FragDNA / Press kit
Press kit
FragDNA maps expensive fragrances to the cheaper ones claimed to smell like them. Everything below is generated from the live database when this page is built, so the numbers are current rather than remembered. If a figure here does not match the site, the site is right and this is a bug — tell us.
What we are
An independent comparison service. We sell nothing and ship nothing. We take affiliate commission from retailers, and a small number of shops pay for a clearly labelled sponsored slot that sits outside the ranking — payment never changes the order of results.
The numbers today
- 9,732 buyable dupe–to–original matches
- 1,833 designer and niche originals with at least one verified match
- 193 alternative fragrance houses
- 96 retailer catalogues monitored, 99,585 products scanned
- 204 perfumers credited, each with a page listing everything they composed
- A free 37-lesson perfumery course, fully translated into Arabic and French
- Every fragrance page published in 10 languages plus English
The rule that makes this different
We never invent a pairing. A dupe appears only when a source — the maker, the retailer's own listing, or documented community consensus — states which fragrance it was inspired by. We publish no percentage “match score”, because there is no honest way to calculate one; anyone showing you a precise similarity figure is guessing. Prices are compared per 100ml, so a 30ml decant cannot masquerade as beating a 100ml bottle.
Some of the biggest verified gaps
Per 100ml, full bottles only, samples and vials excluded:
| Original | Per 100ml | Cheapest verified match | Per 100ml | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasomatto Black Afgano | $650 | Lattafa Ameer Al Oudh | $15 | 43x |
| Creed Aventus for Her | $613 | Fragrance World Aventos | $15 | 41x |
| Creed Royal Oud | $590 | Lomani Intense Black | $15 | 40x |
| Tom Ford Cherry Smoke | $810 | Fragrance World Cherry Incense | $22 | 37x |
| Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540 Extrait de Parfum | $707 | Fragrance World B Rouge Extrait | $20 | 35x |
| Tom Ford Lost Cherry | $810 | Copycat Fragrances Lost Cherry | $23 | 35x |
Story angles
- What are you actually paying for? A 43x gap on the same stated DNA is a question about marketing, packaging and retail margin — not chemistry.
- Is it legal? Yes. A fragrance formula cannot be copyrighted in most countries. Copying a brand's name or bottle is counterfeiting, which is a different thing entirely, and we list none of it.
- The honesty problem in the dupe market. The category runs on invented match percentages and unverifiable savings. We built the opposite and it is harder than it looks.
Using our data
Journalists may quote our figures with attribution to FragDNA (fragdna.com). Happy to pull custom numbers — the biggest gaps in a category, what a specific shelf would cost, which originals are most copied — on request.
Contact
Marco, founder — marco@fragdna.com. Usually replies same day.
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