Scento Study: AI Answer Engines Add Unlisted Perfume Notes; Free Scento Perfume API Launches

Gemini added an unlisted note in 49% of answers. Scento's free Perfume API gives assistants note pyramids for 1,400+ perfumes, linked to scento.com.

PARIS, FRANCE, October 30, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A Scento study of 100 perfumes found that AI answer engines add notes that are not on a perfume's official list in a quarter to half of their answers. Gemini did so in 49% of its answers, against 24% for ChatGPT and 25% for Perplexity. Scento, Europe's largest perfume decant website, has also launched the Scento Perfume API, a free connector and REST API that gives AI assistants and developers note pyramids for 1,400+ designer and niche perfumes.

The study asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the same question about the top, heart and base notes of each perfume on Oct. 20, 2026. Each answer was compared with the perfume's official list, taken from the house's own page or, for nine perfumes, from two authorized retailers that agree. ChatGPT returned every official note in 82% of its answers, Perplexity in 78% and Gemini in 69%.

Answers about designer perfumes were 22 to 32 percentage points more likely than answers about niche perfumes to include a note not on the official list, depending on the engine. All three engines matched the official list exactly for 39 of the 99 perfumes they all answered. The study ran once, in English from a US location, and a note missing from the official list is not automatically wrong. The official lists came from the Perfume API, which stores a saved source page for every entry.

The Perfume API holds full note pyramids (top, heart and base notes) for 1,400+ designer and niche perfumes from 140+ houses. It also explains 400+ raw materials, such as orris and ambroxan, and maps every perfume onto Scento's own system of 14 scent families, from Sunlit Citrus to Oud Court.

Twelve read-only tools let an assistant draw on the Perfume API. They draw a perfume's portrait, set two to four scents side by side and find perfumes built on a similar structure. They also introduce a house or a raw material, match perfumes by the materials they share, and compose a small wardrobe or an edit for an occasion. Each answer carries a link to the matching scento.com page, available in 10 languages.

Setup takes one address and needs no account or key. In Claude, it is available in Claude's connectors directory, or can be added under Connectors by pasting the connector address, scento.com/mcp, as a custom connector. In ChatGPT, it is added in developer mode with authentication set to none. The same connector works in Cursor, VS Code and other clients that support the Model Context Protocol (MCP) over streamable HTTP. It is listed in the Official MCP Registry and on Glama, mcp.so and MCP Market. The same answers are served as a REST API described in OpenAPI 3.1, and setup instructions are published on the Scento developer page.

The Perfume API is read-only and keeps no account. It answers questions about perfumes, raw materials, houses and families.

Scento's free browser extension for perfume samples and prices has been available for Chrome since February. When a reader opens a perfume page on Fragrantica and Scento carries that scent, a small card shows its Scento sample price, with one link to the perfume on scento.com. The toolbar panel searches more than 1,000 designer and niche scents. The extension needs no account. It is available on the Chrome Web Store. Versions for Firefox, Opera, Safari and Edge are on the way, including Firefox for Android and Safari on iPhone.

The Perfume API and the extension bring Scento's try-before-the-bottle approach to the research stage, when people read about a fragrance before they wear it.

About Scento
Scento is Europe's largest perfume decant website, selling authentic designer and niche fragrances hand-decanted from original bottles into 2 ml, 5 ml and 8 ml vials, plus a 30 ml bottle decant on most perfumes. Founded in 2024 and headquartered at Place Vendôme in Paris, with an office in Berlin, Scento offers more than 1,000 scents from a sourcing roster of 200 designer and niche perfume houses. It counts more than 85,000 members across 27 European markets and ships with tracked delivery to 26 EU countries. Scento's annual revenue is €30 million to €35 million across its online and offline sales. Every bottle passes a 12-point intake check at Scento's ISO-certified facility before it is decanted.

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