Top 10 Hottest Peppers In The World (2022)

The title for the hottest pepper is something that is being challenged more often than you might think. Every year, hot pepper growers look for a new mix or hybrid, soil, and temperature to grow peppers that will fight for the top spot, or beat the previous record holder, to become the hottest pepper. The competition is fierce. In this list, we look at the top 10 hottest peppers in the world based on their potential spiciness, which is measured in Scoville units (The Scoville Scale, developed by Wilbur Scoville in 1912, measures the hotness of chili peppers and spicy sauces. )

Let the names of these hot chili peppers, such as Scorpion and Reaper, be a stark warning. These peppers are immensely hot, and as such they must be handled with care. If you’re going to dance with the devil, wear kitchen gloves, goggles and be especially careful throughout the cooking process.

Without further ado, these are the top 10 hottest peppers in the world.

10. 7 Pot Barrackpore – 1,000,000,000 to 1,300,000 SHU

Source: Existential2012 | CC BY 2.0 Generic

The 7 Pot Barrackpore is larger and slightly hotter than a traditional Trinidad 7 Pot pepper and is among the hottest peppers in the world. Although flavor-wise, the Barrackpore variety tends to be slightly more bitter and slightly less sweet than other 7 Pot peppers (and other super hots too). This superhot gets its name from the city where it was originally discovered – Barrakpore, Trinidad.

9. 7 Pot Brain Strain – 1,000,000,000 to 1,350,000 SHU

Source: pepperjohnny | CC BY 2.0 Generic

7 Pot peppers are known for their merciless spiciness and the 7 Pot Brain Strain pepper is no exception. This is a scorching hot pepper, with a fruity, slightly smoky flavor with a burning sensation in the mouth lurking around the corner. What makes the 7 Pot Brain Strain so different is the appearance of the chili pepper. This chili was grown with the intention of making it look like a human brain – lumpy, folding and spherical – with more internal membranes than most other 7 Pot chilies. It’s a unique visual twist not often found on the pepper scale.

8. Naga Viper – 900,000 to 1,382,118 SHU

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The Naga Viper has quite a pedigree behind it. It is a hybrid cross between three super hot peppers – the ghost pepper, the Naga Morich, and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. In 2011, it took the official Guinness Book title as the world’s hottest chili pepper, beating the Infinity pepper. It lost the title in 2012, yet few managed to keep the title, making the Naga Viper one of the most well-known spicy peppers. It has the intense heat of the scorpion pepper with a slow burning sensation of the ghost pepper.

7. Trinidad Scorpion Butch Taylor – 800,000 to 1,463,700 SHU

Source: Kouya | CC BY-SA 4.0 International

Trinidad Scorpion Butch T Chili pepper matured on a plant. Classic shape resembling a scorpion’s sting.

The “Butch T” is a variety of the Trinidad Scorpion pepper and has held the Guinness Book title for the world’s hottest pepper for 3 years. Here it ranks seventh for its peak range, but it tends to come out at an average warmer temperature than the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (which has the much higher potential peak heat).

6. Naga Morich – 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 SHU

Source: Lauri Rantala | CC BY 2.0 Generic

The Naga chili, locally known as Naga Morich, is a chili pepper grown in northeastern India and Bangladesh. It is one of the hottest known chili peppers, and is closely related to the Bhut jolokia.

5. Dorset Naga – 1,000,000 to 1,598,227 SHU

Source: Luciano Roth Coelho | CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported

A ripe fruit of the Dorset Naga chili pepper species (Capsicum chinense Jacq.)

The Dorset Naga is a kind of super Naga Morich. It was developed by selecting from the seeds of the best possible Naga Morich peppers, creating a popular pepper in its own right with a little extra spice. Only the flavors (sweet and floral) are similar between these two peppers.

4. Pot Douglah – 923,889 to 1,853,986 SHU

Source: pepperjohnny | CC BY 2.0 Generic

The 7 Pot Douglah is not your typical 7 Pot pepper. It ripens to a chocolate brown color and has more of a sweet and nutty taste than a fruit flavor. And in terms of spiciness, it’s a significant improvement over other 7 pots – at its peak it’s approaching 2 million Scoville heat units, which only a few peppers have ever approached or even surpassed.

3. Trinidad Moruga Scorpion – 1,200,000 to 2,000,000 SHU

Source: Hankwang | CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Chili Peppers.

The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (Capsicum Chinense) is a chili pepper developed from the Trinidad Scorpion. The pepper was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records for several months in 2012 as the hottest pepper in the world. In doing so, he ousted the Naga Jolokia who had held this title since 2007. A New Mexico State University Chile Institute survey found the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion to score up to 2,009,231 SHU on the Scoville scale. That’s about twice as much as the Naga Jolokia. On average, this chili pepper has a Scoville value of about 1.2 million, but with a wide variety. The conditions in which the plant lives are especially important. In stressful situations such as high temperatures or drought, the fruits become significantly hotter. Later in 2012, the record passed to the Carolina Reaper with an average of 1,569,300 SHU.

2. Komodo Dragon Pepper – 1,400,000 to 2,200,000 SHU

Source: Bigar | CC BY-SA 4.0 International

Plant with two ripe and one unripe fruit.

The Komodo Dragon is said to be one of the hottest chilies in the world, with about 1.4 million Scoville heat units. The pepper was announced in 2015 and was sold in Tesco stores. The pepper is also notable for what has been described as a ‘delayed reaction’ -Eleanor Mansell, who buys chiles for Tesco, said: ‘At first you will taste a lovely hot fruitiness, but after about 10 seconds the full power of this little little devil there’s your whole mouth on fire.’ According to a Tesco buyer, the Komodo Dragon Pepper has become their most popular pepper in 2015.

1. Carolina Reaper – 2,200,000 SHU

Source: Magnolia677 | CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported

Fully grown plant.

The Carolina Reaper is a chili pepper belonging to the genus Capsicum chinense. The Guinness Book of Records named the Carolina Reaper the hottest pepper in late 2013. A few months after the designation of its predecessor, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, this chili pepper was thus crowned the new champion in the race for increasingly spicy peppers. The American grower Ed Currie cultivated a pepper variety in his company PuckerButt Pepper Company in Rock Hill, South Carolina, which comes close to pepper spray in terms of spiciness. On the Scoville Scale, which measures the “hotness” of peppers, the Carolina Reaper averages 1,569,300 units according to research at Winthrop University in South Carolina. An outlier even reached 2.2 million.

Honorable Mentions

Let’s talk about some upcoming hybrid peppers that show promise. These two hot peppers will be added to the list once their validity is confirmed.

Dragon’s Breath 2,483,584 SHU

Could the Dragon’s Breath pepper be the new hottest pepper in the world? Only time will tell. Guinness World Records has not yet confirmed the SHU (Scoville Heat Unit, a measure of heat) values.

Pepper X – 3,180,000 (unofficial) SHU

Pepper X is a cultivar of Capsicum chili pepper bred by Ed Currie, creator of the Carolina Reaper. Pepper X is the result of multiple crosses that produced an exceptionally high level of capsaicin in the peppers. The chilli pepper’s exceptional heat has been developed over the last 10 years of chilli cultivation. Currie stated that it is “twice as hot as the Carolina Reaper” making it the hottest pepper in the world with a Scoville scale of 3.18 million pieces, but this was not confirmed by the Guinness World Records in 2019.