Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation and/or diffusion measurements are used to deduce fluid compositional information such as a chain-length distribution, which may then be used to predict the true boiling points (TBP) of a sample of a complex hydrocarbon fluid mixture, such as a crude oil. The NMR measurements may be considered a fast and portable proxy measurement in estimating fluid TBP distributions in lieu of distillation methods, or the simulated distillation by gas chromatography.