The Scoville Scale and Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) were named for scientist Wilbur Scoville in 1912 for measuring a chili pepper's pungency and heat. Learn what is the Scoville Scale, a list of chili peppers and their Scoville Heat Units (SHUs) from hottest to mildest and more.
What is the Scoville Scale?
The Scoville Scale was named for scientist Wilbur Scoville in 1912. At the time, Scoville worked for a pharmaceutical company named Parke-Davis where he developed a test called the "Scoville Organoleptic Test" which is used to measure a chili pepper's pungency and heat, measured in "Scoville Heat Units".
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.
The measurements are divided into multiples of 100. Note that 1 part per 1,000,000 dilutions of water is rated at 1.5 Scoville Units.
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.
Current Scoville Scale Measurements
Today, testing chili pepper heat is not quite so subjective. It has been replaced by High Performance Liquid Chromatography, or HPLC, which measures the pepper's heat producing chemicals and rates them in ASTA pungency units.
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.
The term "capsaicin" comes from the pepper plants' classification, of the genus Capsicum.
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.
A List of Chili Peppers from Mildest to Hottest as Measured on the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) Scale
This is not a complete list of chili peppers, but rather a representation of some of the more popular chili peppers listed by heat level from hottest to mildest.
Scoville Scale for Some of the Most Common Chili Peppers and Hot Sauces
Here is a list of Scoville Heat Units (SHU) of the most common chili peppers and hot sauces so you can get an understanding of how they relate to each other.
- 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...
Download the Printable Scoville Scale Poster
Would you like to download a hi-resolution, print-quality PDF of the Scoville Scale? Sign up for Grow below.
A Recent History of Hot Peppers - Hottest Peppers in the World - News and the Scoville Scale
The Red Savina Habanero Pepper was the original "hottest pepper in the world", with a heat range of up to 580,000 Scoville Heat Units, but newer, hotter chili peppers came fast and hard in the last 20 years.
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”.
Want More Chili Pepper Heat Information?
Check Out Our List of Chili Peppers Organized by Heat Levels, from Mild to Superhot
This post was updated on 10/20/23 to include new information. It was originally published on 6/14/14.
Kenrick Fearn says
Hi Mike
Huge fan of your website and YT channel…this was an excellent article …very informative…
My wife and I are board gamers and had an excellent game called “Scoville” published by the now defunct Tasty Minstrel Games …it was great fun and part of the game was creating monster super hot new chilli varieties.
We created some monsters lol…
Looking forward to eventually getting my hands on the already legendary “ Pepper X”!
Mike Hultquist says
Thanks, Kenrick! I'll have to check out that game!
Kenrick Fearn says
eBay will be your best bet now …as the publisher very sadly went out of business a year or two ago…