OlfactionaryThe State of Scent: What 25,680 Perfumes Are Really Made Of
We analyzed every perfume in Olfactionary's database, 25,680 fragrances spanning over a century of releases. Musk is the most common listed note, showing up in 33.7% of them. Close behind, bergamot appears as a note in 29.1%. A quick but important caveat: a note is what a perfume is described as smelling like, not a verified list of what's actually in the bottle. Real bergamot oil is IFRA-restricted for phototoxicity, but most fragrances listing a "bergamot" note use a synthetic, furanocoumarin-free version that isn't subject to that restriction, or another aromachemical entirely that just reads as bergamot. See the Methodology section below for the full explanation. Full numbers and free-to-embed charts below. Last recalculated October 9, 2026. These numbers move live with our catalogue.
Most common notes
Share of catalogued perfumes listing each note somewhere in their top, heart, or base notes. This is note frequency, not a breakdown of actual formula composition, see Methodology below.
Perfume releases by decade
How many catalogued perfumes launched each decade, the market's growth curve, decade over decade.
Where perfume brands come from
Catalogued brands by home country, top 8.
Note-frequency figures count a perfume once if a note name appears anywhere in its listed top, heart, or base notes, matched case-insensitively as a substring. So "Bergamot" also catches listings like "Calabrian Bergamot." IFRA status is drawn directly from our materials database, sourced from IFRA's own published standards documentation. Perfume, brand, and material data is continuously reviewed and expanded. Figures on this page are computed live from the current database on every page load, so they will drift slightly over time as our catalogue grows. That's expected and intentional, not an error.
Notes are not a lab breakdown of the formula. A listed note describes what a perfume is meant to smell like, decided by the brand or a reviewer, not a verified assay of what's actually in the bottle. Perfume formulas are trade secrets and are essentially never published, so no public database, including this one, can claim to show real ingredient composition. Two things follow from that: a "musk" note is a broad category standing in for any of dozens of musk aromachemicals (the animal-derived original is not used in modern perfumery at all), and a "bergamot" note very often means a synthetic, furanocoumarin-free (FCF) version bred specifically to avoid the photoxicity restriction, or another citrus aromachemical that simply reads as bergamot, not the phototoxic natural oil the IFRA restriction targets. So when this page says 44.7% of perfumes "list bergamot as a note," that is a true statement about note listings, and not a claim that 44.7% of perfumes contain the restricted material itself. We use the word "note" throughout this page for that reason, rather than "ingredient." Full explanation: Notes Are Not Ingredients.
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