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Oud oil prices vary because several factors multiply together: only a minority of wild trees form resin, resin takes years to build up, distillation yields are very low, often around 0.1 percent of the wood, and grade, origin and wild claims add large premiums. Plantation oils sit at the lower end, while rare aged or wild-sourced oils can cost many times more.
- Estimates of how many wild trees form agarwood range from under 2 percent to about 1 in 10.
- A single 12 ml tola can take from around 8 to over 100 kg of wood.
- A high price does not prove high quality. Labels can be inflated.
Oud pricing is not set by one variable. It is the product of several factors stacked on top of one another: how rare natural resin is, how long it takes to form, how much wood a batch of oil needs, and which grade, origin and wild labels end up on the bottle. Each layer adds its own multiplier, which is why the range is so wide.
Price is layered
It helps to think in layers. The biology of resin formation limits supply. Time and yield decide how much usable oil a tree or plantation produces. Grade, distillation, origin and reputation then decide how that oil is sorted and marketed. A rare, old, wild-sourced oil from a respected distiller sits at the top of every layer at once. A young plantation oil sits near the bottom of most of them.
How rare natural resin is
Agarwood forms only when a tree responds to wounding and infection, as described in how agarwood resin forms, and in the wild only a minority of trees do so. Estimates vary: some put it at fewer than 2 percent of wild trees, while Joachim Gratzfeld of Botanic Gardens Conservation International has said around one in ten trees usually show signs of agarwood. Either way, how much resin a tree holds can only be fully known after it is cut, which is part of why wild trees have been felled so heavily.
That scarcity, together with CITES controls and wild harvest restrictions covered in agarwood and CITES explained, is the foundation of the premium on wild material. The difference between wild and cultivated sources is covered in wild vs plantation agarwood.
Time and cultivation
Wild resin builds up over years to decades, and long-formed resin is widely regarded as more complex, which is part of the premium on aged material. Research has linked denser, more resinous wood to more complex chromone compounds, covered in agarwood resin content. Plantations shorten the timeline by deliberately wounding and inoculating trees: a restoration project in Cambodia reports trees typically inoculated at about eight years old, with resin forming over roughly three years after that. Cultivation brings oil within reach of more buyers, which is the main reason plantation oils cost so much less.
Want the chemistry behind why older resin is valued?
Agarwood resin contentHow much wood it takes
Yields are very low. In a 2020 laboratory study, agarwood gave about 0.06 to 0.14 percent oil by weight, depending on soaking time, roughly 0.6 to 1.4 grams per kilogram. Another study cited in that paper reported 2.5 grams of oil from 25 kilograms of wood, about 0.1 grams per kilogram. On those figures, a 12 ml tola can take from around 8 to over 100 kilograms of wood. How distillation affects yield is covered in oud oil distillation methods.
| Yield | Oil per kg of wood | Wood per tola (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| 0.14% | About 1.4 g | About 8 kg |
| 0.06% | About 0.6 g | About 18 kg |
| 0.01% | About 0.1 g | Over 100 kg |
How labels fold it all in
By the time oil reaches a buyer, grade and origin terms, sinking grades, kỳ nam claims, Hindi or Cambodi, wild or "old stock," work as shorthand for rarity, time and yield. That is why they carry such large premiums, and also why they are worth checking: the financial incentive to overstate any one of them is considerable. See fake oud: what to look for.
What prices look like
There is no public price index for oud oil, and published figures vary widely by source, grade and year, so we do not give a single range. Oil is commonly sold by the tola, about 12 ml, and prices run from modest for young plantation oils to very high for rare aged or wild-sourced oils. At the extreme end of agarwood wood, researchers in 2018 cited kynam at around €350 per gram, and Vietnamese press has reported white kỳ nam at around 50 billion đồng per kilogram. Synthetic oud materials, covered in synthetic vs natural oud oil, cost a small fraction of any natural oil.
Using price wisely
Price is useful in two directions. A very low price for an oil described as wild, aged or pure is a strong warning sign. A high price, on the other hand, proves nothing on its own, since labels can be inflated. Weigh any price against what the seller can tell you about the wood, the distillation and the source, and against prices from other reputable sellers for similar oils. See how much does agarwood cost and buying oud oil.
How we checked this. Infection estimates come from Al Jazeera's 2016 reporting, yields from the studies below, plantation timings from AFoCO, and price examples from the sources named. We removed per-kilogram price ranges for natural and synthetic oud that we could not trace to a reliable source.
Sources
- Al Jazeera (2016). Scent from heaven: a very rare source.
- Abdul Rahim, A. F. et al. (2020). Microwave-assisted hydrodistillation of Aquilaria subintegra. Journal of Advanced Research in Fluid Mechanics and Thermal Sciences, 72(2), 1 to 12.
- Kao, W.-Y. et al. (2018). Chemical profiles of incense smoke ingredients from agarwood. Molecules, 23(11), 2969.
- VietnamNet. Ly kỳ trầm hương Khánh Hòa 10 tỷ/kg.
- Asian Forest Cooperation Organization. Reviving native agarwood in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains.