How We Make Our Verdicts

The Verdict System

Every perfume on ScentVerdict is classified by character - not scored, not ranked, but given a verdict that tells you what kind of fragrance it actually is.

What Goes Into a Verdict

Each verdict considers multiple dimensions of a fragrance, not just "does it smell nice":

• Composition quality - How well the notes work together, the skill of the blending, the overall artistry
• Performance - Longevity and projection in real-world conditions, not laboratory tests
• Versatility - How many occasions and settings the fragrance works in
• Value - Whether the quality justifies the price, at any price point
• Character - The overall personality and boldness of the fragrance

How We Compare Prices

Every perfume page shows prices from verified retailers, sorted lowest first, with shops that deliver to you ranked ahead of shops abroad. This is non-negotiable.

1. 1 Cheapest always wins. The lowest-price option always appears at the top, regardless of which retailer pays us a higher commission.
2. 2 Verified retailers only. We only list retailers we've vetted for authenticity. In a market with over three billion pounds in counterfeits, knowing your retailer is legitimate matters.
3. 3 Full affiliate disclosure. We earn commissions when you buy through our links. You never pay more - commissions come from the retailer.

Prices in other currencies

We show every price in the currency the shop charges. Where that is not your currency, we add an estimate beside it, such as "$120 (about £94, ECB rate 25 Sep)". It is only a guide: your bank or card sets the rate you actually pay. We never rank offers or pick the cheapest on an estimate, so a shop that prices in another currency is listed after the shops that price in yours.

Currency estimates use the European Central Bank's euro reference rates, published each working day. The UAE dirham and the Saudi riyal are fixed to the US dollar, so we work them out from the ECB's dollar rate. For a currency the ECB does not publish we use Frankfurter, and the estimate says so. If a rate is more than a week old, we show the shop's price only.

Import charges

A shop outside your country's customs area may send your order through customs. You may then have to pay import duty, import VAT or sales tax, and a handling fee to the carrier before it is delivered. The amount depends on what you order, its value, where it ships from and where you live, so we cannot work it out for you, and it is not in the prices we show. Some shops pay these charges for you: where a shop has told us it does, its offer says "duties included". Check the shop's delivery page before you buy.

Plus sales tax

UK and European shops include VAT in their prices; US shops show prices before sales tax, which is added at checkout at your state's rate. A price marked with an asterisk (*) is a before-tax price, and we never rank it against prices that already include tax. Sales tax applies only when you buy from a shop in your own country: a US shop delivering to you abroad charges no US sales tax, so its offer says "import charges may apply" instead.

How We Find Similar Perfumes

Every perfume on ScentVerdict carries a 0-100 similarity score against the perfumes most like it. The score is based on what's actually in the bottle - the notes and the overall character - not on brand marketing or how the perfume is sold.

Similarity scores are our estimate of how alike two perfumes may smell. We calculate them from published notes, using our own scores for each note's scent character and relative weight. The percentage is a position on our similarity scale, not a measured percentage of shared smell, and it does not come from smelling the two side by side.

Every note we publish is scored on 34 facets. A perfume becomes the weighted blend of its notes, and two perfumes are compared on how far apart those two sets of numbers sit. An axis where a note's character is broad counts for less than one where it is precise, so a vague match on a wide trait does not carry the same weight as a close one on a narrow trait. The result goes through a curve, which is why published scores sit in a familiar range rather than bunching at the top.

What the score range means

• 90 and above - near-identical. Reformulations, flankers, clones.
• 80-89 - clearly the same territory, with differences you would notice.
• Below 80 - a family resemblance. Adjacent rather than alike, and individual pages set their own floor for what is worth showing.

On the Compare page we show exactly which notes are shared and which aren't, so the score isn't a black box. If a number looks off, the breakdown is right there.

Data Sources

Every verdict is drawn from a broad survey of public sources: thousands of community reviews on the major fragrance databases, brand information from official product listings, and discussion across enthusiast communities. We cross-reference these against each other, and every verdict is editor-reviewed before publishing. Prices are pulled from retailer feeds and verified for accuracy.

How the verdicts are written

We use AI to do the aggregation - reading across those thousands of wearer impressions and distilling them into one clear view. It is the engine, not the author: the opinions in a verdict are the community's, structured and weighed, never invented.

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