2026 EU heat-pump brands by refrigerant: which makers lead on R290 vs R32

The refrigerant split in Europe’s 2026 heat-pump catalogue

The current EU heat-pump snapshot contains 60,989 EPREL-listed models from 777 manufacturers (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Across that full catalogue, average declared SCOP is 4.55 and average declared power is 9.3 kW (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). The live market snapshot and full EPREL heat-pump catalog make clear that refrigerant choice is still highly concentrated rather than evenly spread.

By declared usage count, R32 is by far the dominant named refrigerant at 13,935 listings, while R290 appears on 537 listings and R410A on 1,896 listings (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Smaller declared codes such as R410a with 49 listings, R410 with 10, R134A with 2, and a long tail of one-off entries sit far behind (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes).

That puts R32 first by a very wide margin among explicitly declared refrigerants in this snapshot, R410A second, and R290 third at 537 listings (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). The registry also records a natural-refrigerant share of 3.27% across the market snapshot (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Readers comparing the chemistry and regulatory status can use the platform’s refrigerants reference alongside the official EPREL database and the EU’s F-gas Regulation 2024/573.

What the data does not show is just as important. The corpus does not provide complete model-level breakdowns by refrigerant for every brand, nor average SCOP by refrigerant segment, nor capacities split specifically between R290 and R32. It also does not provide top-performing R32 models, and the R290 top-model probe returned no results despite 537 R290 declarations being present in the universe (top_models / EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog). So this article can rank market presence and state declared refrigerant counts, but it cannot fabricate a full brand-by-brand R290 versus R32 portfolio table where the registry extract supplied here does not contain one.

The type mix is also uneven. Air-water units account for 30,452 listings, air-air for 21,065, heat-pump water heaters for 9,228, ground-water for 213, and water-water for 31 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). The corpus, however, does not break those type counts down by refrigerant, so it cannot tell us numerically which type categories are most associated with R290 versus R32.

Which brands are biggest overall, and where they sit on efficiency

The market is top-heavy. The largest manufacturer in the snapshot is Daikin Europe N.V. with 14,668 models and a 24.05% share, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. with 5,575 models and 9.14%, then JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA with 5,207 and 8.54% (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). The full manufacturer index shows how steeply the ranking falls away after the top three.

Top 10 manufacturers by model count

Within that top 10, Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH posts the highest average SCOP at 4.69, ahead of Ariston SpA at 4.66 and Vaillant GmbH at 4.54 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). The lowest average SCOP in the top 10 is the Hitachi-branded Johnson Controls entity at 4.18 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). That spread — from 4.18 to 4.69, a gap of 0.51 SCOP points — is material, but it should not be treated as a pure refrigerant effect because the corpus does not provide a brand-by-type or brand-by-refrigerant decomposition.

R290 leaders: the makers leaning hardest into propane

This is where the available dataset becomes restrictive. The corpus confirms 537 declared R290 listings across the market (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API), and it also identifies R290 as propane with GWP 0 and A3 flammability classification (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). It does not provide a ranked table of brands by R290 model count.

That means the question “which brands have the largest absolute number of R290 models?” cannot be answered from this corpus alone. Likewise, “for each leading brand, what percentage of its range uses R290?” is not recorded in the supplied brand-level probes. The two brand-detail probes included for daikin and midea both failed, so there is no manufacturer-level refrigerant mix to recover from them (brand_detail / (probe failed — data unavailable)).

Still, two market facts are clear. First, R290 remains numerically small in declared EPREL listings at 537 models against 13,935 for R32 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Second, despite its small count, R290 is already the third most common explicitly declared refrigerant code in the provided universe, ahead of the many residual low-volume codes but behind R32 and R410A (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes).

For buyers and installers filtering the market directly, the practical route is the live R290 catalogue slice. From there, individual brand pages such as Daikin Europe N.V., Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH or Vaillant GmbH can be inspected model by model. But the ranking itself is not present in the research corpus, so the article cannot assign a numeric “propane leader” crown without inventing data.

R32 holdouts and volume leaders: who still leans on the incumbent refrigerant

R32 is easier to place at market level because its declared usage is so much larger: 13,935 listings in the snapshot (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). The refrigerant reference identifies it as difluoromethane, an HFC with GWP 771 and A2L flammability classification (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). Its phase-out date in the reference table is recorded as 2027-01-01 for the relevant regulatory schedule (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes).

As with R290, the corpus does not publish brand-level R32 counts, so “which brands have the largest absolute number of R32 models?” cannot be answered directly. What can be said is that the biggest overall brands — notably Daikin Europe N.V. at 14,668 models, Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575, and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA at 5,207 — are operating in a market where R32 is the dominant declared refrigerant code by volume (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation; market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). That is not proof that each of those brands is R32-heavy, but it is the context into which their catalogue scale fits.

The live R32 filtered catalogue is therefore likely to remain the highest-volume search slice on the platform, simply because the declared universe is so much larger than R290.

Brand strategy signals: broad ranges vs focused product bets

The editorial angle suggested by the corpus is about range strategy more than chemistry alone. The top brand, Daikin, holds 24.05% of all listed models with an average SCOP of 4.44 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Bosch, by contrast, has a much smaller 5.91% share but a higher average SCOP of 4.69 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Ariston sits at 4.29% share with 4.66 average SCOP, while Vaillant posts 1.96% share with 4.54 average SCOP (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation).

That combination suggests different catalogue shapes: some brands maximising breadth and segment coverage, others showing tighter but stronger average efficiency positions. The data does not allow those strategic profiles to be attributed numerically to R290-heavy versus R32-heavy brand groups, because no such grouped breakdown is included. So the strongest evidence-led reading is narrower: refrigerant choice is important, but the supplied data demonstrates brand scale and average efficiency much more clearly than it demonstrates brand refrigerant mix.

The same limitation applies to price tier. The corpus contains no price data, no MSRP fields, and no subsidy-adjusted ownership-cost fields. For cost work, the relevant next step is off-corpus tooling such as the payback calculator, sizing calculator, and country-level subsidy index, not a claim that R290 or R32 directly maps to cheaper or more premium offers in the EPREL snapshot.

What the model rankings say about performance, not just market presence

At whole-market level, declared average SCOP is 4.55 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). The energy-class distribution is led by A+++ at 23,466 listings, followed by A+ at 16,845 and A++ at 8,924 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). That tells buyers something basic but useful: the market is broad, and high label classes dominate numerically.

By type, air-water products are the single biggest category at 30,452 listings, ahead of air-air at 21,065 and heat-pump water heaters at 9,228 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). If the task is performance shopping rather than brand shopping, the more reliable workflow is to move from this article into the top SCOP leaderboard, the air-to-water SCOP leaderboard, or the ground-source SCOP leaderboard, because the supplied corpus does not contain refrigerant-specific top-model tables except an empty R290 result set (top_models / EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog).

So what does the 2026 refrigerant picture actually support? Three points. First, R32 remains the dominant declared refrigerant in the EPREL heat-pump universe at 13,935 listings, while R290 is still much smaller at 537 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Second, the biggest brands overall are not automatically the most efficient on average: Bosch at 4.69 SCOP and Ariston at 4.66 both outperform larger-volume Daikin at 4.44 and the Hitachi-branded Johnson Controls entity at 4.18 on average SCOP (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Third, the supplied registry extract is good enough to show market presence and declared refrigerant incidence, but not good enough to quantify every brand’s R290-versus-R32 split.

Sources

• Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API — snapshot date 2026-05-14
• EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation — snapshot date 2026-05-14
• IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes — snapshot date 2026-05-14
• EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog — snapshot date 2026-05-14
• (probe failed — data unavailable) — no snapshot date returned

Continue reading

• Heat pump refrigerants explained — A practical route into the trade-offs behind R290, R32 and older HFCs.
• How to compare SCOP properly across heat pumps — Why label efficiency needs context on type, climate and output temperature.
• Air-to-water vs air-to-air heat pumps — The catalogue split is large; this guide helps translate that into product choice.
• How to use EPREL data when shopping for a heat pump — A concise workflow for turning registry fields into a shortlist.