Chili or chilli?

chili is a noun meaning “The pungent, spicy fresh or dried fruit of any of several cultivated varieties…”; chilli is a noun meaning “Alternative spelling of chili”. Wiktionary gives them as spellings of the same word. They sound the same (/ˈt͡ʃɪli/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) chili is about 2.8 times as common as chilli.

chiliorchilli

What is the difference between chili and chilli?

	chili	chilli
Part of speech	noun	noun
Meaning	USThe pungent, spicy fresh or dried fruit of any of several cultivated varieties of capsicum peppers, used in cooking USPowdered chili pepper, used as a spice or flavouring in cooking USA dish made with chili peppers and other ingredients, such as beans and beef	Alternative spelling of chili
Example	none recorded	none recorded
Forms	chilis, chilies	chillis, chillies
Pronunciation	/ˈt͡ʃɪli/ /ˈt͡ʃɪliː/	/ˈt͡ʃɪli/
In writing	5.4 times per million words	1.9 times per million words

Sources: chili and chilli in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Every current meaning of chili and chilli

chili

1
noun USThe pungent, spicy fresh or dried fruit of any of several cultivated varieties of capsicum peppers, used in cooking
2
noun USA dish made with chili peppers and other ingredients, such as beans and beef
3
noun USPowdered chili pepper, used as a spice or flavouring in cooking
4
noun USCincinnati chili
5
noun USA spicy stew of chicken or paneer, capsicum and onion, eaten as an appetizer

chilli

1
noun Alternative spelling of chili

Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.

Which is more common, chili or chilli?

chili appears 5.4 times per million words; chilli 1.9 times per million words.

0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

chili 5.4 times per million wordschilli 1.9 times per million words

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How many people search chili vs chilli?

“chili vs chilli” is searched about 30 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.

Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.