Look at any essential oil retailer's range and you'll notice the prices swing wildly — a 10ml bottle of tea tree might cost $12, while the same size bottle of frankincense or rose costs four times as much. If both are "just" essential oils, why the gap? It comes down to how much plant material it takes to make that bottle, and how that plant is grown, harvested, or extracted.
1. How Much Plant It Takes to Fill the Bottle
This is the single biggest driver of price. Some plants yield oil generously; others barely yield any at all.
- Lavender and eucalyptus are relatively oil-rich and fast-growing, so a modest harvest produces a good volume of oil — keeping prices accessible.
- Rose is the extreme example: it can take tens of thousands of hand-picked petals to produce a single 10ml bottle of rose otto, which is why genuine rose oil is among the most expensive essential oils in the world.
- Frankincense comes from resin tapped from Boswellia trees — a slow, seasonal, labour-intensive harvest, with each tree only producing a limited amount of resin per year.
- Sandalwood requires trees that take decades to mature before they can be harvested for oil, and sustainable, ethically sourced sandalwood is increasingly scarce.
2. The Extraction Method
Most essential oils are extracted by steam distillation — relatively efficient and lower-cost. But some plants require slower, more expensive methods:
- Cold pressing (used for citrus oils like bergamot and blood orange) is mechanically simple but yields less oil per fruit than distillation yields from denser plant material.
- CO2 extraction, used for some resins and delicate botanicals, requires specialised equipment and produces a more concentrated, often higher-quality oil — at a higher production cost.
- Enfleurage, a traditional fat-based extraction method used historically for delicate florals, is extremely labour-intensive and rarely used commercially today because of the cost.
3. Where and How the Plant Is Grown
Climate-specific plants that only grow well in particular regions — like Hinoki cypress (Japan) or true lavender (higher-altitude Mediterranean regions) — can't be farmed just anywhere to cut costs. Limited growing regions mean limited supply, which keeps prices higher regardless of demand.
4. Purity and Adulteration Risk
Some of the most expensive oils — rose, sandalwood, frankincense — are also the most commonly adulterated in the wider market, cut with cheaper oils or synthetic compounds to bring the price down while still calling the product "pure." A genuinely pure version of an expensive oil will cost what it costs; a suspiciously cheap version of an expensive oil is a red flag, not a bargain. See our guide on how to tell if an essential oil is genuinely pure for what to check.
Quick Reference — Why Some of Our Oils Cost More Than Others
- More affordable ($12–$15): Tea Tree, Eucalyptus, Cedarwood, Lemongrass, Blood Orange — plants that are relatively fast-growing and oil-rich, so more oil comes from less raw material.
- Mid-range ($22–$28): Lavender, Bergamot, Hinoki — either a more delicate extraction process, a specific growing region, or a lower yield per plant than the entry-level oils.
- Premium ($48+): Frankincense — slow resin harvesting from trees that can only be tapped a limited number of times per season, with no way to speed up or scale the process without harming the tree.
The Bottom Line
Price differences between essential oils aren't arbitrary markup — they largely track how much raw plant material, labour, and time it takes to produce a usable amount of oil. A more expensive oil isn't automatically "better" for your purposes, but a suspiciously cheap version of a naturally scarce oil (rose, sandalwood, frankincense) is worth a second look before you buy.
Recommended Products
Our Pure Essential Oils range spans from everyday oils like Tea Tree and Eucalyptus to rarer, slower-to-produce oils like Frankincense and Hinoki — all single-origin and priced according to what it actually takes to produce them.