Dupe culture runs on one overheated word: identical. A video declares that the $25 bottle smells exactly like the $300 one, the comment section agrees, and nobody ever defines the claim. So we ran nine of the most repeated dupe pairings through the Fragrance Index similarity engine — and the results range from genuinely close to only loosely related, which is exactly the information the hype leaves out.
How the score is built
The engine doesn't watch reviews and doesn't check price tags. It compares the two fragrances' own scent profiles, three ways:
- Accord overlap. Do the compositions occupy the same accord territory — the broad strokes of the smell?
- Note-family coverage. Does the dupe cover the original's note families through the composition, or skip whole sections?
- Pyramid shape. Do both open, develop, and settle along a similar arc, or does the copy flatten the structure?
From that base we subtract an ingredient-authenticity discount. Dupes rebuild a smell out of substitute materials — that's the business model — so a rebuilt profile never earns the original's own score. It's also why the scale carries a hard ceiling of 97: no dupe is a replica, and the number won't pretend otherwise.
Two more honesty rules. Price is never in the score — the number describes scent similarity, not value, so a bargain earns no bonus points. And no score is published bare: every perfume page decomposes it into its accord, note-family, and pyramid parts, plus the discount. Worth saying plainly, too: this is profile math on composition data, not a blind wear test.
Nine claims, scored
The current board, dupe → original:
- 74 — Twist Perfumes Diamonds No. 92 → Versace Bright Crystal
- 74 — Twist Perfumes Stars No. 17 → Burberry Her
- 71 — Twist Perfumes Addicted No. 3 → YSL Black Opium
- 70 — Twist Perfumes Cupid No. 9 → Versace Eros
- 68 — Caffè Rosato → Montale Intense Cafe
- 66 — Club de Nuit Intense Man (Armaf) → Creed Aventus
- 64 — Khamrah (Lattafa) → Angels' Share (By Kilian)
- 57 — Nuancielo Everest → Creed Himalaya
- 50 — Lattafa Asad → Dior Sauvage Elixir
Twenty-four points separate the top of this list from the bottom — and every pair on it gets marketed with the same vocabulary. That gap is the reason to score these claims at all.
What 70 versus 50 actually means
A similarity score is a distance, not a grade. Here's how to read the tiers.
Low 70s: same genre. The two profiles share most of their accord territory, cover most of the same note families, and follow a similar arc. The four Twist pairs live here, and Caffè Rosato's 68 against Montale Intense Cafe is knocking on the same door. These are the claims that hold up — with real differences the decomposition will show you, but built from the same blueprint.
Mid 60s: aimed straight at the original, and it mostly shows. Club de Nuit Intense Man's 66 against Creed Aventus is the internet's most repeated dupe claim, and the number reads as "clearly chasing Aventus, clearly not Aventus." Khamrah's 64 against Angels' Share tells the same story: near the target, with whole stretches of the profile going their own way.
50s: same vibe, different fragrance. Nuancielo Everest at 57 and Lattafa Asad at 50 share a direction with Creed Himalaya and Dior Sauvage Elixir more than a profile. Bought as substitutes, they'll disappoint; bought as their own fragrances in a familiar style, the math is much kinder.
And why does nothing score 100? Because a dupe is a translation. The authenticity discount and the 97 ceiling exist so that even the best translation is never mistaken for the original text.
Every score above is decomposed on its perfume page — overlap, coverage, shape, discount, all visible. Browse the pairs, click into the breakdowns, and see where your favorite dupe claim actually lands in the Fragrance Index catalog.
