Berries Ranked by Sugar, Lowest to Highest

By Dr. Raj Dhadwal

Sea buckthorn, or seabuckthorn, is one of the sourest fruits most people will ever taste, and yet its published sugar figures sit near the low end of the berry world. That gap between "tastes sour" and "measures low sugar" is the whole story of this list. Sourness comes from organic acids, not from the absence of sugar, and the two are measured completely differently.

Cranberry, sea buckthorn, and raspberry sit at the low end of published sugar values for raw berries, while dried goji sits far above every fresh fruit on this list because drying removes the water and concentrates everything left behind.

Why does a berry taste sour if it is not low in sugar?

Taste and composition are two different tables. A fruit's sourness comes mostly from its organic acid content, primarily ascorbic and malic acid in sea buckthorn's case, not from how much sugar it carries. Sea buckthorn is a useful example precisely because it breaks the assumption that sour equals sugar-free and sweet equals sugar-heavy. It is genuinely low in sugar for a fruit, and it is also genuinely high in acid, and those are two separate facts sitting in two separate columns of a food composition table.

What do "per 100 g raw" sugar figures actually mean?

Every entry below reflects the raw, unprocessed fruit, measured in grams of total sugars per 100 grams of edible portion, as published in standard food composition tables (USDA FoodData Central and equivalent regional databases). These values shift by variety, ripeness, growing region, and season, so where the published literature spreads across a real range, the range is shown rather than a single false-precise number. Nothing here reflects a sweetened, juiced, or dried version of the fruit unless the entry says so.

Which berries rank lowest to highest in sugar?

The table below orders twelve berries and berry-adjacent fruits from lowest to highest published sugar per 100 g raw. Cranberry opens the list, sea buckthorn and raspberry follow closely behind, and dried goji closes it out as the deliberate outlier, included specifically to show what drying does to any fruit's sugar concentration. Sea buckthorn's published sugar content generally falls in a low single-digit range, comparable to cranberry and raspberry and well below blueberry, cherry, and grape. It is not the single lowest entry in every published dataset, and it does not need to be; the point worth remembering is the contrast with how sour the fruit actually tastes, not a claim to the number-one spot.

#	Fruit	Sugar per 100 g, raw	Note
1	Cranberry	about 4 g	Among the tartest fruits on the list; rarely eaten raw and unsweetened
2	Sea buckthorn (seabuckthorn)	roughly 3 to 5 g	Low sugar, high organic acid, which is why it tastes far more sour than the number implies
3	Raspberry	about 4 to 5 g	One of the lower-sugar bramble fruits
4	Blackberry	about 4 to 5 g	Close to raspberry in most published tables
5	Strawberry	about 5 g	Often assumed sweeter than it measures
6	Red currant	roughly 7 to 8 g	Tart-leaning, moderate sugar
7	Gooseberry	roughly 6 to 9 g	Range varies widely by variety and ripeness
8	Black currant	about 8 g	Slightly higher than its red currant relative
9	Blueberry	about 10 g	The midpoint of this list
10	Cherry (sweet)	roughly 13 g	Not a true berry botanically, included for reference
11	Grape	roughly 15 to 18 g	Among the highest-sugar fresh fruits commonly eaten
12	Goji, dried	roughly 45 to 50 g	The outlier; drying removes water and concentrates sugar dramatically versus the fresh fruit

Why does dried goji jump so far above everything else on this list?

Drying does not add sugar to a fruit, it removes water, and water is most of what fresh fruit weighs. Once the water is gone, every gram of what is left, including natural sugar, is now packed into a much smaller 100 g portion. That is why dried goji's published sugar figure runs roughly ten times higher than its own fresh-fruit relatives and far above any fresh berry on this table. The lesson generalizes to any dried fruit, not just goji: always check whether a sugar figure describes the fresh or the dried version before comparing it to anything else.

Does a low sugar figure make a fruit less sour or more sour?

Neither, on its own. Sugar content and acid content are measured independently, and a fruit's flavor is the balance between them. Sea buckthorn again is the clearest case on this list: a raw sugar figure in the low single digits sitting alongside an acid profile high enough that almost nobody eats the raw berry plain. Cranberry follows a similar pattern. High-sugar fruits like grape and sweet cherry, by contrast, carry comparatively little acid, which is part of why they read as straightforwardly sweet rather than tart.

Is the sugar in a fruit the same thing as the sugar in a processed product made from it?

No, and this is worth stating plainly. A raw fruit's published sugar figure describes the fruit exactly as it grows. It says nothing about a juice, powder, concentrate, or puree made from that fruit, which can add sugar, remove fiber and pulp, or otherwise change the composition entirely depending on how it is processed. Human Renaissance is the only sea buckthorn puree in the world sold in a single-serve pouch. 190+ naturally occurring compounds, omega 3, 6, 7 and 9, 201 mg of vitamin C per pouch, 0 g sugar, 5,640 hand-picked berries per box. That 0 g sugar figure describes the finished pouch specifically, not the raw berry's own composition shown in the table above. Treat the two as separate facts about two different things, because they are.

The short version

Cranberry, sea buckthorn, and raspberry sit near the bottom of published sugar values for raw berries, blueberry sits near the middle, grape and sweet cherry sit near the top of the fresh-fruit range, and dried goji stands alone above all of them because drying concentrates sugar the way it concentrates everything else in a fruit. Sea buckthorn's own low sugar figure is a real composition fact about the raw berry; it is a separate fact from the pouch's own 0 g sugar figure, and both deserve to be stated correctly rather than blurred into one claim. For more on how the fruit actually tastes given that low-sugar, high-acid profile, see what sea buckthorn tastes like. For the full nutrition profile beyond sugar, see sea buckthorn nutrition facts. For how this list compares to a broader ranking across other health measures, see the 10 healthiest berries in the world, ranked.

Frequently asked questions

Is sea buckthorn the lowest-sugar berry there is?
Not necessarily the single lowest in every published dataset, but it consistently lands near the bottom of the range alongside cranberry and raspberry, and its sourness makes it seem lower than it measures.

Why does dried fruit have so much more sugar per 100 g than fresh fruit?
Drying removes water weight, not sugar. The same sugar content is now packed into a much smaller, lighter portion, so the per-100-g figure rises sharply even though nothing was added.

Does the Human Renaissance pouch use the raw berry's sugar figure?
No. The pouch is a finished, processed product with its own separately verified figure, 0 g sugar, which is not the same measurement as the raw fruit's own composition shown in the ranking above.

Why do published sugar figures for the same berry sometimes differ between sources?
Variety, ripeness at harvest, growing region, and season all shift a fruit's actual sugar content, which is why food composition tables often report a range rather than one fixed number.