Terms of use

Undernotes is an informational library of independent perfume houses and their fragrances. It is free to use, has no accounts and asks nothing of you. Nothing is sold here: every buy link takes you to the maker’s own site or to a store we do not control, and any purchase is between you and them, on their terms. No house pays to be listed and no link earns us a commission.

Prices, sizes, concentrations and availability are copied from the makers’ websites by a crawler that works through the library on a rota, so a house is typically re-read every month or two. Between visits those details can be out of date, and a maker can change or discontinue a product at any time. Check the maker’s page before you buy. Notes are taken from the maker’s own text. Olfactive families are the library’s classification of those notes, and both can be incomplete or, occasionally, wrong; tell us and we will fix them.

Undernotes is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any house listed here, nor by the designer houses named in the comparisons. Those names are used only to identify the fragrance being compared; the alternatives are our own selection.

Fragrance descriptions, house stories and product photographs belong to the makers who wrote and took them. They are reproduced here for reference, credited and linked to the page they came from, and the description and story on each page say plainly whether the words are the maker’s or the library’s. The site’s own text (its summaries, journal articles, comparisons and smell-like pages) and its own artwork belong to Undernotes. You are welcome to link to any page and to quote briefly with a link back; ask before reusing the site’s text or artwork in bulk.

A maker who wants anything on their pages corrected, replaced or removed can ask through the form, as the about page explains, and the request is honoured.

When you suggest a house, you allow us to use what you wrote to look into it and, if it qualifies, to list it. When you type a phrase into the smell-like box, you agree that we may keep the phrase and publish a page built from it, as the privacy policy describes. Send only what you have the right to share, and nothing about another person.

Use the site as a reader would. In particular:

• Do not crawl or scrape it in a way that harms it. Automated access should respect robots.txt, which keeps crawlers out of the JSON endpoints, and should go gently: this is a small server.
• Do not misuse the free-text boxes. No unlawful, hateful or threatening content, no personal data about other people, and no attempts to make the site publish something it should not.
• Do not try to get around the rate limits on the suggestion form or the smell-like box, or run up the site’s costs on purpose.
• Do not use the site to harass or misrepresent any maker listed in it.

We may remove anything submitted in breach of these rules and may refuse further requests from a source that abuses the service.

The site is provided as it is, free of charge. We try to keep it accurate and available, but we make no promise that it is complete, correct, current or uninterrupted. We are not responsible for the makers’ or stores’ products, websites, prices or conduct, or for anything you buy after following a link from here. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss or damage arising from your use of the site or from reliance on anything in it. Nothing here removes rights you have under the law where you live that cannot be excluded by agreement.

These terms may change. The date at the top is the date of the current version, and using the site after a change means you accept the new terms. There is no account or subscription to cancel: if you do not agree, simply stop using the site.

Questions about these terms go through the suggestion form: the form asks for a house name, so write “terms” there and put your question in the message.