Firewood BTU Chart: Best Wood to Burn (20 Species)

Osage orange tops the published extension-service tables at 30.7 million BTU per cord, and eastern white pine sits near the bottom at 15.9 million BTU per cord. White oak lands at 25.7, which means one cord of white oak carries about as much heat as 1.6 cords of white pine (25.7 ÷ 15.9 = 1.62). Every figure below assumes seasoned wood at roughly 20% moisture content and a standard cord — 128 stacked cubic feet, of which about 80 cubic feet is solid wood, the rest air. Green wood delivers dramatically less, because a large share of the energy goes to boiling off water before the wood fibers can burn.

Firewood BTU chart: 20 common North American species

Basis: values marked PSU come from Penn State Extension’s Heating with Wood table (adapted from Stelzer, University of Missouri Extension, 2017), for air-dried wood at approximately 20% moisture. Values marked NFS come from Utah State University Extension’s wood-heating table, based on a University of Nebraska/Nebraska Forest Service fact sheet, for dry wood. Published tables disagree by 5–15% because of differing methodology and assumed cord packing — where the two sources differ meaningfully, both numbers are shown.

Species	Million BTU per cord	Type	Source
Osage orange (hedge)	30.7 (NFS: 32.9)	Hardwood	PSU
Hickory (shagbark and others)	28.0	Hardwood	PSU
Black locust	27.9	Hardwood	NFS
Ironwood (hop hornbeam)	27.3	Hardwood	PSU
Black birch	26.8	Hardwood	PSU
White oak	25.7 (NFS: 29.1)	Hardwood	PSU
Sugar maple	24.0	Hardwood	PSU
Red oak	24.0 (NFS: 24.6)	Hardwood	PSU
White ash	23.6	Hardwood	PSU
Yellow birch	23.6	Hardwood	PSU
Lodgepole pine	21.1*	Softwood	NFS
Douglas fir	20.7	Softwood	NFS
Paper / gray / river birch	20.3	Hardwood	PSU
American elm	20.0	Hardwood	NFS
Black cherry	19.9	Hardwood	PSU
Red and silver maple	18.7	Hardwood	PSU
Quaking aspen (poplar)	18.2*	Hardwood	NFS
Ponderosa pine	16.2	Softwood	NFS
Eastern white pine	15.9	Softwood	NFS
Cottonwood	15.8	Hardwood	NFS

* Lodgepole pine and quaking aspen are outliers in the source table — at the ~6,950 BTU/lb the other rows converge on, their published cord weights (2,610 lb and 2,160 lb) imply roughly 18.1 and 15.0 million BTU. Treat the higher published figures as optimistic.

What “million BTU per cord” actually means

A BTU is the energy to raise one pound of water 1°F. A cord is a volume measure, not an energy measure, so BTU per cord is really a statement about how much solid wood fits in 128 cubic feet and how heavy that wood is.

Missouri Extension’s working numbers make this concrete: air-dried firewood at 20% moisture yields about 7,100 BTU per pound of available heat, against roughly 8,600 BTU per pound oven-dry. A cord of dense hardwood holds about 80 cubic feet of solid wood at roughly 40 pounds per cubic foot — 3,200 pounds. Multiply: 3,200 × 7,100 = 22.7 million BTU, right in the middle of the oak-and-maple band above.

That is why the tables are, underneath, just weight charts. In the Nebraska data most rows work out to almost exactly the same BTU per pound: white oak 29.1M ÷ 4,200 lb = 6,929; Douglas fir 20.7M ÷ 2,970 lb = 6,970; cottonwood 15.8M ÷ 2,272 lb = 6,954. The species barely matters per pound. What matters is how many pounds of wood you got in the truckload. If you are checking a delivery against what you paid for, run the stack dimensions through the firewood cord calculator — short-stacked “face cords” and loose throws are the most common way buyers lose 20–35% of the volume they were billed for.

Why “softwood is bad” is a myth

Pound for pound, pine and oak release nearly identical heat. Pine simply weighs less per cubic foot, so a cord of it holds fewer pounds. Nothing about that makes it bad fuel — it makes it faster fuel.

The creosote accusation is a misattribution. Creosote forms when flue gas cools below roughly 250°F and unburned volatiles condense on the chimney wall. The dominant cause of cool, smoky, incomplete combustion is water in the wood, not resin in the species. Burning wet oak at 35% moisture will glaze a chimney faster than burning properly seasoned pine at 18%, because a meaningful share of the firebox energy is being spent evaporating water instead of raising flue temperature. Softwood does contain more resin and it does throw more sparks, which argues for a closed stove rather than an open hearth — but seasoned softwood burned hot is legitimate fuel.

Practical use: pine, fir and aspen are excellent for shoulder-season fires in October and April when a full oak load would overheat the house, and they are the correct choice for kindling because low-density wood has less mass to heat per unit of surface area, so it reaches ignition temperature far faster than a dense hardwood split. Save the hickory, locust and oak for January overnight burns, where density buys you burn duration rather than peak output.

Seasoning targets and times by species

The target is 20% moisture or less on a moisture meter, which reads on the dry basis — water weight as a percentage of oven-dry wood weight. That is the same basis the forestry literature uses, so the green moisture figures below compare directly to your meter reading with no conversion. (If you ever meet a wet-basis number, 20% dry basis equals about 16.7% wet basis.)

Species-level drying time is largely set by how wet the wood starts. USDA Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook Table 4-1 gives green moisture content (dry basis) for heartwood as:

• White ash — 46%. The lowest of the common firewood hardwoods, which is why ash has a reputation for burning acceptably almost green. Split and stacked, it is usable in 6–12 months.
• Northern red oak — 80% heartwood, 69% sapwood. Nearly twice the water of ash. Oak needs 12–24 months, and 18–24 is the realistic figure for splits over 4 inches.
• American elm — 95% heartwood. Wet, stringy and hard to split; budget 18–24 months.
• Sugar maple 65%, black cherry 58%, American beech 55%. These fall in the 12–18 month range.
• Eastern cottonwood 146% (black cottonwood 162%), quaking aspen 95%. Very wet green, but low-density wood dries fast once split — 6–12 months.
• Softwoods: Douglas fir 37%, ponderosa pine 40% heartwood. Typically ready in 6–12 months.

Freshly cut red oak at 80% moisture content is four times the 20% burnable threshold — and past the top of most consumer meters’ range, so a green oak split will simply peg the display. No stove design compensates for that.

The economics: compute cost per million BTU

Price per cord is meaningless without BTU per cord. The formula is one division:

Cost per million BTU = price per cord ÷ million BTU per cord

Compare a $400 white oak cord against a $250 pine cord:

• Oak: $400 ÷ 25.7 = $15.56 per million BTU
• Eastern white pine: $250 ÷ 15.9 = $15.72 per million BTU

They are effectively the same fuel cost — the “cheap” pine is not cheap. Break-even against that $400 oak is $15.56 × 15.9 = $247 per cord of white pine; above that, the oak wins. Denser softwood changes the answer entirely: a $250 cord of Douglas fir at 20.7 million BTU is $250 ÷ 20.7 = $12.08 per million BTU, clearly the best buy of the three.

To compare against a utility bill, convert to delivered heat. An EPA-certified stove at 75% efficiency turns that $15.56 oak into $15.56 ÷ 0.75 = $20.75 per million BTU delivered. Electric resistance heat: one million BTU is 1,000,000 ÷ 3,412 = 293.1 kWh, and at the April 2026 US residential average of 18.83 cents per kWh (EIA) that is $55.19 per million BTU. A heat pump running at a seasonal COP of 3.0 delivers the same heat for about $18.40 — slightly under the oak. Pull your own rate off a recent statement with the electricity bill calculator rather than using the national average, since state rates in 2026 range from roughly 11 to over 40 cents per kWh and that spread decides the comparison.

Moisture meters and stacking practice

A pin-type moisture meter costs $20–40 and is the only way to know what you actually have. Measure correctly or the reading is worthless:

• Split a piece and test the freshly exposed interior face, not the weathered outside. Surface wood reads dry after one sunny week while the core is still at 40%.
• Test at room temperature. Readings on frozen wood run low.
• Push pins in parallel to the grain, take three readings, use the highest.
• Accept 20% or less. 15–18% is ideal.

Stacking drives the drying rate more than species does. Split to 3–6 inch faces before stacking — splitting is what opens the end grain and exposes surface area. Keep rows single-width with a few inches of gap between them, get the bottom course up on pallets or rails so ground moisture does not wick in, orient the rows into the prevailing wind, and cover the top only. A tarp wrapped down the sides converts the stack into a humidity chamber and can stall seasoning indefinitely. Oak cut and split in February and stacked by April will be borderline the following winter and genuinely ready the winter after.

Before you buy, confirm you are pricing the same unit the seller is. A full cord is 128 cubic feet; a “face cord” or “rick” is one 4 × 8 foot face at whatever the split length is, so a 16-inch face cord is only about one-third of a full cord — 42.7 cubic feet. Measure the delivered stack and check it with the firewood cord calculator before the truck leaves.