Enagic Co., Ltd.
A genuine 52-year Japanese appliance manufacturer with ISO 13485 certification and no sign-up fee, no autoship and no quota - selling a $4,710 machine that is itself the price of admission, on a plan where a new distributor keeps one of eight commission points.
You join by buying a $4,710 appliance, you keep 1 of the 8 commission points on the first sales you make, and the company’s own 2024 disclosure puts the median annual gross for the 49.90% of the field at rank 1A at $466.30.
Can you actually make money with Enagic?
No. Not on the company's own published numbers. Rank 1A holds 17,904 distributors, 49.90% of the US field, with a median annual gross of $466.30 in the 2024 disclosure, against a machine costing $4,710 to join. Recovering the appliance at that median rate takes just over ten years of gross income, with expenses excluded from the figure. The disclosure says so itself, and says they can be significant.
The plan compounds it at the point of entry. A new distributor keeps 1 of the 8 commission points on a sale they personally made - $235 at the base rate, $290 with the Special Point uplift - while the other seven, $1,645 to $2,030, cascade up a sponsorship line they did not build. The identical transaction pays up to $1,880 to a 6A holding a full position. Ten to twelve personal sales gets your own money back, each one a household persuaded to spend $4,710 or more.
Ranks 1A through 4A carry medians of $466.30, $1,278.72, $2,264.94 and $4,066.01, so roughly 85.5% of the field sits at a rank whose median annual gross is below the price of one SD501. Commissions also decay: no direct sale in six months halves them under D0, and one to two years without one removes them under FA0. Selling water from your own machine is prohibited outright, donations included, which closes the obvious non-recruitment use of the asset.
What is genuinely true in its favor: a 52-year Japanese manufacturer with its own factories and published ISO 9001, 13485 and 14001 certificates. No sign-up fee, no autoship, no monthly qualification, no inventory loading, so a distributor who stops selling stops spending. Commission is paid only on a machine that left a factory and went into a house. Sales accumulate rather than resetting, and there is a 10-day cooling-off with a 90% buyback on inventory returned within 90 days of cancellation.
the Leveluk SD501 - there is no sign-up fee because the machine is the fee; the K8 is $5,890 and the cheapest route in, the JRIV, is $3,530
- A way in that is not a $4,710 appliance. The absence of a sign-up fee is presentational while the machine is the ticket, and $3,530 for the four-plate JRIV is the floor rather than a trial.
- A commission split that does not send 7 of 8 points up the line on a sale the newest distributor made themselves. An eight-times spread on the identical machine to the identical customer is decided by position rather than by selling.
- Rank advancement measured in something other than cumulative group units. 6A needs 101 of them, and every rank above it is defined by how many 6As have been developed underneath you.
- Permission to sell the water. Charging for it, donating it and charging for electricity or usage are all banned, which removes the one obvious way to earn from the appliance without enrolling anybody.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL BUT - one national regulator has ruled on the structure. Bhutan’s Office of Consumer Protection categorised the operation as a pyramid scheme under Rule 38 of the Consumer Protection Rules and Regulations in April 2022 and directed distributors to stop recruiting; that is a regulator’s administrative determination and cease order in a small jurisdiction, not a court judgment, and it binds nowhere else. On the claims track: an FTC cease-and-desist demand to Enagic USA on 9 December 2021 over distributor COVID-19 prevention claims - no complaint, no fine, no finding of liability, and the company complied; inclusion among 1,100-plus recipients of the FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses on 26 October 2021, which is a mass notice and not an allegation; self-regulatory findings from BBB National Programs’ DSSRC in consecutive years (#216-2025 closed administratively 14 May 2025, #258-2026 decided 15 May 2026), which are industry self-regulation and not government action; a Malaysian Ministry of Health crackdown in July 2016 aimed at bottled-water sellers and claim-makers, with no finding located against the local company; and a $27.6 million TCPA class settlement given final approval on 15 January 2020, settled with no admission of liability. No FTC administrative complaint, no consent order, no state attorney general action and no criminal proceeding against the company or its executives was located anywhere.
Confidence: Medium
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
A privately held Japanese manufacturer of alkaline water ionisers, tracing production to 1974 and selling through independent distributors under the Kangen Water name. The machines are assembled in Japan and the company publishes ISO 9001, ISO 13485 and ISO 14001 certificates plus Japanese medical-device manufacturing authorization. It is not a label on somebody else’s product, and the distinction should be made plainly before anything else in this report.
You become a distributor by buying a machine. There is no sign-up fee - the standard route in is a Leveluk SD501 at $4,710 ex-tax, or a K8 at $5,890; the cheapest ioniser, the 4-plate JRIV, is $3,530. Add roughly 8% sales tax and the cash cost of the standard entry is about $5,087. On the in-house installment program it is more: the published mechanic is a $20-per-month processing charge, so a 12-payment plan adds $240 and a 24-month plan adds $480, plus $25 for each bounced payment. No APR is disclosed in any market. Working the Canadian 24-month plan on the K8 backwards gives an indicative effective rate near 10% - our calculation from published payment tables, not a disclosed figure.
The compensation mechanic is the part most write-ups get wrong, and it is the single most important thing to understand before buying. The company pays a fixed number of commission points on every unit sold - eight - regardless of who sells it or how deep the organization runs. The pool does not expand with organization size. Each product has a fixed dollar value per point: on the SD501 that is $235 at base rate, or $290 with the Special Point uplift, making the entire pool $1,880 to $2,320 on a $4,710 machine, or roughly 40-49% of retail. Your rank number is literally your point entitlement. A 1A takes 1 point. A 2A takes 2, a 3A 3, and so on to 6A at 6. The thresholds are cumulative units: 3 for 2A, 11 for 3A, 21 for 4A, 51 for 5A, 101 for 6A.
So here is what happens on your first sale. You are a 1A. You sell an SD501 for $4,710 to a household you found and persuaded. You receive $235, or $290 at the Special Point rate - 5.0% to 6.2% of the price. The remaining seven points cascade up your sponsorship line, each upline absorbing up to their own rank entitlement until all eight are allocated. Your upline collectively receives $1,645 to $2,030 on a sale you made. The same transaction made by a 6A pays that seller $1,410 to $1,740, and a 6A holding a full eight-point position takes the entire pool. Same machine, same customer, an eight-times spread driven by hierarchy rather than skill.
Ten to twelve personal sales of a $4,710 appliance is what it takes to recover your own machine - roughly nine or ten at the favorable Special Point rate, more at base rate, and more again once sales tax and installment charges are counted. Against that, the company’s own 2024 US earnings disclosure records the median annual gross at rank 1A, where 49.90% of the field sits, as $466.30. Recovering the machine at that rate takes just over ten years, before a single expense is deducted.
The eight points on one SD501, sold by a brand-new distributor
A $4,710 machine sold by a 1A. The commission pool is fixed at eight points regardless of organization depth: $235 per point at base rate, $290 with the Special Point uplift. Rank number equals point entitlement, and the points the seller cannot claim cascade upward.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Leveluk SD501 (7 plates) The standard entry. Buying it is how you become a distributor - there is no separate sign-up fee. Eight-point pool of $1,880 to $2,320, or 40-49% of retail price. |
$4,710 one-time |
$235/point base, $290 with SP |
| Leveluk K8 (8 plates) The most heavily promoted model. Total pool $2,160 to $2,808. Was $4,980 before the 1 July 2024 increase. |
$5,890 one-time |
$270/point base, $351 with SP |
| Leveluk JRIV (4 plates) The cheapest ioniser route into the business, and still the highest floor on this site. Was $2,980 two years ago. |
$3,530 one-time |
$140/point base, $200 with SP |
| Leveluk Super 501 (12 plates) The flagship. The largest single commission pool in the range at $2,800 to $3,360. |
$7,080 one-time |
$350/point base, $420 with SP |
| FC1 replacement filter With descaling powder at about $30 and electrolysis enhancer at $13-$15, total running cost is $167-$395 a year, or roughly $1,700-$4,000 over ten years. |
$153 every 12 months / 6,000 L |
— |
| E-Payment installment plan Marketed as interest-free. $240 on a 12-payment plan, $480 over 24 months, plus $25 per bounced payment. No APR disclosure was located in any market. |
$20 per month processing 3 to 24 months |
— |
| E8PA membership Six optional tiers. Heavily socialised in the field, and the association states plainly that memberships do not generate a distributor ID and cannot be used for rank-ups. Pure cost, no rank benefit. Bronze is free at 6A and above. |
$240 to $3,600 a year annual |
— |
| Global convention attendance The 52nd anniversary event ran 21-22 June 2026 in Okinawa. Ticket prices were not published; for a US participant, airfare, hotel and time make this the largest soft cost in the model and it appears in no earnings figure. |
$2,000-$4,000 realistically annual |
— |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Okinawan; still listed as Founder and CEO across the company’s country sites and third-party company databases in 2026. No regulatory action, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against him could be located in any jurisdiction, and no prior collapsed venture exists - this appears to be his original and principal business, which relative to the modal founder profile in this category is a materially better starting point. The corporate identity is built heavily around him personally: the 2026 global convention was themed on his birthplace and country sites publish a "Success Story" page about him.
No published succession plan, no named heir-apparent, no independent board and no disclosed shareholding split could be located. His date of birth could not be established from any primary source. That gap matters more here than it would elsewhere, because the plan promises "willable" lifetime monthly payments to its highest ranks - over $5,000 a month at 6A2-3, over $80,000 a month at 6A2-8, described in one mirrored official plan document as "for life." Nothing located describes how those obligations are funded, reserved against or contractually backed, and the person on whom the entire governance structure rests has no publicly identified successor.
Trade press coverage of the 2023 US convention in Las Vegas named two long-standing top-rank distributors as keynote speakers. They are field leaders rather than officers of the company, which is worth knowing: much of what a prospective participant encounters as "the company" is in practice produced by independent distributors whose income depends on recruitment, and whose claims the company has repeatedly had to remove. Critical third-party blog commentary about individual top earners exists; it consists of private allegations by uninvolved parties, not regulatory findings, and nothing in it is relied on here.
Registered address
Japan, with Enagic USA, Inc. in Torrance, California
Privately held with no audited financial statements published anywhere, in any market. The only revenue figures located are a direct-selling trade site’s estimate of $147 million for the US entity, held flat with 0% growth across six consecutive years - a shape implausible enough to be treated as a placeholder rather than a measurement. Group revenue worldwide is not verifiable from any primary source, so any global figure quoted by a distributor is unsubstantiated. What is verifiable is the industrial side: the company assembles its Leveluk units in Japan and publishes ISO 9001, ISO 13485 and ISO 14001 certificates alongside Japanese Medical Device Marketing Authorization Holder and Medical Device Manufacturer certificates, and its Singapore office states the group runs 23 countries and 38 locations. This is a manufacturer with factories, not a brand renting somebody else’s production line.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
WATCH
Enagic Co., Ltd., a privately held Japanese corporation founded by Hironari Ohshiro, who is still CEO after 52 years, with Enagic USA, Inc. in Torrance, California since 2003. No audited financials in any market, no disclosed shareholding structure and no published succession plan.
|
| What does it really cost? |
RED
$4,710 for the SD501 or $5,890 for the K8 - the machine is the entry, and there is no cheaper route than the $3,530 JRIV. Add ~8% tax, $20 a month on the installment plan, and $167-$395 a year in consumables. No autoship, no quota, no minimum purchase.
|
| How much do you keep on a sale? |
RED
One of eight commission points as a 1A - $235 on an SD501, or $290 with the Special Point uplift, which is 5.0-6.2% of the price. The other seven points cascade upline. A 6A in a full position takes the whole $1,880-$2,320 pool on the same sale.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes, and unusually granular: twelve rank tiers with headcounts and medians for 2024. It shows 17,904 people at 1A (49.90%) with a median annual gross of $466.30, and eleven at 6A2-6+ with a median of $1,462,729.48. It does not state how many earned zero.
|
| Regulatory action against the company, ever? |
CONCERN
Bhutan’s Office of Consumer Protection declared the operation a pyramid scheme under Rule 38 in April 2022 - a national regulator’s administrative determination, not a court judgment. Separately an FTC cease-and-desist demand in December 2021 with no complaint, no fine and no liability finding, plus self-regulatory findings in 2025 and 2026.
|
| Are the machines FDA approved? |
RED
No. There is no FDA clearance, no 510(k) and no PMA for any Leveluk model, and the company does not claim one - its own declaration states the products have no therapeutic or curative properties. Japan registers alkaline ionisers as home-use medical devices for improvement of mild gastrointestinal symptoms only; registered is not cleared, and EU Declarations of Conformity are self-declarations on electrical safety.
|
| Can you get your money back? |
WATCH
A 10-day cooling-off applies to retail sales with statutory notice on the receipt, and inventory bought within 90 days of cancellation is repurchased at not less than 90% of net cost. The return window on the machine itself is reported as 7 days by a competitor and could not be confirmed against an official US document.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
CONCERN
Miner, decisively, at entry. The plan pays only on product sold, which is a genuine merchant feature - but a new distributor keeps one point in eight while rank advancement is measured in cumulative group units, and 6A requires 101 machines through the organization.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Recover the SD501 you bought in order to join | 10-12 personal sales $4,710 plus ~8% tax; 1 point on sales 1-2, 2 points on 3-10, 3 points on 11-20 at $290/point |
| Recover it on the median 1A income instead of selling hard | just over 10 years $4,710 divided by the published median annual gross of $466.30 at rank 1A |
| Reach 6A, where the published median gross is $9,074.92 | 101 cumulative group units 7.73% of the US field are at 6A; that is 101 machines through your organization |
| Keep commissions at the full rate | a direct sale every 6 months, and every 90 days for the SP rate D0 halves commissions after 6 months without one; FA0 removes them after 1-2 years |
Read this twice
This is the most expensive arithmetic on the site and both halves of it come from the company. The entry is a $4,710 Leveluk SD501 - about $5,087 with typical sales tax, or roughly $5,570 financed over 24 months once the $20-a-month processing charge is added. The commission side is fixed: eight points per unit, $290 per point on the SD501 at the favorable Special Point rate, and your rank number is your point entitlement. Sales one and two pay one point each. Sales three to ten pay two. Sales eleven to twenty pay three. Run that ladder and breakeven on your own machine arrives at roughly the ninth or tenth personal sale at SP rate and the eleventh at base rate; with tax and financing charges, call it ten to twelve. Every one of those is a household persuaded to spend $4,710 to $5,890 on a water ioniser. Now the other side. The 2024 US earnings disclosure records 17,904 distributors at rank 1A - 49.90% of the field - with a median annual gross of $466.30. At that rate the machine takes just over ten years to recover. The median 2A at $1,278.72 takes 3.7 years; the median 3A at $2,264.94 takes 2.1 years. The disclosure states that it excludes expenses, which "can be significant," and it does not deduct the machine that each of those 35,878 people bought to be counted in it. Two honest caveats in the company’s favor: there is no autoship, no quota and no minimum purchase draining money month to month, so a distributor who simply stops is not bleeding; and the buyer keeps a functioning appliance with a warranty and a resale market, however discounted, which is more than a consumable-based plan leaves behind.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
One commission point on a $4,710 Leveluk SD501 - which is what a new distributor keeps, the other seven points going upline until points accumulate. There is no monthly fee, no autoship and no quota, so the holding cost is zero. What the model deliberately does not net off is the entry cost itself: the machine you must buy is $4,710 in cash, more on finance, and it takes roughly ten sales to get that back. The company’s own 2024 disclosure puts the median annual gross for the rank half the field sits at - 1A - at $466.30. Your own subscription cost of $0/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
The machines against open-market ionisers at the same plate count, 2026 prices. Comparator figures come from a direct competitor’s comparison page - an interested party - but each is independently checkable on the relevant manufacturer’s own site and no contradicting figures were found. Plate count is the fairest single specification to compare on, because it drives electrolysis capacity.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Leveluk SD501 - 7 plates, $4,710 | AlkaViva Athena H2 - 7 plates, retail | $2,205 |
| Leveluk SD501 - 7 plates, $4,710 | Bawell Platinum - 7 plates, retail | ~$2,000 |
| Leveluk K8 - 8 plates, $5,890 | Life Ionizer MXL-9 - 9 plates, retail | $2,697 |
| Leveluk Super 501 - 12 plates, $7,080 | Tyent UCE-13 - 13 plates, retail | $4,195-$4,785 |
| Molecular hydrogen positioning | Echo H2 dedicated hydrogen generator | $2,795-$2,999 |
| FC1 filter through the company - $153/yr | Third-party compatible filters | less, but warranty risk |
| E8PA membership - up to $3,600/yr | Nothing; it confers no rank credit | $0 |
| $20/month E-Payment processing charge | Buying outright, or a disclosed-APR consumer loan | $0-$480 |
| Total as sold ~$5,090 cash for an SD501 with tax, or ~$5,570 financed over 24 months, plus $167-$395 a year |
Total, built yourself ~$2,205 for a 7-plate retail ioniser, plus filters |
Price-to-value
Roughly 2.1 to 2.35 times the open-market price for the same plate count - the AlkaViva Athena H2 at $2,205 and the Bawell Platinum at about $2,000 against $4,710. That multiple is closely consistent with the 40-49% of retail price committed to the eight-point commission pool, which is the honest explanation for the gap: the premium is the distribution model, not the electrolysis. If you want ionised water in your kitchen, the retail market sells it at less than half the price with a transferable warranty and no plan attached. If you want the business, note that the machine and the business are the same purchase and the machine is where the money goes.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Machine owner who joined for the discount
bought an SD501 to drink the water, sells to family occasionally, never ranks past 1A
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 1% | −$5,090 |
| 6 mo | 2% | −$5,000 |
| 1 yr | 3% | −$4,900 |
| 3 yr | 4% | −$4,400 |
| 5 yr | 5% | −$3,900 |
Part-time distributor
10 hrs/wk, warm market first, financing the machine over 24 months
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 1% | −$5,300 |
| 6 mo | 3% | −$5,100 |
| 1 yr | 6% | −$4,600 |
| 3 yr | 11% | −$3,400 |
| 5 yr | 13% | −$2,600 |
Full-time builder
30+ hrs/wk, events, E8PA membership, chasing 6A at 101 units
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 1% | −$6,400 |
| 6 mo | 3% | −$7,600 |
| 1 yr | 7% | −$8,900 |
| 3 yr | 12% | −$11,000 |
| 5 yr | 14% | −$13,000 |
Methodology note. ANCHORED to the company’s own 2024 US Earnings Disclosure Statement: 17,904 distributors at 1A (49.90%) with a median annual gross of $466.30; 8,222 at 2A (22.92%) at $1,278.72; 2,011 at 3A at $2,264.94; 2,522 at 4A at $4,066.01; 1,249 at 5A at $5,853.52; 2,772 at 6A at $9,074.92; and eleven people at 6A2-6 or above with a median of $1,462,729.48 - which is why the top column climbs steeply while no cohort here reaches a majority in cumulative profit at any horizon. Anchored also to the published cost and plan side: the $4,710 SD501, the $5,890 K8, the eight-point pool, the $235 and $290 point values, the 1-2-3-4-5-6 point entitlement by rank, the 3/11/21/51/101 cumulative unit thresholds, the D0 and FA0 decay rules, the $20-a-month E-Payment processing charge and the $167-$395 annual consumables. MODELED by us: the sales-rate distributions within each cohort, the share in cumulative profit at each horizon, the soft costs of events and travel that no disclosure quantifies, and the cohort definitions themselves, which the company does not segment. One calibration note that cuts in the company’s favor and should be read alongside the medians: with no autoship, no quota and no minimum purchase, a distributor who stops selling stops spending, so the downside curve flattens after the machine is paid for rather than compounding. The losses here are front-loaded because the entry is front-loaded.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151The entry cost is the highest on this site
2A new distributor keeps 1 of 8 commission points
3The company’s own 2024 disclosure puts the median 1A at $466.30 for the year
4Roughly 85.5% of distributors sit at ranks whose median is below the price of one machine
5Ten to twelve personal machine sales just to break even on your own
6Commissions decay: D0 halves them, FA0 zeroes them
7Bhutan’s consumer regulator declared the operation a pyramid scheme
8Repeat self-regulatory earnings findings one year apart
9An FTC cease-and-desist demand over distributor COVID-19 claims
10"0% interest" financing that charges $20 a month with no APR disclosed
11Prices rose 18.3% in two years while point values barely moved
12Selling water from your own machine is expressly prohibited
13Non-transferable warranty and a reported 7-day return window
14Terminated distributors may never be sponsored again
15A $27.6 million TCPA settlement arising from distributor conduct
Green flags
81A real manufacturer with real factories and 52 years of continuity
2No sign-up fee, no autoship, no quota, no inventory loading
3Commissions are paid only on product actually sold
4Sales accumulate and rank never resets
5It publishes a twelve-tier income disclosure with medians and headcounts
6A narrow but real regulatory approval exists in Japan
7The buyer keeps a functioning durable appliance
8Cooling-off rights and a 90% buyback are written into the policies
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Rebalancing the eight points toward the seller - anything that gives a 1A more than one point on a sale they personally made would directly address the core participant-economics problem, as would abolishing or substantially softening the D0 and FA0 decay so that downline income actually vests.
- Publishing the denominator and netting the machine: how many people held a distributor ID in the year, how many earned nothing, and the median net outcome after deducting the purchase price of the entry appliance over the first twelve and twenty-four months.
- Closing the price-to-value gap toward the $2,000-$2,700 open-market band for equivalent plate counts, or publishing independent third-party hydrogen and ORP testing that justifies the premium - together with a real APR disclosure on the installment program and a published succession plan for the willable top-rank obligations.
Downward
- Any FTC administrative complaint, consent order or state attorney general action on either the earnings-claim or health-claim track, as opposed to the cease-and-desist demand and self-regulatory closures on file today, or an FDA warning letter over device or health claims.
- A second national regulator adopting Bhutan’s pyramid-scheme characterisation - one small-jurisdiction determination is an outlier, two would be a pattern - or a third consecutive year of self-regulatory findings, which would establish that the remediation is cosmetic.
- Introduction of any recurring fee, autoship or minimum-volume qualification; further price increases without matching point-value increases; or confirmation that the earnings disclosure counts only earners rather than all registered distributors, which would make every percentage in it flattering.
Grade is D−, one band below the 4.09 arithmetic, and the cap is published rather than hidden. A genuine 52-year manufacturer, attached to the highest entry cost on this site and a company-published median of $466.30 for half the field.
Start with what is true and good, because it is unusual in this category and it should not be lost. This is a manufacturer. The machines are assembled in Japan, the company holds ISO 9001, ISO 13485 and ISO 14001 certification and Japanese medical-device manufacturing authorization, and the founder has run the same business for fifty-two years without a single relaunch, rebrand or offshore restructuring. There is no sign-up fee, no autoship, no monthly quota, no minimum purchase and no inventory to load. Commissions are paid only on product actually sold - nobody is paid for the act of recruiting. Sales accumulate and rank never resets. And the company publishes a twelve-tier income disclosure with headcounts and medians, which most operators do not. Every one of those is a real credit and the grade already reflects them.
Then the entry, which is the report. You join by buying a machine: $4,710 for the standard SD501, $5,890 for the K8, $3,530 at the absolute floor. With sales tax that is about $5,087 cash, or roughly $5,570 financed over twenty-four months once the $20-a-month processing charge is added - a charge marketed as interest-free with no APR disclosed in any market. To get that money back you need ten to twelve personal sales of a $4,710 appliance, because the plan pays eight fixed points per unit and your rank is your point entitlement: one point on your first two sales, two on sales three to ten, three on eleven to twenty. On your first sale you keep $235, or $290 at the rate that requires a fresh personal sale every ninety days. The remaining $1,645 to $2,030 cascades to people above you. The same machine sold by a 6A in a full position pays that seller the entire $1,880 to $2,320 pool. Eight times the money for the identical transaction, determined by position rather than skill.
And then the disclosure the company publishes itself, which is the hardest evidence in the file. In 2024, rank 1A held 17,904 distributors - 49.90% of the US field - with a median annual gross of $466.30. That is roughly a tenth of the machine they bought to be counted. Ranks 1A through 4A, about 85.5% of the field, all have medians below the price of one SD501. Eleven people at the top show a median of $1,462,729.48. The disclosure excludes expenses, which it says can be significant, does not state how many earned zero, and does not net off the machine. Layer on the regulatory file, stage-labeled exactly: Bhutan’s Office of Consumer Protection declared the operation a pyramid scheme under Rule 38 in April 2022 and ordered distributors to stop recruiting - an administrative determination by a national regulator, not a court judgment and not binding elsewhere, but the only ruling anywhere that addresses the structure. Separately and on a different track: an FTC cease-and-desist demand in December 2021 with no complaint and no fine, self-regulatory findings in consecutive years, and a $27.6 million TCPA settlement with no admission of liability. That combination - the dataset’s highest entry cost against a company-published median of $466.30, plus a regulator’s determination on structure - is why the grade sits a band below its arithmetic.
If you want the water, buy the appliance at retail
A 7-plate AlkaViva Athena H2 is $2,205 and a 7-plate Bawell Platinum is around $2,000 against $4,710 for the same plate count here. You get a transferable warranty, an open filter market and no plan attached. The Japanese approval that does exist covers improvement of mild gastrointestinal symptoms only - a June 2026 review in Frontiers in Medicine finds systemic alkalinisation, immunity and anti-aging benefits unsupported and advises against routine recommendation in primary care. Buy it because you like the water, not because of what somebody told you it cures.
Do the 1-of-8 sum out loud before you buy
Write down what you personally receive on your first sale - $235, or $290 if you sell again within ninety days - and what your upline receives on the same sale, which is $1,645 to $2,030. Then write down how many $4,710 sales it takes to get your own machine back. If your sponsor cannot produce those three numbers from the plan document without hesitating, they do not understand the plan they are selling you, and the eight-point cascade is the whole economics of it.
Ask for the APR and the total of payments in writing
The installment program is marketed as interest-free but charges $20 a month in processing, $25 per bounced payment, and discloses no annual rate in any market located. Ask for the lender’s name, the effective APR and the total of all payments before signing. On the published Canadian twenty-four-month tables the implied effective cost works out near 10% - our calculation, not a disclosure. If the answer is that there is no APR because there is no interest, that is not an answer.
Sell water treatment as a merchant instead
Filtration and ionisation is a real retail category with real search demand, open supplier terms, transferable warranties and no rule against building your own website, running paid ads, listing on marketplaces or owning your customer list - all of which are prohibited here. You keep the full margin instead of one point in eight, you keep the customer relationship instead of handing it over as company-confidential data, and no rule stops you from selling the water itself.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- Enagic USA Earnings Disclosure Statement (PDF, company domain)
Enagic USA Earnings Disclosure Statement covering 2024, updated 19 May 2025 - 17,904 distributors at 1A (49.90%) with a median annual gross of $466.30; 2A $1,278.72; 3A $2,264.94; 4A $4,066.01; 5A $5,853.52; 6A $9,074.92; through to eleven at 6A2-6+ with a median of $1,462,729.48; expenses excluded and stated to be potentially significant. The company page was indexed but the PDF was blocked at egress; figures reproduced from a distributor-operated analysis site quoting it directly, whose rank headcounts sum arithmetically to the stated percentages
Not established by this document: enagic.com serves the earnings-disclosure PDF under a robots.txt disallow, so the document could not be fetched and its figures confirmed at source; the company URLs above appeared verbatim in search results with matching titles and the numbers are corroborated only by the distributor-operated analysis site.
- Enagic USA Earnings Disclosure Statement (company PDF viewer copy)
- Enagic USA Earnings Disclosure Statement - Enagic Europe hosted copy
- Enagic Statement of Average Gross Compensation (PDF, company domain)
- Distributor-operated analysis reproducing the 2024 Enagic earnings-disclosure rank tables
- Enagic Singapore - Business Opportunity: eight-point commission across eight levels, 1A–6A thresholds of 1-2 / 3-10 / 11-20 / 21-50 / 51-100 / 101+ cumulative sales, "no sign-up fee", "no monthly qualifications", "no stocking of inventory"
Enagic Singapore official business-opportunity page - the eight-points-within-eight-levels structure, rank thresholds of 1-2, 3-10, 11-20, 21-50, 51-100 and 101+ cumulative sales, and the stated absence of a sign-up fee, monthly qualification and inventory stocking
- Enagic Official Site - Business Opportunity / Compensation (US)
- Enagic Thailand Distributor Handbook, revision 11 November 2025 (PDF) - D1 at 100% of the 8-Point commission with a direct sale inside six months, D0 at 50%, FA0 at zero after a year, 6A educational award withheld until financing completes
Enagic Thailand Distributor Handbook, rev. 11 November 2025 - D1 at 100% of commission with a direct sale inside six months, D0 at 50% without one, FA0 at zero after a year; registration requiring the Distributor Agreement, Product Order Form and Return Policy; and the 6A educational award withheld until financing completes
- Enagic Thailand Distributor Handbook, 14 July 2025 revision (PDF, prior version)
- Enagic (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd Company Policies and Procedures (PDF) - Clause 8.9 therapeutic claims, Clause 14.1 bottled-water ban, Clause 22 cooling-off, Clause 25 the 90% buyback, Clause 45 income-claim and commission-check ban
Enagic Malaysia Policies and Procedures - Clause 8.9 on therapeutic claims, Clause 45 banning income claims and commission-check displays, Clause 9.1 on independently designed websites, Clause 10 naming eBay, Amazon and Craigslist and disclaiming transferable warranties, Clause 12.3 on shelf sales, Clause 14.1 banning bottled-water sales, Clauses 13 and 24.2 on non-compete and the three-year cross-solicitation tail, Clause 22 cooling-off, Clause 25 the 90% buyback, Clause 42.4 barring re-sponsorship after termination
- Enagic Malaysia - Policies & Procedures index page
- Policies and Procedures for Enagic Independent Distributors (PDF, company domain - US/global text)
- "OCP directs distributors of Enagic business to stop operating" - Bhutan Broadcasting Service report on the Office of Consumer Protection determination
Bhutan Office of Consumer Protection determination, April 2022, as reported by BBS Bhutan and The Bhutanese - operations categorised as pyramid schemes under Rule 38 of the Consumer Protection Rules and Regulations, distributors directed to stop, health claims ordered removed, tiered enforcement from fines to license cancellation, with licensed retailing lawful where no recruitment occurred
Not established by this document: The Office of Consumer Protection's own April 2022 determination is not published online in any retrievable form; the prose entry itself frames this as "as reported by BBS Bhutan and The Bhutanese", and only those two outlets' reporting could be sourced.
- "Monitoring is next challenge after Enagic is declared to be a Pyramid Scheme" - The Bhutanese
- "OCP in final stages of investigation of Enagic and Kangen Water" - The Bhutanese
- "OCP comes up with Pyramid Scheme Identification Guideline" - Bhutan Broadcasting Service on the Rule 38 framework applied
- FTC cease-and-desist letter to Enagic USA, Inc. d/b/a Kangen, 9 December 2021 - case page
FTC cease-and-desist demand to Enagic USA, Inc. d/b/a Kangen, 9 December 2021, over distributor COVID-19 prevention claims - no complaint, no fine, no finding of liability; and the FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities, 26 October 2021, sent to more than 1,100 companies as a mass notice with no company-specific allegation
- Cease and desist letter to Enagic USA, Inc. dba Kangen, 12.9.21 (PDF)
- FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities - program page
- List of October 2021 recipients of the FTC's Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities (PDF)
- "FTC Puts Businesses on Notice that False Money-Making Claims Could Lead to Big Penalties" - press release, October 2021
- DSSRC Case #216-2025: Administrative Closure - Enagic USA, Inc., closed 14 May 2025 (cancer, arthritis, gallbladder, kidney-stone and heart-disease product claims; "$300,000" monthly and "$25,000 in less than three months" earnings claims)
BBB National Programs DSSRC case #216-2025, administratively closed 14 May 2025 - 11 of 13 product performance claims and 11 earnings claims removed or materially revised, including cancer, arthritis, gallbladder, kidney-stone and heart-disease claims and earnings representations of "$300,000" monthly and "$25,000 in less than three months"; and DSSRC case #258-2026, decided 15 May 2026 - 18 further earnings claims identified, 12 removed or modified
- "DSSRC Recommends Enagic USA Discontinue Earnings Claims" - Case #258-2026, decided 15 May 2026 (18 earnings claims identified, 12 removed or modified)
- DSSRC Case #39-2021: Monitoring Inquiry - Enagic, USA, Inc. (earlier proceeding)
- Edward Makaron v. Enagic USA, Inc., C.D. Cal. No. 2:15-cv-05145 - full district court docket
Makaron v. Enagic USA, Inc., C.D. Cal. 2:15-cv-05145 - TCPA class action over autodialled and pre-recorded calls by distributors, final approval 15 January 2020, $27.6 million total comprising $21.6 million to a class of roughly 1.8 million plus $6 million allocated to injunctive relief including distributor compliance training, audits and twice-yearly reporting; settled with no admission of liability
- Enagic auto-dialer TCPA class action settlement - administration page ($21.6m common fund, $27.6m total with injunctive relief)
- Enagic USA Product Price List (PDF, company domain)
US price lists as of September 2025 corroborated across three independent distributor sources - SD501 $4,710, SD501 Platinum $4,820, SD501 DX $5,360, K8 $5,890, Super 501 $7,080, JRIV $3,530, Anespa DX $3,420 - with the 1 July 2024 increase documented (SD501 $3,980 to $4,380, K8 $4,980 to $5,480); Enagic USA K8 Payment Plan sheet, September 2025, giving the $20-per-month processing charge and $25 bounced-payment fee; point values per a June 2025 third-party reconstruction and older mirrored official plans
Not established by this document: enagic.com is robots-disallowed to fetching, so the SD501 $4,710 / K8 $5,890 / Super 501 $7,080 figures and the $20 monthly processing charge could not be read at source; the company PDF URLs above appeared verbatim in search results with matching titles and content snippets.
- Enagic USA E-Payment Compensation Plan / payment-plan price sheet (PDF, company domain)
- Enagic USA Distributor Compensation Plan (PDF, company domain) - point values per rank
- Enagic Distributor Handbook, revised 29 July 2025 (PDF, company domain)
- Deen et al., "The health benefits of alkaline water: is it a fact or marketing myth?", Frontiers in Medicine, 26 June 2026 (doi:10.3389/fmed.2026.1849818)
Deen et al., "The health benefits of alkaline water: is it a fact or marketing myth?", Frontiers in Medicine, 26 June 2026; Association of Alkaline Ionized Water Apparatus (Japan) FAQ on the approved gastrointestinal indication and the expressly non-approved indications; Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic consumer guidance; comparator ioniser pricing from a direct competitor’s comparison page, independently checkable on each manufacturer’s own site
- Association of Alkaline Ionized Water Apparatus (Japan) - FAQ on the approved gastrointestinal indication and the expressly non-approved indications
- "Is Alkaline Water Better for You?" - Cleveland Clinic consumer guidance
- "Alkaline water: Better than plain water?" - Mayo Clinic expert answer
What we could not get
- Current 2026 point and commission values direct from the company - enagic.com was blocked at network egress throughout, so the point-value table used here comes from a June 2025 third-party reconstruction and older mirrored official plan PDFs. Treat the per-point figures as approximate to roughly ±10%; the eight-point structure itself is confirmed on an official country site
- The current US Policies and Procedures text - the channel, claims, termination and cooling-off rules cited here come from the Malaysian version, which is the most complete text retrievable. The US, Canadian and European versions exist but were unreachable, and country versions differ in detail
- Whether the 2024 earnings disclosure counts all registered distributors or only those who earned a commission in the year. This materially changes every percentage in it: if it counts only earners, the true denominator is larger and every figure quoted here is flattering to the company
- The percentage of distributors earning zero - not published anywhere, in any market. No income disclosure at all could be located for Canada, Australia, the UK, the EU, Japan, India, the Philippines or Malaysia
- The effective APR on the US installment program. The $20-per-month processing charge and the $25 bounced-payment fee are confirmed from the September 2025 payment-plan sheet; no APR disclosure was located in any market, and the ~10% indicative figure is our own calculation from published Canadian payment tables, not a disclosed rate
- Group revenue worldwide, ownership structure, the founder’s age and any succession plan - none is published. The only revenue figure located is a trade site’s US-only estimate of $147 million held flat with 0% growth across six consecutive years, which is implausible enough to be unusable
- The official US return window and warranty terms. The 7-day return, 3-to-5-year limited warranty and $600 extended-warranty figures come from a direct competitor’s page and could not be confirmed against an official document; the non-transferability of warranties is confirmed from the policies
- Any FDA warning letter, 510(k) or PMA for any Leveluk model, and any UK ASA ruling naming the company - none was found, but fda.gov and ftc.gov searches were constrained by the same egress blocking, so this is absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence. An Italian competition-authority matter referenced in one search result could not be retrieved or confirmed
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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Enagic - frequently asked
QHow much does it cost to join Enagic?
QHow does the Enagic 8-point commission structure actually work?
QHow much do Enagic distributors actually earn?
QIs Enagic a pyramid scheme?
QIs Kangen Water FDA approved?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Enagic’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
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Corrections
Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from Enagic than from a reader.
Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and say in the report that it was corrected and when. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.
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