OlfactionaryThe State of Scent: What 12,703 Perfumes Are Really Made Of
We analyzed every perfume in Olfactionary's database, 12,703 fragrances spanning over a century of releases. Musk is the most common ingredient, showing up in 47.9% of them. Close behind, bergamot appears in 44.7%, and it's classified as an IFRA-restricted material, meaning its use is capped by industry safety standards, not banned outright. Full numbers, methodology, and free-to-embed charts below. Last recalculated September 12, 2026. These numbers move live with our catalogue.
Most common ingredients
Share of catalogued perfumes listing each material somewhere in their top, heart, or base notes.
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 material's 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.
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