Scentome

How Scentome works

Fragrances

Every fragrance on Scentome is sold by at least one of 27 shops in the US and Canada. Strengths of the same scent, such as Eau de Toilette and Parfum, are listed together, while a different line such as Sauvage Elixir has its own page. Notes are the ones the shop or brand lists for the fragrance.

Alternatives

An alternative is a fragrance people recommend as a stand-in for another, usually for less money. Scentome finds them in five places:

Each person counts once per pair, however often they mention it. Wording matters: "1:1" counts for more than "smells a bit like", and "nothing like it" counts against. Upvoted and recent comments count for more.

Each pair gets one of four verdicts:

Clone
At least six people across three threads, several of them calling it near-identical, plus a second kind of source such as a clone list, and very few people disagreeing.
Close dupe
At least three people across two threads recommend it as a substitute, and most people agree.
Inspired by
The maker says it was inspired by the original, or people mostly describe it as a take on it.
Similar
People compare the two, but not as a copy.

Fragrances from the same house are never listed as alternatives to each other. Each pair has a page with every comment and list entry behind it.

"Similar notes" on a fragrance page is a separate list: fragrances from other houses whose note lists overlap most with this one.

Which Reddit accounts count

Each account is checked against its Reddit history and what it has written in fragrance threads. An account is left out if it posts discount codes or promotions, pastes the same comment over and over, has the name of a house it recommends in its username, or recommends one house almost exclusively while posting almost nowhere else. An account that was less than 60 days old when it commented, or has under 20 karma, counts half.

Prices

Prices come from each shop's own site, for buyers in your country, in the currency the shop charges. Every price shown, on every page, was checked in the last half hour; a price that has not been checked since is not shown. Scentome checks the shops itself, every 20 minutes; looking at a page never sends a request to a shop. Sold-out sizes don't appear, and testers are labelled. Prices are sorted by price per millilitre. Some links to shops are affiliate links.

Updates

Prices are checked every 20 minutes. Four times a day, Scentome adds new fragrances and sizes from the shops, reads new Reddit posts and replies and the clone lists, and updates every verdict.