The critical temperature for soot formation in diffusion flames has been the subject of prior measurements by various investigators. More recently, the presence of soot precursor particles in a variety of diffusion flames has been recognized, and the Arrhenius reaction rate constants for their conversion to carbonaceous soot have been reported. In this work the prediction of the soot inception temperature using the recent carbonization reaction rate data is investigated when temperature increases linearly with time. The temperature gradient and the detection sensitivity to the initial soot formation are two factors accommodated by the method of prediction. A good correlation is obtained between the predicted soot inception temperatures and the values previously measured by several investigators for eight hydrocarbon fuels of diverse molecular structures. Both the temperature gradient and the detection sensitivity of the experiments to the initial soot formation are significant differences among the several test protocols. The ability to predict the soot inception temperatures in diffusion flames for the wide range hydrocarbon fuels by means of the Arrhenius rate data are discussed.