Best Essential Oils for Toothache: What the Evidence Ranks

If you rank essential oils for toothache by the evidence rather than by internet popularity, clove comes first, and first is not very far up. We sell clove, so that sounds convenient, but it comes with a catch: the clove research that exists studied dental products and gels, not our bottles, and we will not give a how-to for putting any essential oil on a tooth or gum. Toothache is a symptom with causes a dentist has to find.

Clove Essential Oil bottle

Clove Essential Oil

Our own Clove Essential Oil, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

From $10.99

Shop Now →

Step one is not an oil

The NHS says to book a dentist if toothache lasts more than 2 days, does not go away with painkillers, or comes with a high temperature, pain on biting, red gums, a bad taste or a swollen cheek or jaw. It sends people to A&E if swelling around the eye or neck, or in the mouth or neck, makes it hard to breathe, swallow or speak. Common causes it lists include decay, abscess, a cracked tooth, a loose filling and gum disease (NHS, toothache). Notice what the NHS suggests while you wait: ordinary painkillers, a pharmacy pain-relief gel for the mouth, soft foods. Its page does not mention clove oil at all.

That matters for how to read the ranking below. An oil that dulls a symptom for an hour does nothing about an abscess, and abscesses are not something to wait out. This ranking is a map of the research, not a menu.

The evidence ladder, oil by oil

OilWhat was studiedWhat it showedMain limit
Clove (eugenol)Homemade gel on healthy mucosa, 73 adults, 2006; systematic reviews of plant analgesics in dentistry, 2024 and 2025Gel scored lower needle pain than placebo; reviews list clove among agents with analgesic signalNot our oil, not toothache itself, preparations vary
Tea treeMouthwash and subgingival use, meta-analysis of randomised trials, 2024Plaque improvement not significant; subgingival adjunct showed pocket benefitPlaque and gum outcomes, not pain; "lack of strong evidence"
Formulated essential oil rinsesCommercial rinses, meta-analysis, 2025Plaque scores differ with and without alcoholA branded system, not a single oil; not pain
Peppermint, thyme, oreganoNothing for dental pain turned up in our searchesNo finding to reportAbsence of evidence in what we found

Clove: first by default

The cleanest clove experiment is a 2006 randomised, subject-blinded trial in the Journal of Dentistry by Alqareer et al.. On the buccal mucosa near the upper canine of 73 adult volunteers, a homemade clove gel, 20% benzocaine gel and a placebo for each were left for 5 minutes before two needle sticks. Both active gels scored lower pain than placebo on a 100 mm scale (p=0.005), with no difference between them. Read it for what it is: healthy tissue, a needle, a gel of unreported strength, one site, one session. It did not study an aching tooth.

Two newer reviews widen the frame. Reddy et al., Int J Dent, 2025 reviewed 21 studies of plant-derived analgesics in dentistry and listed clove oil (eugenol) among the agents with the strongest analgesic properties, alongside curcumin and capsaicin, while calling for standardised preparations and larger trials. Barrera et al., Scientific Reports, 2024 pooled 62 randomised trials of herbal extracts in orofacial pain, naming clove among them; its pooled estimates mix many plants and many pain conditions, so no number in it belongs to clove alone. Both are broad sweeps that we cannot turn into a statement about our oil.

Now the harm side, because it is the same dental literature. The UK product information for a 100% clove oil dental solution sold for temporary toothache says eugenol can irritate skin and mucous membranes, repeated use may cause gum damage, patients may become sensitised, it is contraindicated for people hypersensitive to clove oil, eugenol or Peru balsam, and it is not recommended under 2 years. The labelled use is small amounts in a cavity, with a recommendation to seek dental attention as soon as possible (emc, Clove Oil BP SmPC). A packaged dental product with a professional label is a different thing from a bottle of aromatic oil, which is why we do not borrow its directions.

Tea tree: studied for gums, with a swallowing warning

A 2024 meta-analysis by Zhang et al., Oral Health and Preventive Dentistry covered 11 randomised studies. For tea tree mouthwash against placebo as an add-on to daily oral hygiene, the plaque improvement was not significant. For subgingival use alongside professional scaling and root planing, pocket depth and attachment level favoured tea tree at three and six months, and an unpleasant taste was reported in three of four such studies. The authors found a lack of strong evidence. None of this is toothache. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health states that tea tree oil should not be swallowed and that swallowing can cause confusion, unsteadiness, inability to walk and coma; it says the same for tea tree mouthrinses (NCCIH, tea tree oil). We do not sell tea tree, so see clove oil vs tea tree oil for the direct comparison.

Essential oil rinses: engineered, and not about pain

A 2025 meta-analysis by van Swaaij et al. of seven papers found that an essential oil mouthwash containing alcohol outperformed an alcohol-free version on plaque scores (difference in means 0.40 in non-brushing studies, 0.05 in brushing studies) with small to moderate certainty. The lesson is not to buy alcohol. It is that formulation moves results, and that a rinse with a Seal behind it is a different thing from an oil.

What this means if you are choosing

Reasoning from the sources, three conclusions follow. First, no essential oil has strong trial evidence for the pain of an aching tooth, and the best-supported one, clove, has trial evidence for needle discomfort on healthy tissue and a risk label from its own dental product. Second, the oils with the most plaque and gum data (formulated rinses, tea tree) were tested for those outcomes, not for pain. Third, the question that gets you out of pain is not "which oil" but "which tooth and why", and only an examination or X-ray answers it.

When a bottle of any strong oil is in the house, keep the arithmetic in mind. In a 2005 report in the European Journal of Pediatrics, Janes et al. described fulminant liver failure in a 15-month-old after swallowing 10 ml of clove oil. Our smallest bottle, 0.5 oz, holds about 14.8 ml. Clove oil is also about 60 to 90 percent eugenol according to the Tennessee Poison Center; our published GC-MS report for the bud oil lists 73.57% eugenol.

Who we would send where

What we do offer is aromatic oil, sold undiluted, with the bud oil having a published GC-MS report. See clove oil and toothache and clove oil vs benzocaine for the longer evidence discussions, or clove vs oregano if oregano is the other bottle on your shelf.

Clove Essential Oil bottle

Clove Essential Oil

Clove Essential Oil from our own shop, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

From $10.99

Shop Now →

Sources & Further Reading