Most fragrance dupe sites will tell you every cheap perfume is a 95% match for something expensive. We publish the ones that fail.
Decoded Scents is a database of fragrance dupes with a similarity floor. If an alternative does not reach 85% similarity to the original, it does not go on the site — and when we research a fragrance and nothing qualifies, we publish that too. Those pages say so plainly instead of quietly filling the gap with a weak match.
The differentiator is refusal. Anyone can list ten alternatives to Creed Aventus. The useful question is which ones we rejected, and why. That is the part no competitor copies, because most of them have no floor to fail against.
We buy what we test
Most entries on this site have been worn side by side on skin — the original on one wrist, the alternative on the other, across a full day rather than a thirty-second pass at a counter. Where something looks doubtful, we buy it specifically to settle the question.
Everything we test, we pay for. Sometimes that is a decant, sometimes a full bottle. It is never a press sample, because we don't accept free product from fragrance houses — see below for why.
We are not going to pretend that covers all 205 entries. Where we have not worn both ourselves, a score rests on research and on the testimony of people who own both. That is the weaker of the two kinds of evidence, and it is the reason we keep buying.
Who runs this
Decoded Scents is written and maintained by Carlos, working from Florida. One person, buying his own bottles and decants, publishing what clears the 85% floor and what doesn't. There is no team, no sponsor and no house sending product.
How a match gets scored
Every percentage comes from cross-referencing note pyramids against Fragrantica and each brand's own published material, then weighting what people who own both fragrances actually report. Sources are ranked in that order: brand-official first, then Fragrantica, Parfumo and Basenotes, then enthusiast communities, then retailers last.
Note pyramids are marketing copy, not formulas. Two fragrances can share almost every listed note and still smell different — so owner-of-both testimony outranks note overlap when the two disagree. One entry on this site shares 25 of 26 published notes with its original and still sits at 85%, because everyone who owns both reports it thin.
What disqualifies an entry
- Similarity below 85%
- A claim we cannot trace to a real, findable source
- Evidence pinned to the wrong version of a fragrance — a flanker or a different concentration is a different product
- A note list that does not match the product's own published pyramid
We remove things after publishing them
In August 2026 a note-level audit of the whole database found twelve products whose listed notes had been reshaped toward whatever original they were filed under. Fourteen records were removed, ten had their notes corrected against sources, and the database shrank from 219 verified dupes to 205.
That is the trade this site is built to make. A smaller database that is true beats a larger one that is not.
What we don't do
- We don't accept free product from fragrance houses. This site assigns a number that drives affiliate revenue. Taking product from the same brands would create two financial relationships pointing the same direction.
- We don't invent links. An entry with no verified retailer ships with a Fragrantica reference only, rather than a search URL dressed up as a product page.
- We don't hide what a dupe gets wrong. Every entry names the gap, not just the resemblance.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we want to know — particularly if you own both fragrances in a comparison and our reading does not match yours. That is the evidence we weight highest. Write to decodedscents@gmail.com.
How this site makes money
Some links here are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission when you buy through them. It costs you nothing extra and it does not affect a similarity score — the scores are set before links are attached, and entries with no affiliate relationship at all are ranked the same way. The full terms are on our affiliate disclosure page.
Last updated 8 August 2026.