The Outset Nourishing Squalane Daily Moisturizer

The Outset is the skincare line Scarlett Johansson launched with co-founder Kate Foster in March 2022, and the Nourishing Squalane Daily Moisturizer is the product the brand is best known for. It is also the reason a lot of people end up here: squalane is right there in the product name, which raises the obvious question of how much squalane is actually in the jar, and whether a cream at this price is a sensible way to buy the ingredient. This review answers that from the published ingredient list and the live listing, not from a lab we do not have.

Start with the part the front of the jar does not tell you. The Outset publishes a full ingredient list, and on it squalane appears seventh, out of forty-five. Ahead of it sit water, caprylic/capric triglyceride, pentylene glycol, glycerin, ethylhexyl palmitate and cetearyl alcohol. US labeling rules require every ingredient present above one percent to be declared in descending order of predominance, so a seventh-place finish tells you squalane is a real, meaningful part of the formula rather than a trace added to justify the name. That is genuinely better than most creams with squalane on the label manage — plenty bury it down near the preservatives.

Seventh is not first, though, and it is worth being clear about what that means. The first six ingredients are the ones doing the heavy lifting: water as the base, caprylic/capric triglyceride as the main emollient, glycerin as the humectant that pulls water into the skin, ethylhexyl palmitate as a lightweight ester, and cetearyl alcohol holding the emulsion together. Squalane is a significant supporting player in a well-built conventional cream. It is not the product. If you have been picturing something closer to a squalane oil in cream form, adjust that picture before you buy.

The ingredient sitting immediately after squalane is the one the brand markets hardest: cassia angustifolia seed polysaccharide, which The Outset calls its Hyaluroset complex. It is a plant-derived polysaccharide used as a botanical stand-in for hyaluronic acid, and like hyaluronic acid it works as a humectant — it holds water at the skin surface. Pairing a humectant with an emollient is exactly the right structure for a moisturizer, and it is why a cream like this will out-perform a plain squalane oil on skin that is genuinely dehydrated rather than merely rough. Further down the list you will also find edelweiss extract, aloe, rice bran, hops and rosemary, which is where the brand's botanical positioning comes from.

The squalane itself is olive-derived, and The Outset says so plainly. Most of the squalane on this site is sugarcane-derived, so this is a slightly unusual sourcing choice worth noting — though it changes nothing about performance. Once squalane has been purified and hydrogenated it is the same single molecule regardless of which plant it started from, so olive squalane and sugarcane squalane behave identically on skin. What a stated source does buy you is certainty that it is not shark-derived, which is the distinction that actually matters. Our guide on where squalane comes from covers that in full.

On fragrance, the label and the ingredient list agree, which is not always the case. There is no fragrance, no parfum and no essential oil anywhere on the published forty-five-ingredient list, and the brand markets the cream as fragrance-free and suitable for sensitive skin. For anyone who reacts to fragrance — a large share of the people who go looking for a gentle moisturizer in the first place — that is the single most useful thing about this product. It is also vegan and cruelty-free by the brand's own certifications, and gluten- and nut-allergen-free.

Two honest caveats sit against the sensitive-skin claim. The first is length: forty-five ingredients, including a long tail of botanical extracts, is simply more surface area for an individual reaction than a one-ingredient squalane oil offers. Fragrance-free is not the same as inert. The second is coconut oil, which sits tenth, with safflower, avocado, soybean and plum seed oils below it. Squalane on its own rates 0 to 1 on the comedogenic scale and is a safe bet for skin that breaks out; a cream carrying this many plant oils is a different proposition, and if your face is acne-prone this is a patch-test product rather than a straight-to-the-face one. Our page on whether squalane is comedogenic explains why the ingredient and the finished formula have to be judged separately.

Then there is the price, which is where the recommendation gets complicated. The full-size jar holds 1.7 fl oz and sits firmly in the premium bracket — the live cost per ounce is in the spec table above, and it is one of the highest of any product on this site. For comparison, a 100% squalane oil from The Ordinary or Timeless costs a small fraction of that per ounce and is nothing but squalane. If your goal is squalane on your face, buying it inside a forty-five-ingredient cream at this price is an expensive route to a cheap ingredient, and we would rather say so plainly than pretend otherwise.

If you do want this specific cream, there are cheaper ways to buy it than the standard jar. Amazon lists a 0.5 fl oz travel size, which is the sensible way to find out whether your skin likes it before committing, though its cost per ounce is worse than the full size. The Outset also sells a refill pouch directly on its own site that holds fifty percent more product than the standard jar and works out cheaper per ounce than buying another jar — we cannot show you a live price for it, because we only quote prices our retailer feed can verify, but if you become a repeat buyer it is the version to look at. We earn nothing by pointing you there, which is rather the point.

One more thing to read carefully: the brand's headline numbers. The Outset reports that 95 percent of users agree the cream soothes their skin and is gentle and non-irritating, 95 percent agree it provides immediate and long-lasting hydration, and 92 percent agree it leaves skin feeling soft and smooth. Those are consumer-perception figures from a brand-run study — people reporting how a product felt — not clinical measurements of barrier function or water loss. They are a reasonable signal that testers found it pleasant and non-irritating, which matters for a sensitive-skin cream. They are not evidence of anything a dermatologist would call efficacy, and the wording of the claim is what tells you which is which.

So who is this actually for? It suits someone with dry or reactive skin who wants a finished, fragrance-free daily moisturizer from a brand that publishes its full ingredient list, and who is comfortable paying a premium for the packaging, the refill system and the botanical formulation. On that basis it is a good product, and we scored the formulation accordingly. It is a poor fit for anyone shopping on cost per ounce, anyone whose acne-prone skin dislikes coconut oil, and anyone who came looking specifically for squalane — because in that last case the honest answer is that a plain squalane oil layered over any cheap fragrance-free cream gives you more of the ingredient for far less money.

The bottom line: The Outset Nourishing Squalane Daily Moisturizer is one of the better-constructed squalane creams on the shelf — squalane genuinely earns its place at seventh, the formula is fragrance-free, and the source is disclosed. It is also priced as a luxury item, and the squalane inside it is not what you are paying for. Buy it because you want a gentle, well-made daily moisturizer and the price does not bother you. Do not buy it as a way to get squalane onto your skin.