Bell Peppers vs Sweet Peppers: What's the Difference?

Are bell peppers and sweet peppers the same?

Not quite: one is a group, the other is a member of it. New Mexico State splits peppers into two groups, mild or sweet-tasting (bell, pimiento, sweet wax and others) and hot (New Mexican, jalapeño, serrano and others). Iowa State calls the bell “the most common and popular” sweet pepper, and adds that “not all sweet peppers are exclusively block-like bell peppers”.

So a recipe that says “sweet pepper” will work with a bell. A bag labeled “sweet peppers” may hold bells, or another type entirely.

Types of sweet peppers

Sweet peppers in a row on a wooden cutting board: a green and a red bell pepper, three mini sweet peppers, a pale cubanelle, a yellow banana pepper and a red pimiento — Bells are one of many sweet peppers.

Type	Shape	Heat (SHU)	Notes
Bell	Blocky, 3 or 4 lobes	0	Thick walls; good stuffed, raw or cooked
Pimiento	Heart-shaped, pointed	0–⁠500	Thick walls; red when ripe
Cubanelle	Long, tapered	500–⁠1,000	Great for frying
Banana (sweet)	Long, tapered, waxy	Little to none	Pickles, relishes, salads
Cherry	Small, round	Little to none	Small and globe-shaped
Mini sweet	Small, often pointed	None	Bred for snacking

Heat from Iowa State; UF/IFAS puts cubanelles at about 1,000 SHU. Shapes and uses from New Mexico State, Purdue and UF/IFAS. For scale, Iowa State puts a jalapeño at 2,500 to 10,000 SHU.

A bell isn’t always 0 SHU. New Mexico State says bells are “normally without heat, but some cultivars do have heat”, and that heat in any pepper rises with water stress, heat, disease and insect damage.

Shishito peppers are sold as a sweet pepper, but their heat varies from fruit to fruit. In one study, fruits with few seeds varied the most (Molecular Genetics and Genomics, 2021).

Why sweet peppers aren’t hot

Pepper heat comes from capsaicinoids, made in glands on the placenta, the pale ribs inside the pepper. The seeds don’t make heat themselves (New Mexico State).

Whether a pepper can make capsaicinoids at all comes down to one gene, Pun1. Researchers at Cornell found the same deletion in that gene “in every non-pungent accession tested” (Stewart et al., 2005). Sweet peppers typically carry two copies of a broken Pun1, so they make no heat.

Why bell peppers are green, red, yellow or orange

Green is the unripe stage of any bell. Left on the plant, it ripens to red, yellow, orange or another color, and the variety decides which: ‘Early Sunsation’ goes from green to golden yellow, ‘Orange Blaze’ to orange, and most others to red (Iowa State). A green pepper of a yellow variety will never turn red.

The chemistry: green comes from chlorophyll. As the pepper ripens, it breaks down and carotenoids build up (Jang et al., 2022). Red peppers make capsanthin and capsorubin, the red pigments. Yellow varieties have a silenced gene for the enzyme that makes them, so they stop at yellow (Ha et al., 2007).

A red bell takes another 2 to 3 weeks on the plant after the green stage. See when to pick bell peppers.

Nutrition by color

Per 100 g raw	Green	Red	Yellow
Calories	20	26	27
Vitamin C	80 mg	128 mg	184 mg
Beta-carotene	208 µg	1,624 µg	120 µg
Sugars	2.4 g	4.2 g	n/a

From USDA FoodData Central. Red bells have about 8 times the beta-carotene of green ones and 75% more sugar. Yellow bells have the most vitamin C of the three.

Mini sweet peppers

Mini sweet peppers are small sweet peppers bred for snacking, in red, yellow and orange, with no heat (Nature Fresh Farms). Popular minis such as ‘Pretty N Sweet’ are hybrids of the same species as bells, but not all: UT Gardens lists a mini, ‘Roulette’, from the habanero’s species that “looks exactly like a blazing hot habanero but has no heat at all”.

USDA has no separate nutrition entry for minis. It counts one mini as 30 g against 120 g for a regular bell, so about 4 minis replace 1 bell in a recipe. A 1 lb (454 g) bag, the usual size, holds about 15.

Can you swap them?

In most recipes, yes. Match the type to the job:

Stuffing: use a thick-walled type, bell or pimiento (Purdue, New Mexico State).
Frying: cubanelles (UF/IFAS).
Pickling: banana and other yellow wax peppers (New Mexico State).
By weight: swap gram for gram, or 4 minis for each bell.

How we checked this

We took heat from extension Scoville tables, shapes and uses from extension guides, color from peer-reviewed plant studies, and every nutrition number from USDA FoodData Central.

We said	Now
Cubanelle 0–⁠100 SHU	500–⁠1,000 SHU
Pimientos are thin-walled	Thick-walled
Red has 11× the beta-carotene	About 8×
Color shows picking time only	The variety sets the ripe color

More on bell peppers

When you shop for either kind, our page on how many peppers in a pound gives counts by type. Once they are home, our guide on how to store bell peppers keeps them fresh, and our guide on how to grow bell peppers takes you from seed to harvest.