop when an oil disqualifies itself.
- Oleic, linoleic, linolenic, saturates. Weight percent of total fatty acids. They do not sum to 100 because minor acids (palmitoleic, gadoleic, erucic) are not shown.
- Index. Linoleic plus twice linolenic: the bis-allylic count in disguise. It predicts oxidation far better than total unsaturation, because oleic acid has no bis-allylic hydrogen and barely oxidises. The reasoning is in rancidity and oxidation.
- Basis. Codex declared range, peer-reviewed measurement, supplier data sheet consensus, or defined manufactured material, in that order of confidence.
- Vendor life claim. Not a measurement. It is what suppliers state, with no method, temperature, packaging or endpoint behind it, and it is here because you will meet it.
- Weight and absorption. Sensory judgement: very dry, dry, light, medium, rich.
- Typical use level. Percent of the total formula. Not a safety limit.
The heuristic: under index 10 it is a base oil, 10 to 30 a supporting oil, above 30 a short-life speciality needing an antioxidant, cold storage and a plan. Above 70 you are buying something with a season, not a shelf life.
The full comparison table
| Oil | INCI | Oleic % | Linoleic % | Linolenic % | Saturates % | Index | Basis | Vendor life claim | Weight / absorption | Typical use level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jojoba | Simmondsia chinensis seed oil | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | 0 | Peer-rev. | 5+ years | Light, dry-ish | 5-40% | Wax esters C34-C50, C42 50-74%. No bis-allylic sites |
| Squalane | Squalane | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 (saturated hydrocarbon) | 0 | Defined | 3+ years | Very dry, fast | 2-15% | Olive or sugarcane. No odour or colour |
| Meadowfoam seed | Limnanthes alba seed oil | <5 | <2 | <1 | <5 | ~0 | Supplier | 3-5 years | Light, film forming | 3-10% | Stable by arrangement, not by saturation |
| Fractionated coconut | Caprylic/capric triglyceride | 0 | 0 | 0 | ~100 (C8-C10) | 0 | Defined | 2-3 years | Dry, thin, fast | 5-30% | Odourless, stays liquid cold |
| Castor | Ricinus communis seed oil | 3-6 | 3-6 | <1 | 2-3 | 4-7 | Peer-rev. | 2 years | Rich, tacky, does not absorb | 5-15% | Ricinoleic ~87%. Gloss, pigment wetting, tacky above ~25% |
| High-oleic sunflower | Helianthus annuus seed oil | 75.0-90.7 | 2.1-17.0 | 0-0.3 | 6-11 | 2-18 | Codex | 1-2 years | Light to medium | 10-60% | Codex identity: at least 75% oleic |
| Camellia (tea seed) | Camellia oleifera seed oil | 68.2-82.7 | 7-14 | <1 | 8-11 | 8-16 | Peer-rev. | 1-2 years | Light, fast | 5-40% | Olive-like profile, lighter, near-odourless |
| Marula | Sclerocarya birrea seed oil | 70-78 | 4-7 | <1 | 12-18 | 5-9 | Supplier | 2 years | Light to medium | 5-25% | Unusually stable triglyceride. Expensive |
| Macadamia | Macadamia integrifolia seed oil | 55-65 | 1-4 | <1 | 10-15 | 2-6 | Supplier | 1-2 years | Medium, cushioned | 5-30% | Tree nut allergen. Sinks in fast |
| Olive, virgin | Olea europaea fruit oil | 55.0-83.0 | 3.5-21.0 | no Codex figure | 8-25 | 4-22 | Codex | 1-2 years | Rich, slow | 10-50% | Codex sets no linolenic figure, so none is given |
| Avocado | Persea gratissima oil | 31.8-69.6 | 6.1-22.9 | <1 | 15-25 | 7-25 | Peer-rev. | 1 year | Rich, heavy | 5-30% | Oleic range far wider than supplier sheets say |
| Moringa | Moringa oleifera seed oil | 65-78 | <1 | <1 | 15-20 | ~2 | Supplier | 2 years | Light to medium | 5-25% | Stable, historically used to hold fragrance |
| Sweet almond | Prunus amygdalus dulcis oil | 62.0-76.0 | 20.0-30.0 | 0-0.5 | 4-12 | 20-31 | Codex | 1 year | Medium | 10-40% | Tree nut allergen. The old default emollient |
| Apricot kernel | Prunus armeniaca kernel oil | 58-66 | 25-32 | <1 | 4-7 | 25-34 | Supplier | 1 year | Light, fast | 10-40% | Almond feel, no tree nut declaration |
| Baobab | Adansonia digitata seed oil | 30-40 | 24-34 | 1-3 | 25-35 | 26-40 | Supplier | 1-2 years | Medium, sinks in | 5-25% | Saturates offset the linoleic load |
| Tamanu | Calophyllum inophyllum seed oil | ~38 | ~30 | <1 | ~30 | ~31 | Peer-rev. | 1-2 years | Very rich, thick, sticky | 1-10% | Dark green, stains, strong odour. An active |
| Argan | Argania spinosa kernel oil | 43-49 | 29-36 | <1 | 15-20 | 29-38 | Peer-rev. | 1-2 years | Medium, fast | 5-25% | Buy the cosmetic grade, not the roasted |
| Rice bran | Oryza sativa bran oil | 38-45 | 30-38 | 1-2 | 18-25 | 32-42 | Supplier | 1 year | Medium | 5-30% | Cheap, competent, waxy when cold |
| Sesame | Sesamum indicum seed oil | 35-45 | 35-48 | <1 | 13-18 | 35-50 | Supplier | 1-2 years | Medium | 5-25% | Outlasts its index. Strong odour unless refined |
| Black cumin | Nigella sativa seed oil | 20-25 | 50-60 | <1 | 12-18 | 50-62 | Supplier | 6-12 months | Medium, sharp | 1-5% | Peppery. An active, at low level |
| Borage | Borago officinalis seed oil | 15-20 | 35-40 | <1 | 12-18 | 35-42 | Supplier | 6-12 months, chill | Light, medium | 1-10% | GLA is a 1,4-diene too, so the index understates it |
| Evening primrose | Oenothera biennis oil | 6-11 | 65-80 | <1 | 6-10 | 65-82 | Supplier | 6-12 months, chill | Light | 1-10% | Short life, faint fishy note when old |
| Sunflower, standard | Helianthus annuus seed oil | 14.0-39.4 | 48.3-74.0 | 0-0.3 | 8-14 | 48-75 | Codex | 6-12 months | Light | 5-30% | Cheap, fast to oxidise, confused with high-oleic |
| Grapeseed | Vitis vinifera seed oil | 12.0-28.0 | 58.0-78.0 | 0-1.0 | 9-18 | 58-80 | Codex | 6-9 months | Very light, fast | 5-25% | Good feel, poor life. Usually solvent extracted |
| Pomegranate seed | Punica granatum seed oil | 5-10 | 5-10 | <1 | 3-6 | see note | Supplier | 1 year | Rich, thick | 1-5% | Conjugated triene, the index does not apply |
| Hemp seed | Cannabis sativa seed oil | 13.1 | 56.8 | 16.2 | 8-12 | 89 | Peer-rev. | 6 months, chill | Light, dry | 2-15% | Green and grassy. Refrigerate the stock bottle |
| Rosehip | Rosa canina fruit oil | 13-20 | 40-50 | 16.6-51 | 3-6 | 73-152 | Peer-rev., contested | 6 months, chill | Light, dry | 1-10% | Studies disagree on linolenic. Highest index in use |
| Sea buckthorn (fruit) | Hippophae rhamnoides fruit oil | 20-30 | 5-12 | 1-3 | 30-40 | 7-18 | Supplier | 1 year, chill | Rich, thick | 0.5-3% | Stains everything. Use in drops |
| Coconut, virgin | Cocos nucifera oil | 5.0-10.0 | 1.0-2.5 | 0-0.2 | 85-92 | 1-3 | Codex | 2 years | Light but waxy, melts on contact | 5-20% | Lauric 45-53%. Solid below 24-26 C, grainy if cooled slowly |
Squalane and fractionated coconut are not carrier oils in the botanical sense: one is a hydrocarbon, the other a manufactured triglyceride. They are here because they compete for the same slot. Jojoba is a third case, explained in jojoba oil.
Iodine values, and the oils we will not give one for
Iodine value is grams of iodine reacting with 100 g of fat (Wijs method, ISO 3961 or AOCS Cd 1d-92). It is the oldest stability proxy in the trade and a blunt one: it counts double bonds and is blind to their arrangement. Jojoba and meadowfoam carry substantial iodine values and are among the most stable materials in cosmetic use, because none of their double bonds share a carbon between them. Use the index for stability and the iodine value as an identity check.
| Oil | Iodine value |
|---|---|
| Coconut | 6.3-10.6 |
| Olive, refined | 75-94 |
| Sunflower, high-oleic | 78-90 |
| Safflower, high-oleic | 80-100 |
| Almond | 85-109 |
| Sunflower, mid-oleic | 94-122 |
| Sunflower, standard | 118-141 |
| Grapeseed | 128-150 |
| Safflower, standard | 136-148 |
No Codex iodine value exists for castor, rosehip, hemp, avocado, argan, camellia, tamanu, meadowfoam or jojoba, so figures circulating for them cannot be traced to a compositional standard and are not reproduced here. If you need one for a specification, ask your supplier for a measured value with the method named.
Shelf life: what is measurable and what is marketing
Every circulating shelf life table for cosmetic oils, including the vendor column above, is an estimate with no stated method. What has been measured is the induction period, the time under forced oxidation before the reaction accelerates. Four oils under identical conditions at 100 C (Fagoaga et al., Antioxidants, 2026): jojoba 39.8 h, olive 27.5 h, sunflower 10.4 h, rosehip 4.5 h. The ranking tracks polyunsaturate content almost perfectly. Jojoba has also been measured at 68.6 to 71.2 h at 110 C, and 51 to 229 days at 60 C against 1 to 29 days for every other oil tested.
Induction hours must not be converted into months of shelf life. Extrapolating from 100 to 130 C down to room temperature needs an Arrhenius assumption that fails here, because the dominant mechanism changes with temperature. These numbers rank oils against each other. They do not generate dates.
The more useful number is what storage does. In a 270-day real-time study of hemp seed oil (Bonazza et al., Molecules, 2024), the same oil in polypropylene at 25 C in diffused light reached 40 meq/kg of peroxide by day 150, nearly three times the Codex limit for a cold pressed oil, while in amber glass with foil at 10 C in the dark it stayed under 10 meq/kg for the full 270 days. Packaging and temperature beat oil choice. Peroxide value needs care too: Codex allows 10 meq/kg refined and 15 cold pressed, but fresh oil tests at 0.1 to 1, so a compliant certificate is not a fresh one.
The caveat that matters most: these are ranges, not constants
Composition varies by cultivar, region, season, seed maturity, extraction and refining. Four traps.
Cultivar substitution under one name. "Sunflower oil" covers standard, mid-oleic and high-oleic cultivars with almost inverted profiles. Codex identity thresholds are at least 75% oleic for high-oleic sunflower, 70% for high-oleic safflower. If a supplier does not state the grade, assume the standard one.
Genuine disagreement between studies. Rosehip is the clearest case. One published dataset puts alpha-linolenic at 16.6 to 26.5%, another at 45 to 51%, a gap far larger than cultivar noise and probably reflecting species, extraction, and whether seed or fruit pulp oil was analysed. Rather than pick a favourite we publish the whole span, which is why the rosehip index runs from 73 to 152. Treat any single rosehip figure elsewhere with suspicion.
Refining. Refined oil has lost colour, odour, phospholipids and much of its native tocopherol, so it can be less stable than the unrefined version unless tocopherol was added back. It is more consistent batch to batch.
Age on arrival. Life is counted from pressing, so an oil with a nominal one-year life that spent five months in a warehouse gives you seven. Ask for the pressing date and the peroxide value.
So compare oils against each other here rather than quoting a figure as a fact about the bottle on your bench. If a formula only works with an oil at the top of its oleic range, the formula is fragile. Catching the failure is covered in rancid balm.
Oils to avoid, or handle carefully, in lip products
Lip products are eaten in small quantities, so the bar is higher than for a hand salve.
| Oil | Problem | Detail | What to use instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweet almond, hazelnut, macadamia, walnut, peanut | Allergen exposure | Refining does not reliably remove all residual protein, and lip products are ingested | Apricot kernel, camellia, high-oleic sunflower |
| Neem | Odour | Sulphurous garlic note no flavour covers, and a bitter taste | Tamanu at low level, on the body only |
| Black cumin | Odour and taste | Peppery thymoquinone note on the lip | Leave it out |
| Hemp seed, unrefined | Odour, colour, index 89 | Grassy smell, green tint, short life | Refined hemp at low level, or apricot kernel |
| Sea buckthorn fruit oil | Staining | Carotenoids stain lips and packaging orange above about 1% | Use at 0.5% or below, or a proper pigment |
| Tamanu, buriti, unrefined avocado | Colour | Green or orange tint fighting any intended shade | Refined grades |
| Rosehip, grapeseed, standard sunflower | Very short life | Index above 58, and a lip balm lives in a warm pocket | High-oleic sunflower, camellia, jojoba |
None is a regulatory prohibition. They are formulating judgements, except the allergen group, which is a risk decision and a labelling obligation.
Declare every oil by its INCI name on the label, including nut-derived oils, and do not rely on refining to remove allergenic protein. If you sell to the public, an allergen you did not declare is the one problem that a good formula cannot fix later.
Choosing a base oil from the table in thirty seconds
- Base oil for a product that must last 18 months: index under 15.
- Base oil for a product used within six months: index under 50 is fine.
- Speciality oils above index 30: cap at 10% of the formula and add 0.02-0.1% mixed tocopherol.
- Staining or strongly coloured oils: cap at 1-3%.
- Oils bought for a minor component (GLA, punicic acid, carotenoids): 1-5% is where the cost is defensible.
To weight a blend and see its resulting profile and index, use the oil blend calculator. For pigments alongside a high-castor formula, colourants and tints covers dispersion, and the gloss mechanics are in castor oil.
How we compiled this
Rows marked Codex take their ranges from CXS 210-1999 or CXS 33-1981, which are declared ranges rather than typical values. Peer-reviewed rows come from published measurements. Supplier rows are a consensus of data sheets, a weaker basis, so those ranges are kept broad. Where sources disagreed we widened the range, and where they disagreed irreconcilably, as with rosehip, we said so in the table.
Vendor life claims are reproduced, not endorsed. Skin feel descriptors are editorial judgements from the Trebalm desk, made by applying each oil neat to the back of the hand at the same dose. They are consistent within this table, but another assessor would order the middle differently. Nothing here is a claim about what an oil does to skin beyond emolliency and occlusion.
Corrections and updates
If a supplier certificate falls outside a range given here, we will widen the range or note the exception. Cultivar outliers are the usual cause. Coconut diverges from supplier claims often enough for its own page, coconut oil in balms, and the antioxidant strategy for the short-life half of the table, including the correction that puts tocopherol at 0.02 to 0.1%, is in vitamin E and antioxidants.
Frequently asked questions
Where do these fatty acid percentages come from?
The basis column says, row by row. Codex rows use the declared ranges in CXS 210-1999 and CXS 33-1981, peer-reviewed rows use published measurements, and supplier rows are a consensus of technical data sheets. They are ranges rather than single figures because real oils vary by cultivar, season and processing.
Why does the same oil show different numbers on different sites?
Because cultivar, growing region, harvest season, seed maturity, extraction method and degree of refining all shift the profile. High-oleic cultivars of sunflower and safflower exist alongside standard ones with almost inverted profiles under the same common name. Always check whether a supplier is selling the high-oleic or the standard version.
Which oils should I avoid in a lip balm?
Tree nut oils because of allergen exposure, strongly scented oils such as neem, black cumin and unrefined hemp because no flavour will cover them, staining oils such as sea buckthorn and unrefined buriti, and the very short-life oils (rosehip, grapeseed, standard sunflower) unless the product will be used within a few months.
Does a longer shelf life for the oil mean a longer shelf life for the balm?
Roughly, but the balm is limited by its least stable component, not its average. A blend of one part rosehip to nine parts jojoba will not last five years. Peroxides formed in the unstable fraction accelerate oxidation around them, so the highest-index oil sets the pace.
What does relative weight mean in the table?
It is a sensory judgement, not a measurement: how substantial the film feels and how long it stays perceptible on skin. It tracks viscosity, molecular size and polarity. Dry means the film thins below the sensory threshold quickly. Rich means it stays detectable and cushioned for some time after application.
Can I trust the shelf life figures suppliers publish?
Treat them as guidance, not data. None states a method, temperature, packaging or endpoint. What has been measured is the induction period under forced oxidation: at 100 C, jojoba 39.8 hours, olive 27.5, sunflower 10.4, rosehip 4.5. Those rank oils against each other but cannot be converted into months, because the mechanism changes with temperature.
Are the typical use levels limits or recommendations?
They are formulating recommendations for anhydrous balms, not safety limits. Most of these oils can be used at 100% of an oil phase without a safety issue. The levels given reflect where each oil earns its place before cost, odour, tack, colour or instability starts to outweigh what it contributes.
Sources and further reading
- Codex Alimentarius Commission, Standard for Named Vegetable Oils (CXS 210-1999), FAO/WHO (declared fatty acid ranges, iodine and peroxide values).
- Codex Alimentarius Commission, Standard for Olive Oils and Olive Pomace Oils (CXS 33-1981), FAO/WHO.
- Fagoaga et al., Oxidative stability of cosmetic vegetable oils, Antioxidants, 2026 (induction periods at 100 C).
- Bonazza et al., Effect of packaging and storage conditions on hemp seed oil quality, Molecules, 2024.
- US Department of Agriculture, FoodData Central, Agricultural Research Service.
- National Library of Medicine, PubChem compound summary: ricinoleic acid, NCBI.
- Personal Care Products Council, International Cosmetic Ingredient Dictionary and Handbook (INCI nomenclature).
Reviewed and updated 6 September 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix and log it.