PerfuMate › Straight answers
A marketing page is the worst place to learn what a tool cannot do, so this page says both. Every number here is counted from the data the app ships, at the moment this page was built. Where the answer is no, it says no.
PerfuMate's AI writes a real formula, brief to finished lines, in one run. The model cannot answer a build request in prose: it is forced to return a structured formula, every line pointing at a material on your own shelf with a percentage and a role, and the server discards the whole answer if any line names something you do not own. The shares are then normalised to exactly 100.00% in code, not by asking the model nicely.
One tap turns it into a working formula on the bench, weighed to a batch, and the dose is corrected for the strength of the bottle you actually own: if your only linalool is a 10% dilution, the weighed mass is multiplied up so the formula is true to what is in the bottle.
It refines. In AI Studio the conversation is kept, so "warmer, drop the aldehydes" re-runs against the previous answer, and the model's own open questions come back as one-tap prompts. From a formula already on the bench, it reads that formula, gives advice, and a second tap turns the advice into a complete revised version with every unchanged line kept at its share. If a returned formula fails the server's checks it is re-asked once with the exact faults listed, and it is never shipped unverified.
It rebuilds. On any community post, "Rebuild from my shelf with AI" hands that formula to the studio with the shelf-only constraint on, and what comes back is the same idea recomposed from bottles you actually own - deliberately not a clone, because a post names materials you may not have. The same door takes a PDF or a pasted formula. And the Scent Equalizer feeds the same engine: its slider arithmetic travels as evidence in the brief, so "more mossy at hour eight" is composed as one idea rather than patched line by line. Taken together this is probably the most advanced AI in any formulation tool today - probably, because nobody has measured every tool, and this page does not claim what it cannot check.
What it does not do: it never edits a formula in place, so a revision is always a new copy you look at before saving. It does not browse the internet. It cannot smell anything, has no feedback from your bench, and does not learn from your results. And it is not free - one run per request, including a question that returns no formula.
Yes. Formulating from the shelf you own is how PerfuMate works rather than a feature it has: the bench is built around your shelf. You add the bottles you actually own, picked from 1,581 described catalog materials, and every tool composes from that shelf rather than from an idealised list.
Three tools are explicitly shelf-bound. The Scent Equalizer turns "more mossy, less smoky" into concrete gram moves chosen only from materials you already own, and says when a bottle cannot reach the target instead of pretending. Substitutes searches your own shelf with role as a hard gate; where no single bottle fits it rebuilds the target from a pair or a trio with a fitted ratio, and it returns an honest no-match when nothing is close. And AI Studio is grounded on your real shelf: with shelf-only on it cannot name a material you do not own, and a returned formula that fails that check on the server is corrected or refused rather than shipped.
Getting the shelf in is the same door as formulas: import from PDF, CSV, TSV, JSON or pasted text, matched against 4,308 supplier and trade synonyms so the name your supplier printed finds the material we already describe. Stock, prices and suppliers ride along, and your shelf exports back out as one CSV at every tier, free included.
The arithmetic honours what is really in each bottle: every dose is corrected for the strength it is weighed at, so a line weighed from a 10% dilution counts for a tenth of the same gram taken neat, in the formula, the scent profile and the compliance checking alike. On any community post, one button rebuilds that formula from your own shelf with AI: the same idea recomposed from bottles you actually own, deliberately not a clone, because a post names materials you may not have. Room is the only ceiling here: the free tier holds an unlimited shelf with every tool included, and the one paid version that lifts the formula ceiling is a one-time purchase, not a subscription.
Yes, PerfuMate calculates dilutions everywhere a number appears. Every dose is corrected for the strength of the bottle it is actually weighed from, so a line weighed from a 10% solution counts for a tenth of the same gram taken neat, in the weighed formula, the scent profile, the drydown and the IFRA arithmetic alike.
The catalog helps you start: hundreds of materials carry a typical working dilution, so a bottle arrives with a sensible strength instead of a blank field. And the correction runs on what you own, not on an assumption: if your only linalool is a 10% dilution, the weighed mass is multiplied up so the formula stays true to what is in the bottle.
Concentration is a derived, adjustable quantity rather than a hand-recalculation: change the batch size or the target strength and the alcohol moves with it. Making a dilution is a first-class event in stock too: "dilution created" is one of the typed movements in the append-only ledger, so the new bottle's balance is tracked the same way a purchase is.
This matters because juggling dilutions at 1%, 10% and 50% is the most common way a spreadsheet goes quietly wrong: solvent maths is easy to get almost right. Here it is one calculation, and it is free at every tier; the paid version sells room to work, as a one-time purchase, not a subscription.
No. Nothing in PerfuMate reconstructs a formula from a lab report, and no page here has ever claimed it does.
What it has instead is a table of typical constituents for 588 of the 1,581 materials - roughly what is inside a natural, compiled from published compositions. That is what the compliance arithmetic reads: it is how one restricted molecule arriving from three different naturals gets counted once, across all of them.
It is an estimate and the app says so on every material page. If you have a real analysis from your supplier you can paste it in and it replaces the estimate for your bench, which is the honest version of this feature: your numbers beat ours.
291 limit rows drawn from the 51st Amendment, Category 4 - fine fragrance on skin. Limits are judged against the finished product at your chosen concentration, adjusted for the dilution each material is actually weighed at, and one molecule arriving from several naturals is summed once.
It has been checked against the official book, line by line. On 2026-08-16 the compiled IFRA Standards up to and including the 51st Amendment were downloaded from IFRA's own CDN - 263 standards over 726 pages - and every entry in the app was diffed against it by CAS number. 252 of 252 comparable entries matched the published Category 4 figure exactly, with 0 disagreements. Of the rest, 8 are SPECIFICATION standards that publish no concentration limit at all and are correctly blank here, and 31 are class standards and constituent-driven naturals that IFRA does not key to a single CAS. The script that does it ships in the repository, so the check can be run again against the next amendment rather than taken on trust.
Three things are worth saying plainly. It is Category 4 only: this is an app for fine fragrance, and a candle or a body lotion is a different category with different numbers. It moves when a new version ships, not on its own, so it names the amendment rather than implying it tracks the current one. And it is indicative: a working figure to compose against, not a certificate. Verify against the official IFRA documents before you sell. The app stamps every compliance sheet exactly that way.
The coverage is honest too. 196 materials in the catalog are flagged restricted and 156 of them reach a standard. For the rest the app says "restricted, check the current amendment" and gives no number, because a number invented from memory is worse than a blank.
No. 1,581 distinct rows with zero duplicate names. The 4,308 supplier synonyms are attached to materials, not counted as materials - they exist so that pasting "Phenylethyl alcohol" finds the row you already have.
The composition, since a count on its own says little: 423 naturals and 1,158 aroma chemicals, isolates and compounded bases. 1,153 carry a CAS number; the rest are mostly commercial bases, which have no single CAS to give. 588 carry an estimated constituent table. All 1,581 carry a written odor description and an impact figure, and 1,547 carry an olfactive family with percentage dominance - the other 34 are solvents and diluents, which have no smell to file. Every material resolves to a substantivity figure, 441 of them from a sourced value and the rest estimated from family and band.
You do not have to take any of this on trust: the whole catalog is free to browse without an account, one page per material. Open a few and count.
You own your formulas. Before you sign in, everything is in a local database on your own machine and nothing reaches us - you can work that way indefinitely. Signing in turns on cloud sync, so from that moment your bench is stored on our servers and kept in step across your devices.
We say that plainly because the alternative is worse. There is no separate switch: an account and a synced bench are the same thing. If you would rather nothing left the device, do not sign in - the community and AI Studio are what you give up.
Publishing is always a deliberate act and never a default, and your stock levels, costs, suppliers and private notes are never part of anything you publish. AI Studio sends your brief and the relevant part of your shelf to our server and on to Anthropic's API to compose the answer, and that content is used only to answer your request. We do not sell data and there are no third-party ad trackers anywhere in the app.
You can take everything with you at any time: a full backup exports as a ZIP holding backup.json, your library as CSV, every formula as both CSV and JSON, and your batches. You can delete your account and every piece of cloud data from inside the app.
PerfuMate predicts wear from the materials, not from the formula. Every material carries a strip life, an impact figure and an olfactive family with percentage dominance, and the drydown is those curves summed over 24 hours. Every predicted number now shows how sure it is, and that figure is computed rather than decorative.
What goes in. Strip life is how long a material lasts on a blotter, and it is the largest input: the drydown is exponential decay against it, and longevity is where the summed curve falls under the perception floor. Impact is evaporation flux times potency plus olfactory bloom. Every dose is corrected for the strength of the bottle it is actually weighed from, so a 10% dilution contributes a tenth.
Where the confidence comes from. A material's strip life is either a measured pin, which somebody timed on paper, or an estimate from its family and its tier. The app weighs how much of your formula's aromatic mass sits on measured values rather than estimates, and prints that next to the number: 40% when nothing is measured, up to 95% when everything is. It never prints 100, because this is still a model of a blend on skin. Tap the figure and it names the evidence.
What it cannot see. Skin chemistry, weather, how much you apply, and what the materials do to each other. Those are real and the model does not model them, which is most of the reason the ceiling is 95 and not higher.
And you can check it. After a wearing you can record what actually happened: how long it really lasted, and whether each phase came in weaker or stronger than predicted. The app then shows its own error on your own formulas. Nothing is adjusted automatically and none of it is uploaded; it is your record of how well the model does on your bench, which is the only version of that question worth answering.
Every material carries a written odour description and a potency rating out of 10, and the 1,547 that are odorants carry a place in 21 olfactive families and 214 family/sub-category pairs - 7,405 sub-category assignments across the catalog, about 4.7 per material - plus a top / heart / base band. On top of that: 1,153 CAS numbers, 4,308 supplier synonyms, 705 typical working dilutions, 441 substantivity figures and 588 estimated constituent tables.
| What each material carries | How many of the 1,581 have it |
|---|---|
| Odour description, in words | all 1,581 |
| Potency rating, out of 10 | all 1,581 |
| An olfactive family | 1,547 (34 are solvents, filed in a bucket that carries no smell) |
| Several families, in dominance order | 1,465 |
| Sub-categories under those families | 1,544 materials, 7,405 assignments |
| A top / heart / base band | 1,532 (the other 49 are solvents and carriers, outside the pyramid) |
| Supplier and trade synonyms | 1,436 materials, 4,308 names |
| CAS number | 1,153 |
| Typical working dilution | 705 |
| Substantivity in hours on a blotter, sourced and labelled an estimate | 441 |
| Estimated constituent table (what a natural is made of) | 588 |
| Marked as a UV filter, a job rather than a smell | 4 (they protect citrus from light) |
The percentages are not typed in by hand, and that is the point. The catalog stores the ORDER a material's families come in - which one leads, which is secondary - and one shared curve turns that order into shares: the primary family takes 6 parts, the second 3, the third 2, the rest 1 each, with a family's share split across its sub-categories. That same curve drives the profile chart, the pyramid, the colour of the material's swatch and the genre title, so all four agree because they are one calculation rather than four that happen to be maintained together. Inside a formula each material's share is then weighted by its dilution-adjusted aromatic mass, so a line weighed from a 10% solution counts for a tenth of the same gram taken neat.
One thing on a row is a job rather than a smell. 4 materials are marked as UV filters, and the reason is citrus. The terpenes carrying a cologne's whole opening are the first thing light takes apart: the colour drifts, the top note goes flat, and a hand-made eau that was beautiful in March is disappointing by May. A perfumer building one should be able to find those four without already knowing to search for "octinoxate", so the catalog says it beside the material instead of leaving it in a paragraph. It is not a facet, because a facet is an odour word and this is not an odour, and it is not inferred from the text either - a text match would also catch a material described as photostable, which resists light rather than absorbing it, and those are opposite claims.
Where the constituent tables matter. An estimated breakdown of what a natural is made of is not trivia: it is how a limit written against a single molecule gets enforced on the oil carrying it, and how the same restricted molecule arriving from three different naturals is added up instead of being missed three times.
Two honest limits. Every regulatory join - IFRA, GHS, allergens - is by CAS number, and a material can supply one through its constituents as well as its own row: of the 428 with no CAS of their own, 127 carry no constituent table either, and those are the ones that return "nothing known" rather than "nothing applies". The app does not dress that up as a clean bill. And there is no physical chemistry on a catalog row: no molecular weight, no vapour pressure, no logP, no boiling point. The behaviour in time comes from measured blotter readings and family, not from physical constants. Both are open work rather than solved problems.
PerfuMate carries a formula through to a batch you can ship. Exact scaling to the milligram, guided weighing at the bench, an append-only stock ledger that deducts as you make, batch records tied to the exact formula version and carrying supplier and lot number per line, maturation timelines, and the compliance paperwork. What it is NOT is an ERP: no team workspace, no supplier feed, no invoicing.
| From an approved formula to a shipped bottle | What the app does |
|---|---|
| Scale it to a real batch | Any batch size, exact to the milligram, off the same formula. Concentration is a derived, adjustable quantity, so alcohol moves with the batch rather than being recalculated by hand. |
| Weigh it | Bench mode, free. One material at a time in type readable at arm's length, the screen kept awake, four weighing orders, and the first overpour offers to rescale everything still to come instead of ruining the batch. |
| Know what is left | Stock is an append-only ledger, not a counter. Every movement is typed - purchase, batch use, dilution created, adjustment - and each bottle's balance is written in the same transaction as the movement. Logging a batch at the bench deducts what it consumed; the quick log deducts if you tick the box. |
| Prove what went into a batch | Batch records. Its own code, size, date and notes, pointing at the formula VERSION it was made from rather than at the formula in general. The printable record reads its lines back out of the stock ledger, so it names the actual bottles weighed, with supplier and lot number where you have them. A batch logged without a stock deduction has no per-line ledger, and the record says so rather than inventing one. One caveat worth knowing: ordinary edits change the current version in place, so snapshot before you carry on if you want that pointer to keep meaning something. |
| Let it rest properly | A dated maturation timeline per batch, derived from when it was made and how concentrated it is: shake and aerate, rest, chill and filter. On a phone it also reminds you as each milestone comes due. |
| Reorder before you run out | A shopping list plus a running-low view driven by a per-bottle threshold, so a material surfaces before a batch stops for it. |
| Produce the paperwork | Live IFRA checking while you compose, including the same restricted molecule arriving from several naturals at once; the EU allergen declaration; a print-ready INCI ingredient line; a 16-section safety data sheet draft; bottle labels; and a sale-ready pack. |
| Answer "which version was this batch?" | Snapshot a version and it records its parent, drawn as a tree with a diff, and each batch points at the version it came from. |
What is deliberately not here. There is no multi-user team workspace with roles and permissions: the bench belongs to one perfumer and syncs across their own devices. There is no live supplier catalog integration - supplier and price are fields you fill or import, not a feed, and nothing reorders for you. There is no accounting, invoicing or shipping. If you need a factory ERP, buy a factory ERP. PerfuMate covers formulation, compliance and the batch, which is the part an ERP usually does worst.
And the regulatory limits, which matter more. The IFRA data is Category 4 only - fine fragrance on skin - and the app puts every formula in that category: a lotion, a soap, a candle or anything for children sits in a different category with different limits, and this app will not compute them. It is fixed at the 51st Amendment and ships inside the app, so a new Amendment arrives as an app release. The GHS hazard set is indicative and unverified, reaching 369 of 1,581 materials. The safety data sheet is a draft that says so on its own face and needs sign-off by somebody competent in chemical safety classification; its flash point and transport class are estimated from the carrier solvent, not measured, so nothing should be shipped on them. There is no REACH, no CPNP or SCPN notification, no UFI or poison-centre submission, no Product Information File and no US state disclosure. None of this replaces a regulatory consultant, and the app never says it does.
What the production chain costs. Bench mode itself is free, as are the stock ledger, batches, the printable batch record, the EU allergen declaration and the INCI line - so a free account can weigh a batch, deduct what it used and print a record of it. Signing in - free - opens the rest: the safety data sheet draft, PDF export, compare and bench mode's smart weighing order. Two things need Pro, and they are separately gated: bottle labels, and the sale-ready pack that contains them. Free's only ceiling is room - the shelf and formula counts (the ladder is here). No tool sits behind the paid version.
PerfuMate does rather more than its front page says, which is a fair complaint. The short version: it will move a formula toward a smell you describe, find a replacement for a material from your own shelf, compare two formulas line by line, and keep every version you ever saved.
| If you want to | It does this |
|---|---|
| Move a formula toward a smell | The Scent Equalizer. Say "more mossy, less smoky" and it returns concrete gram moves, chosen from materials you actually own, on real mass arithmetic rather than a guess. Where a material cannot reach the target it says so instead of pretending. It applies as a new branch, so the original is untouched. |
| Replace a material you have run out of | Substitutes. The role is a hard gate, then softened sub-note vectors decide. Where no single bottle fits, it rebuilds the target from a pair or a trio with a fitted ratio. Each suggestion carries its match and its reason, and an honest no-match when there is nothing close. |
| See what changed between two versions | The evolution tree. Take a snapshot and it records its parent, drawn as a tree you can pan, with a diff against the parent, and restore or branch from any point. Snapshots are deliberate rather than automatic: an ordinary edit changes the version you are working in, which is why you take one before a direction you might want to come back from. |
| Put two formulas side by side | Compare. Shared lines aligned, two orderings, and the differences called out. |
| Know what it costs | Cost breakdown. Ranked by which lines carry the cost, naming the unpriced ones so an estimate is never quietly wrong. |
| Weigh it without losing your place | Making mode, and it is free. One ingredient at a time in large type, the screen stays awake, four weighing orders, and the first time you overpour it offers to rescale what is still to come instead of making you start again. |
None of these are AI. They are deterministic engines with tests behind them, which is why they can be trusted with a number. AI Studio sits beside them and is optional.
Yes, PerfuMate exports all of it, at every tier including free. One button writes a ZIP holding your whole bench in open formats - CSV that opens in any spreadsheet and JSON any text editor can read - and the same file imports back. Nothing you make is trapped here, and nothing about getting your own data out costs money.
| What leaves | What you get |
|---|---|
| The whole bench, as a ZIP | backup.json, a complete re-importable copy of everything; library/materials.csv and .json with your stock, prices, suppliers and each material's constituents; one folder per formula holding formula.json and every version as both vN.csv and vN.json, with the live one marked; and batches.csv. Free. |
| One formula, as a file | CSV for a spreadsheet, JSON for the whole structure, or a designed PDF formula sheet. CSV and JSON need nothing; the PDF needs a free account. |
| One formula, to paste | Tab-separated to the clipboard, so it lands in spreadsheet cells rather than one column, and pastes readably into a chat. Free. |
| Your shelf, as a spreadsheet | Every material you own as one CSV: stock, bottle sizes, dilutions, cost and supplier. Free. |
| The label text for a bottle | The EU allergen declaration and the print-ready INCI ingredient line, copied to the clipboard from the compliance panel. Free. |
| The safety data sheet | All 16 sections as a PDF draft to review, with your supplier details on it. Free, with an account. |
| A sale-ready bundle | Bottle labels sized for your bottle, and a pack zipping the formal formula sheet, the SDS, the labels and the latest batch record together. Pro - the only row on this table that is. |
Two things are worth being exact about. The backup is the whole history, not a snapshot: every saved version of every formula is in the ZIP, so a branch you abandoned in March is still there. And it is re-importable rather than just readable - importing backup.json restores the bench, which is what makes it a backup instead of a printout.
One thing deliberately does not travel: the passcode on a locked formula. A four or six digit code sitting in a file you email to yourself is not a lock, so a restored backup asks you to set it again. Everything else, including your private notes, costs and suppliers, is in the file.
The same doors work in reverse. PerfuMate imports formulas from PDF, CSV, TSV, JSON or text you simply paste, matches the material names against 4,308 supplier synonyms so "Phenylethyl alcohol" finds the row you already have, and takes several files or a ZIP of them at once. Whatever you can get out of your current tool, it will most likely read.
Nothing happens to the bench, because there is nothing to stop paying. Lifetime Unlimited is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. You buy it once and it stays.
The only thing that renews is AI Studio, and only because every run is a live bill to the model on the day it happens. Unused runs roll over up to a ceiling of two months of your plan, and whatever you are holding when a plan ends stays yours. Cancelling stops the next charge and nothing else.
Nothing is ever locked away from you: your formulas stay readable and exportable at every tier, including free - see what you can take with you. What a tier buys is room, how many materials and formulas you can hold. Every tool opens with a free account, with exactly two exceptions, separately gated and both Pro: bottle labels, and the sale-ready pack that contains them. The prices are here.
Start free and find out - there is no card to enter and nothing to cancel. But the honest version has a shape, so here it is, including the cases where the answer is do not pay yet.
| If you are | What to do |
|---|---|
| Starting out, with a handful of materials | Use it free. This is the case a spreadsheet serves worst, not best. A blank sheet cannot tell you that your bergamot is phototoxic, what oakmoss actually smells like, or how long it holds on a blotter. You get all 1,581 described materials without typing one of them, and the arithmetic is right before you know which parts of it matter. |
| Selling, or planning to | Go Unlimited. The allergen declaration and the INCI line are free, but the safety data sheet draft and the bottle labels are paperwork a bottle legally needs, and doing that by hand against PDF standards is where evenings go. |
| Juggling dilutions at 1%, 10% and 50% | Go Unlimited. This is the most common way a spreadsheet goes quietly wrong: solvent maths is easy to get almost right. Here every dose is corrected for the strength of the bottle you own. |
| Scaling a 5 g sketch to 500 g | Go Unlimited. Exact to the milligram in one step, with the weighing order worked out for you. |
| A hobbyist with a small shelf and no plans to sell | Stay on free, honestly. An open shelf and 3 formulas is a real bench, not a teaser, and every calculation is the one a paying user gets. Buy when you want more than 3 formulas at a time, not before. |
| Someone who avoids subscriptions | Then you are fine. Lifetime Unlimited is bought once and kept. Only AI Studio renews, it is optional, and the app is complete without ever buying a single run. |
Two things get assumed about PerfuMate that are not true, and both push people away from what would suit them. The bench is not a subscription: the one paid version is a one-time purchase, so there is no monthly fee to weigh and nothing to cancel. And the free tier is not a trial - it does not expire, it does not ask for a card, and it does not need an account at all. Open the bench and it is there.
It installs to a phone straight from the browser, which is where most people actually weigh: open the bench, then Add to Home Screen.
The Android app is in its last rounds of development and testing before it goes into Google Play. An iPhone version will follow after that, if there turns out to be demand for it.
In the meantime PerfuMate is not waiting for a store, and you do not have to either. It installs to a phone today, from the browser. Open the bench on the phone, then Add to Home Screen - on Android that is the browser menu, on an iPhone it is the Share button. It lands as an icon on the home screen and opens like any other app, without a store account, an install prompt or a download.
What you get that way is not a cut-down mobile version. It is the same bench, with the same catalog, the same arithmetic and the same compliance checking, and if you sign in it is the same bench you left open on a larger screen. Weighing happens at the bench, so the phone was the first screen this was designed for rather than an afterthought.
Which is also why a store listing is a distribution question and not a capability one. When the Android app lands it will be the same app in a place people look for apps.
PerfuMate is operated by Omer Siton, in Israel, and you can reach him at PerfuMate.Support@gmail.com. It is one perfumer who writes the app and uses it at his own bench: that is the whole team, it is said here rather than implied, and the same line is on the privacy policy, the terms and the refund policy.
What happens if it stops. This is the right question to ask a small product, so here is the mechanical answer rather than a promise. The bench runs on your own device: until you sign in, every formula is in a local database and the app works with no account and no network at all. Everything exports at every tier including free, in open formats, in one button: CSV any spreadsheet opens and JSON any text editor reads, with every saved version of every formula in the file. Nothing is in a proprietary format, nothing needs our server to be readable, and no export is behind a payment. If this site went dark tomorrow, a backup taken today would still open. The full list of what comes out.
It is worth knowing before you buy, in both directions. It means features asked for by people who actually make perfume tend to ship in days rather than quarters. It also means there is no support desk and no sales team, and a reply to a message comes from the person who wrote the code.
There are other things called Perfumate, and none of them are this one. There has been a perfume-finder website and an unrelated Android app of a similar name. PerfuMate is at perfumate.app and nowhere else: if a page, a listing or a download calling itself Perfumate is not on this domain, it is a different product and nothing to do with us.
What is not claimed: there is no company registration to point you at, no funding, no team, and no independent audit of the compliance data beyond the check described above, which you can re-run yourself from the repository. Treat the IFRA figures as a working set to compose against and verify against the official standards before you sell, exactly as the app stamps on every compliance sheet.
Still unanswered? Ask, and the answer comes from the person who wrote the code. Or open the bench and check any of this yourself: the catalog is free to browse without an account.