A reference chart for how hot the chilies used in Thai cooking are, in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), compared to more familiar peppers. This is a guide, not a converter — there's no reliable formula for turning chili heat into an exact number.
| Chili | Heat level | Scoville Heat Units (SHU) |
|---|---|---|
| Prik kee noo (Thai bird's eye chili, fresh) | 🌶🌶🌶 | 50,000–100,000 SHU |
| Prik chee fah (spur / finger chili, fresh) | 🌶🌶 | No reliably confirmed figure — milder than bird's eye chili, roughly in the cayenne-pepper range based on general comparison, but we could not confirm a specific number from multiple sources. |
| Dried Thai chili (prik haeng) | 🌶🌶🌶 | No confirmed figure — heat depends entirely on which fresh chili variety was dried. |
| Thai chili powder (prik pon) | 🌶🌶 | No confirmed figure — varies by blend and which chilies were ground into it. |
| Pepper | Heat level | Scoville Heat Units (SHU) |
|---|---|---|
| Bell pepper | (none) | 0 SHU |
| Jalapeño | 🌶 | 2,500–8,000 SHU |
| Cayenne pepper | 🌶🌶 | 30,000–50,000 SHU |
| Thai bird's eye chili (prik kee noo) | 🌶🌶🌶 | 50,000–100,000 SHU |
| Habanero | 🌶🌶🌶 | 100,000–350,000 SHU |
Every other tool on this site converts a fixed, physical property — weight, volume, temperature — where the same input reliably produces the same output. Chili heat doesn't work that way. The Scoville scale measures capsaicin concentration, and that concentration varies with the specific pepper variety, the plant's growing conditions (soil, water stress, sunlight), how ripe the chili was when picked, and even which part of the same plant it came from. Published Scoville figures for a given chili type are almost always given as a range for exactly this reason, and different reputable sources sometimes disagree on where that range sits. Building a numeric "convert chili A to chili B" calculator on top of that much variance would present false precision, so this page deliberately stays a reference guide rather than an interactive tool.
The one figure with solid agreement across sources is the Thai bird's eye chili (prik kee noo), commonly cited at 50,000–100,000 SHU — multiple independent references land in that same range, which is why it's the only Thai-specific chili on this page given a confirmed number. Other Thai chilies, like the milder prik chee fah (spur or finger chili) commonly used in curry pastes, or chili in dried and powdered form, don't have the same level of cross-source agreement in the reference material available, so this guide leaves those figures unconfirmed rather than repeating an unverified number as if it were solid.
For cooking purposes, the practical takeaway is usually simpler than the exact Scoville number anyway: prik kee noo (small, thin, intensely hot) is the chili to use sparingly, prik chee fah (larger, milder) is the one you can use more generously for color and moderate heat, and dried or powdered chili's heat depends entirely on which fresh chili went into it. Taste and adjust as you cook, the same way experienced Thai cooks do.
If a recipe calls for "chilies to taste," start with fewer prik kee noo than you think you need — it's easier to add more than to fix an overly hot dish.