AltScent Report · September 2026 · Second edition

The Dupe Report: what 72,507 scored perfume pairs say about cheap fragrance

AltScent holds a similarity score for 72,507 perfume pairs across 14,619 originals. This report looks at the 2,358 originals priced $60 and up — designer and niche, the part of the market where "dupe" means something — and their single closest match. Clones nail the dry-down and miss the opening. Niche is easier to copy than designer. And paying more for the dupe buys you nothing.

First published 21 August 2026 · Expanded 3 September 2026 with a 24× larger sample · Analysis by AltScent · Figures may be reproduced with attribution

• $120 → $30. The median designer perfume against its closest match: a 73% saving, or $85 a bottle.
• 51% of designer and niche originals have a match scoring 85 or better; 12% score 90+. Only 0.5% have no cheaper match at all.
• 45% have a top match at a quarter of the price or less.
• 84% of all pairs are closer in the dry-down than in the opening — 92% for niche originals.
• 24 minutes. What you give up in wear: 5.8 hours against the original's 6.2, at 3.4× the hours per dollar.
• $25–40 is where the closest matches live. Dupes over $60 score worst.

1. The price of a copy

Designer and niche originals (estimated price $60+) and their rank-1 match. Medians, not means — a $470 Creed would drag an average.

45.4% of these originals have a top match at a quarter of the price or less. Across the whole set, the top matches undercut their originals by a combined $258,896 — a number that only exists because someone priced 2,358 bottles at $120 and someone else priced them at $30.

Below $60 the word stops meaning anything: for mass-market originals the median "dupe" costs exactly what the original does. A $25 body mist has no cheaper version; it has a similar one. That is why AltScent's ranking treats price as a filter, not a score.

2. Niche is easier to copy than designer

Share of originals with an 85+ match, and the median saving, by price tier.

3. Clones nail the dry-down and miss the opening

Every pair carries two scores: how close the first fifteen minutes are, and how close the skin scent is hours later. Bars start at 70, not zero — the whole field sits between 78 and 84.

4. What you actually give up

Community-reported performance for the 2,356 designer and niche originals where both sides have it.

The average cost of the copy is 24 minutes of wear. 37% of top matches last as long as the original or longer; 31% fall at least an hour short. Projection is a wash. Per dollar, the median top match delivers 3.4× the hours.

5. Paying more for the dupe buys nothing

Designer and niche originals, grouped by what their closest match costs.

The $25–40 band is where the closest matches live, and it is also where most of them are. Above $60 the "dupe" is usually another designer perfume that happens to be similar — and those score worse than the clone houses do. The August price study found the same thing on a smaller sample; it holds at 24× the size.

6. The clone houses

Who holds the top-match spot most often, across all 14,619 originals at every price.

7. Which designer houses get copied best — and worst

Designer and niche houses with at least five originals in the data, by how well their closest matches score.

Parfums de Marly is the most cloned house in the niche tier and the most successfully cloned — every one of its thirteen originals has a match at 85 or better, at an average of $29 against $190. Guerlain, with a century of complex, powdery compositions, is the house the clone market has least figured out. It was the hardest house in August too.

8. The ten popular perfumes nobody has cloned well

Originals with 8,000+ community ratings whose best match is furthest away.

And the ten that have been copied almost perfectly — 8,000+ ratings on the original, 300+ on the match.

Montale and Mancera share an owner, so the first row is less a clone than a sibling.

9. The biggest savings in the catalogue

Top matches scoring 88+ for originals with 3,000+ ratings, by dollars saved. Prices are estimates.

10. The workhorse clones

Some cheap bottles are the closest match to several expensive ones at once. Designer and niche originals only.

If you buy one $18 bottle to cover the most ground, the data says it is Fragrance World Ace.

11. The dupe you read about may not exist any more

2,295 perfumes in the catalogue are discontinued. 9.4% of all 72,507 match slots — and 5.9% of top spots — point at a bottle no retailer stocks. Blog lists and forum threads are full of them. AltScent now ranks a discontinued bottle below any that can be bought.

12. Smaller findings

• Masculine originals are the easiest to copy: 59% have an 85+ match, against 46% of feminine originals. Unisex originals are the priciest ($167 on average) and save the most (75%).
• The copy is newer than the original by 1.2 years on average — the clone market runs about a year behind.
• Half of everything is a dupe of something: 51.7% of all 14,619 originals, at every price, have a match at 85 or better.