An open reference for what is actually inside a perfume.

Perfumes with their accord structure and note pyramids, the houses and designers behind them, individual notes traced across the catalog, and the perfumers credited with each composition.

Community ratings appear only once enough people have voted — below that threshold an average is noise, so it is omitted rather than shown as false social proof. The insights dashboard reads the whole catalog through countries of origin, dominant accords, perfumer output and release waves.

The catalog is assembled from a normalized import of publicly available fragrance data, combined with ratings and reviews contributed by the fragrance community. The material descriptions on note pages, though, are written by Essentia and are not part of that import.

It is not perfect and does not pretend to be. Entries can be incomplete, a note can be missing from a pyramid, an attribution can name the wrong perfumer, and a fragrance can be absent entirely. Corrections are genuinely welcome — write to contact@essentiadiscovery.com and the record gets fixed.

Essentia does not sell fragrances. It is not owned by, endorsed by or sponsored by any perfume house or commercial database. Where a perfume page links out to a shop, that link is an affiliate link and Essentia may earn a commission on a resulting purchase, at no extra cost to you.

No brand pays to appear in the catalog, to rank higher in a listing, or to have a note or accord attributed to it. Retailers are listed in a fixed order that does not depend on what they pay, and a shop link appears only when that shop actually carries the brand. Advertising and affiliate links cannot buy a position, a rating or an attribution.

Essentia is built and maintained by José Sanz, a software engineer based in Spain. It is an independent side project rather than a company — one person, evenings and weekends, with no team behind the byline.

That is also the honest reason replies take a few days rather than a few hours.