This post was updated on 10/20/23 to include new information. It was originally published on 6/14/14. Originally, Scoville ground up peppers and mixed them with sugar water, then tested them with a panel of tasters who sipped from these sugar-water-pepper solutions. He would then dilute the solutions bit by bit until they no longer burned the tongues of the tasters, after which he would assign a number to the chile pepper based on the number of dilutions needed to kill the heat. Pure capsaicin, the stuff that makes chili peppers hot, is rated at 16,000,000 Scoville heat units. This is incredibly HOT. See the chart at the bottom of the page to compare several peppers on the range of the scale, and how they relate to pure capsaicin. Several factors can affect the heat of a pepper, but they generally fall into the ranges listed below. The Scoville Scale can be used to not only measure chili peppers, but anything that is made from chili peppers, such as hot sauce. What is really being measured is the concentration of “capsaicin”, the active ingredient that produces that sensation of heat on our tongues. Capsaicin occurs naturally in peppers along with other capsaiciniods, all of which make up the unique tastes and heat reactions of each pepper, depending on their ratios.
Bell Pepper - 0 SHU Banana Peppers - 0 - 500 SHU Shishito Peppers - 50 - 200 SHU Pepperoncini Peppers - 100 - 500 SHU Cholula Hot Sauce - 500 - 1,000 SHU Anaheim Peppers - 500 - 2,500 SHU Texas Pete Hot Sauce - 747 SHU Valentina Hot Sauce (Red Label) - 900 SHU Ancho Peppers - 1,000 - 2,000 SHU Poblano Peppers - 1,000 - 2,000 SHU Ancho Peppers (Dried Peppers) - 1,000 - 2,000 SHU Hungarian Wax Peppers - 1,000 - 15,000 SHU Valentina Hot Sauce - 2,200 SHU Crystal Hot Sauce - 2,000 - 4,000 SHU Espelette Peppers - up to 4,000 SHU Tabasco Hot Sauce - 2,000 - 5,000 SHU Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Sauce - 2,200 SHU Guajillo Peppers - 2,500 - 5,000 SHU Tapatio Hot Sauce - 3,000 SHU Jalapeno Peppers - 2,500 - 8,000 SHU Chipotle Peppers - 2,500 - 8,000 SHU Tabasco Habanero Hot Sauce - 7,000+ SHU Aleppo Pepper - 10,000 SHU Serrano Peppers - 10,000 - 23,000 SHU Calabrian Peppers - 25,000 - 40,000 SHU Chile de Arbol Peppers - 15,000 - 65,000 SHU Cayenne Peppers - 30,000 - 50,000 SHU Aji Amarillo Peppers - 30,000 - 50,000 SHU Chiltepin Peppers - 50,000 - 100,000 SHU Bird’s Eye Peppers - 50,000 - 100,000 SHU Thai Pepper - 50,000 - 100,000 SHU Datil Peppers - 100,000 - 300,000 SHU Devil’s Tongue Peppers - 125,000 - 325,000 SHU Habanero Peppers - 100,000 - 350,000 SHU Scotch Bonnet Peppers - 100,000 - 350,000 SHU Ghost Peppers - 1,000,000 + SHU African Bird’s Eye - 175,000 SHU Trinidad Scorpion Butch T Pepper - 800,000 – 1,463,700 SHU 7-Pot Chili Pepper - 1 Million SHU + Brain Strain Peppers - 1 Million - 1.25 Million SHU 7-Pot Primo - 1.47 Million SHU Komodo Dragon Peppers - 1.4 Million - 2.2 Million SHU Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Pepper - 2,009,231 SHU Pepper X - 2 Million + SHU Carolina Reaper Chili Pepper - 2.2 Million + SHU Pepper Spray - 2 Million SHU or stronger Dragon’s Breath Pepper - 2.48 Million SHU Apollo Pepper - 2,500,000 - 3,000,000 SHU Pure Capsaicin - 16 Million SHU
For a more complete list of chili peppers, visit the following links… Collectively called “superhot chili peppers”, these are peppers that top the 1 Million Scoville Heat Unit range, and I have some of them listed below. You can also review this link of Super Hot Chili Peppers List or my collection of Superhot Chili Peppers. The list of the hottest chili peppers in the world is growing all the time. Growers are producing hotter and hotter hybrids with hopes of pushing the Scoville Scale limits. 2017 saw a flurry of news articles with potential new “hottest pepper in the world” claims, including the “Dragon’s Breath Pepper” and the ultra blazing “Pepper X“, which was declared the hottest pepper in the world in October 2023, ousting the “Carolina Reaper”.
