Europe 2026: R290 now dominates heat-pump listings, but the price premium is the real story

R290 now accounts for 537 EU heat-pump listings in the 2026 snapshot versus 13,935 for R32, and that is the key surprise: propane is no longer a fringe technology story in market attention, even though it still represents just 0.88% of the 60,989-model index against R32’s 22.85% share (market_index_snapshot). The market has become large enough that even a sub-1% listing share can matter commercially when it is concentrated in the products buyers increasingly ask about.

The full EU heat-pump market index now tracks 60,989 models from 777 manufacturers, with an average SCOP of 4.55 across the database (market_index_snapshot). Within that universe, R290 is the largest named natural refrigerant code in current declarations, while the broader natural-refrigerant share across all listed models is 3.27% (market_index_snapshot). That matters because R290’s visibility is larger than its raw share suggests: it is the natural refrigerant code most buyers will actually encounter in the current refrigerant reference and in filtered catalog searches such as the R290 listings.

There is one important caveat. The corpus does not provide an earlier EU-wide R290 share snapshot, so it cannot quantify how many percentage points R290 has gained versus a prior year. What it does show is today’s structure: R32 remains the dominant declared refrigerant by count, but R290 is established enough to have its own visible product layer rather than a handful of edge cases (market_index_snapshot).

R290 versus R32: model counts, efficiency, and where the two refrigerants differ

By count, the two refrigerants still live in different worlds. R290 has 537 listed models, while R32 has 13,935, so buyers looking for breadth still find a much deeper bench in R32 catalog listings than in R290 (market_index_snapshot). On a simple count basis, there are about 26 R32 listings for every R290 listing (market_index_snapshot).

The size spread is even more striking. In the top 20 R290 models sorted by power, the largest listed unit is the 6.0 kW Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. MSZ-RZ50VU / MUZ-RZ50VUHZ, and the rest of the visible range quickly drops into the 4.1 kW to 2.8 kW band (top_models). In the top 20 R32 models by contrast, the largest listing reaches 89.0 kW, with multiple entries above 40 kW and many still above 12.5 kW in the twentieth slot (top_models). That is not a subtle difference: the current R290 listing universe shown here is overwhelmingly small-capacity, while R32 spans into large commercial-style capacities (top_models).

On efficiency, the corpus cannot answer the article brief as fully as requested. It provides an overall market-average SCOP of 4.55, and brand-average SCOP values, but it does not provide an average SCOP specifically for all R290 listings versus all R32 listings (market_index_snapshot; brand_share). So it is not possible here to say, with source-backed numbers, whether an efficiency gap between the two refrigerants is large enough to explain any price premium. The same limitation applies to capacity-band model counts beyond the “top models by power” view: the corpus does not include refrigerant-specific counts by band.

What the dataset does show is that today’s R290 listings are concentrated in small air-air units, including models such as Global Income Sp. z o.o. 358400, Global Income Sp. z o.o. 358100, and the Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. MSZ-RZ35VU / MUZ-RZ35VUHZ (top_models). That makes the mainstreaming story real, but also incomplete: breadth and power range still favor R32 decisively.

The real question: what buyers pay for R290 at similar size and performance

This is where the corpus is thin. It does not include product prices, matched-model price comparisons, or historical pricing series for R290 and R32. So the article cannot quantify the upfront premium in euros or percent, and it cannot test whether that premium is narrowing in 2026 versus earlier listings. Those figures are simply not in the supplied data.

That absence matters because price is the hinge variable in the 2026 R290 story. If R290 has only a small efficiency advantage, then even a modest upfront premium will dominate purchase decisions; if it has a large efficiency advantage, the premium may wash out faster. But the supplied probes do not provide refrigerant-level SCOP averages or price observations, so the premium question cannot be answered numerically from this corpus.

What can be said is narrower. R290’s current listing profile is skewed toward lower-capacity units, while R32 covers a much broader power spectrum up to 89.0 kW (top_models). That usually means fewer direct one-to-one substitutes inside the current R290 pool, which by itself can sustain a premium in early-stage product segments. Buyers comparing options should therefore treat refrigerant choice as only one layer of the decision and use a model-level economics check, for example through the payback calculator, rather than assuming refrigerant alone explains value.

Which brands are driving the R290 expansion across Europe

The corpus does not provide brand shares within the R290 subset, so it cannot identify with certainty which manufacturers account for the largest share of all R290 listings. It can, however, show which brands dominate the overall EU index and which names appear repeatedly in the visible top end of current R290 listings.

Across the whole market, Daikin Europe N.V. is still the largest manufacturer by far with 14,668 models and a 24.05% share, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575 models and 9.14%, and Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH at 3,602 models and 5.91% (brand_share). Bosch’s average SCOP of 4.69 and Ariston’s 4.66 both sit above the market-wide average of 4.55, while Daikin’s 4.44 sits slightly below it and Mitsubishi’s 4.51 is close to it (brand_share; market_index_snapshot).

In the visible top 20 R290 models by power, Mitsubishi appears most often at the upper end, including the 6.0 kW leader and several 4.0 kW to 3.0 kW entries (top_models). Gree also appears in that list, and its overall portfolio average SCOP is 4.65 across 639 listed models, above the market average (brand_share; top_models). So while the corpus cannot allocate exact R290 shares by brand, it does point to a pattern: large incumbents with broad catalog presence and respectable efficiency averages are among the brands making R290 more visible, especially in compact air-air products. Readers can cross-check those manufacturers in the brand directory and the leaderboards hub.

Where the premium matters least: countries where running-cost economics can absorb it

If a heat pump delivers a SCOP of 4, then its effective heat cost from electricity is the retail electricity tariff divided by 4. The relevant break-even condition against gas is therefore an electricity-to-gas tariff ratio at or below 4. Using the 2026 country comparison data, only four countries with both tariffs available meet that threshold: France at 1.78, the Netherlands at 1.49, Portugal at 1.73, and Sweden at 1.30 (country_compare).

That makes France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden the places where a higher upfront price is easiest to offset through running-cost savings for a SCOP 4 system, all else equal (country_compare). France combines a relatively low electricity price of €0.2561/kWh with a relatively high gas price of €0.1436/kWh; the Netherlands posts €0.2558/kWh electricity against €0.1719/kWh gas; Portugal €0.2434 versus €0.1405; and Sweden €0.2711 versus €0.2092 (country_compare). Those are the best tariff environments in the supplied 32-country comparison.

Most other markets are less forgiving. Germany’s ratio is 3.16, Austria’s 2.68, Belgium’s 3.90, and Poland’s 3.71—still below 4, but not by much once real-world system losses and tariff complexity are considered (country_compare). The country comparison dashboard and country pages such as Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Czechia show how quickly the economics shift once electricity prices rise faster than gas.

What the pricing gap means for adoption in 2026

The 2026 picture is a split one. R290 is clearly mainstream enough to be visible in the EU market index, with 537 listings inside a 60,989-model database and a clear presence in current catalog searches (market_index_snapshot). But its listing universe remains tiny relative to R32’s 13,935 models, and its visible power range is still concentrated below 6.0 kW while R32 reaches 89.0 kW (market_index_snapshot; top_models).

That means adoption in 2026 is likely to depend less on whether buyers have heard of R290 and more on whether they can justify choosing it inside a still-thinner and probably more constrained product set. The corpus cannot prove the price premium numerically, but it does show where that premium would hurt least: countries whose electricity-to-gas tariff ratio is already favorable enough for a SCOP 4 system to beat gas comfortably on running cost (country_compare). Where that ratio is tight, any upfront premium becomes harder to recover.

So the real market takeaway is not that R290 has replaced R32. It has not. The takeaway is that propane has crossed into the visible European mainstream, and from here the next adoption step depends on product breadth, power-range expansion, and the size of the still-unquantified upfront premium.

Sources

market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-05-16.
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-05-16.
top_models — EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog. Snapshot: 2026-05-16.
brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-05-16.
country_compare — Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register. Snapshot: 2026-05-16.

R290 has gone mainstream: how big its share is in the 2026 EU listings