🌶️ Spice Heat Converter
Convert between chili peppers and Scoville Heat Units. Enter a pepper to see its SHU range and heat level, or enter a number to find which pepper it matches — handy for scaling a recipe's fire up or down.
🔥 Check the Heat
What is a Spice Heat Converter?
It translates chili heat into the Scoville scale and back. Type a pepper name and it returns the published Scoville Heat Unit range and a heat level; type a number and it tells you which pepper band you landed in. Behind it is a reference table of common peppers, from the mild bell to the record-setting Carolina Reaper.
Use it to swap peppers in a recipe without blowing out the heat, decide how many fresh chilies equal a spoon of a hotter variety, or simply satisfy your curiosity about how fierce that sauce really is. Heat varies with variety and ripeness, so treat the ranges as a reliable guide, not a guarantee.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
How does the spice heat converter work?
Enter either a pepper name or a numeric Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) value. Give it a name — bell, poblano, jalapeño, serrano, cayenne, habanero, ghost, or carolina-reaper — and it returns that pepper's published SHU range and heat level. Give it a number and it finds the matching pepper band and classifies the heat from None to Insane.
What is the Scoville scale?
The Scoville scale measures the pungency (spicy heat) of chili peppers in Scoville Heat Units, which reflect the concentration of capsaicin — the compound responsible for the burn. A bell pepper sits at 0 SHU, a jalapeño runs a few thousand, a habanero reaches into the hundreds of thousands, and the Carolina Reaper tops out over two million.
How hot is a jalapeño compared to a habanero?
A jalapeño measures roughly 2,500 to 8,000 SHU — noticeable but manageable heat. A habanero runs about 100,000 to 350,000 SHU, so it's on the order of twenty to forty times hotter. That's why recipes swap them cautiously: a single habanero can carry the heat of a whole handful of jalapeños.
Are Scoville ratings exact?
They're ranges, not fixed points. A pepper's heat varies with its variety, growing conditions, ripeness, and even where it grows on the plant, so published SHU figures are typical bands rather than a single guaranteed number. Use them to compare peppers and gauge a recipe's heat, and taste cautiously with anything toward the extreme end.