PerfuMate › Compare

Perfume formulation software, compared

An independent perfumer in 2026 keeps formulas in one of six places: a spreadsheet, Formulair on Apple devices, Formulab Pro, ScentLabs, an industry suite like Formpak, or PerfuMate. The honest comparison is shorter than the marketing: a spreadsheet gives total control and no safety net; Formulair and Formulab are capable workspaces where compliance is a field you maintain; ScentLabs keeps its IFRA tools, pyramid and export on the paid plan; Formpak is built and priced for companies; and PerfuMate is the one where the free tier already includes the described materials database, the indicative IFRA checking and every other tool, in any browser. The table says the same thing in facts; every competitor claim was verified against their own published pages on 2026-08-17.

	PerfuMate	Spreadsheets	Formulair	Formulab Pro	ScentLabs	Formpak
What it is	Formulation software for independent perfumers, in the browser	General-purpose calculation grid (Excel, Google Sheets)	Formulation app for iPhone, iPad and Mac	Perfumery workspace app for perfumers and indie creators	Web platform for creating, managing and buying or selling formulas	Formulation and regulatory suite for fragrance and cosmetics companies
Ships with a materials database	Yes - 1,581 materials, each DESCRIBED and classified: odor description, olfactive families with percentage dominance, impact and substantivity, a CAS number where one exists (1,153; a compounded base has none to give), plus estimated constituent tables for 588	No - every material is typed in by hand	No - raw materials and their data are entered by the user	A repository of 20,000+ material entries with one-tap detail auto-fill	A material library is included; its size is not stated	Industry ingredient libraries
IFRA compliance	Checked live while composing, on every tier including free - and it counts one molecule arriving from several naturals at once. Category 4 (fine fragrance on skin), 51st Amendment, indicative: verify against the official standards before you sell	By hand, if you build the formulas yourself	A field you fill in per material; the FAQ notes conformity is your own responsibility	Per-material limit auto-fill and safety alerts on the finished product	IFRA tools are on the Pro plan, not the free one	Automated IFRA, allergen and GHS/CLP calculations, plus IFRA certificates
Formula work	Milligram scaling, version history with diffs and branching, batch and maceration tracking, dilution management, substitute suggestions from your own shelf	Whatever you build - and every formula is one typo from silently wrong	Scaling engine, a five-level pyramid by substantivity, dilution tracking	Scaling, batch trials with versions, side-by-side compare, reuse a formula as an accord	Smart calculator, auto-scaling, version control, cost and margin analysis; the pyramid is a Pro feature	Multi-level formulations with versions and full traceability
Import and export	Import from PDF, CSV, TSV or pasted text; export PDF, EU allergen declaration, INCI label, GHS SDS draft	CSV in and out, by hand	Export PDF, Markdown, CSV and TSV; CSV import is experimental	Excel import with mapping; PDF export and Excel backup	Formula export is a Pro feature	SDS and labels in 30 languages, technical documents
Runs on	Any browser, desktop or phone; installs as an app; native Android next	Anywhere Office or Sheets runs	iOS 13+ and macOS 10.15+ only	Android, iPhone, iPad, Mac and Windows	Any browser	Not stated publicly
Price to start	PerfuMate: free with no expiry - an UNLIMITED shelf and 3 formulas, with the whole catalog, the IFRA checking, the allergen and INCI label text, the scent profile and the drydown. A free account opens every tool; only bottle labels, the pack that contains them and colour PDF themes are paid. PerfuMate has one paid version, Lifetime Unlimited, a ONE-TIME purchase bought once and kept, never a subscription	Spreadsheet: an Office licence, or free with Google Sheets	Formulair: free up to 25 raw materials or formulas; paid full version by in-app purchase	Formulab Pro: free to download and try; a Formulab subscription unlocks full features (price not stated on the store page)	ScentLabs: free up to 25 materials and 10 formulas, without IFRA tools, pyramid or export; ScentLabs Pro is $9.95/month or $49.99 lifetime	Formpak: no public pricing - demo and sales contact

One-on-one, from the same verified rows: PerfuMate vs a spreadsheet · vs Formulair · vs Formulab Pro · vs ScentLabs · vs Formpak.

Where each one is the right answer

A spreadsheet is right when you want total control and zero new tools. The cost is that everything - percentages, dilution math, allergen totals, versioning - is yours to build and yours to break, and a mistyped cell fails silently.
Formulair is a genuinely well-made native app if you live on iPhone, iPad and Mac and prefer to build your own materials library. It arrives empty by design: no preloaded materials and no IFRA data, and its own FAQ notes that conformity to IFRA standards is your responsibility to track. Free up to 25 raw materials or formulas.
Formulab Pro is a serious cross-platform workspace with the largest raw repository here - 20,000+ material entries with one-tap detail auto-fill - plus batch trials and Excel import. The materials arrive as entries to fill rather than described profiles, and full features sit behind a subscription whose price the store page does not state.
ScentLabs is the one with a formula marketplace: buying and selling formulas is its distinctive idea, alongside stock control and a smart calculator. On the free plan you get 25 materials and 10 formulas but not the IFRA tools, the pyramid or export - those are Pro, at $9.95 a month or $49.99 lifetime.
Formpak is the serious answer for fragrance and cosmetics companies: automated IFRA, allergen and GHS/CLP calculations, safety data sheets and labels in 30 languages, IFRA certificates, and the traceability an audit expects. It is sold to teams through demos and sales contact, with no public pricing.
PerfuMate is for the independent perfumer who wants the bench already set, and it is the only tool here whose FREE tier includes both the database and the compliance checking: 1,581 materials that arrive described - CAS, odor, families with dominance, impact, substantivity, estimated constituent tables for 588 - not as blank rows to fill; indicative IFRA checking while composing, counting the same molecule arriving from several naturals at once; milligram scaling, version history with branching, batch and maceration tracking; and import straight from a PDF. Paid tiers are one-time purchases, not subscriptions. Open the bench or see what it does.

Sources

Competitor facts were read from their own published pages on 2026-08-17: the Formulair FAQ (platforms, free tier, no preloaded IFRA data, export formats), the Formulab Pro store page (20,000+ repository, IFRA auto-fill, platforms, subscription), ScentLabs (plans, free-tier limits, Pro features and prices), and the Formpak fragrance & cosmetics page (regulatory automation, documents in 30 languages, demo-based sales). PerfuMate's numbers are computed from the same material seed the app ships. Something wrong or out of date? Tell us and it will be corrected.