Young Living Essential Oils
A real farming and distilling operation with genuine consumer demand for its oils - publishing a median annual income of $13 across all US Brand Partners, against roughly $1,200 a year of personal purchasing needed to stay commission-qualified.
The company’s own 2024 disclosure puts the median annual income across all US Brand Partners at $13 - and in 2017 the corporate entity itself pleaded guilty in federal court to illegally trafficking two of the botanicals its sourcing marketing is built on.
Can you actually make money with Young Living?
No. Not as a business, and the company's own published numbers are what settle it. The 2024 US Income Disclosure Statement puts the median annual income across all Brand Partners at $13, down from $23 the year before. At the bottom Associate rank, where 68.1% of the field sits, the median is $5 and the average is $31. The document states in terms that the figures are gross and exclude costs and expenses. About 1.0% of participants reach Silver or above, where the 2024 median of $13,228 first clears the cost of qualifying by a comfortable margin.
Now what qualifying costs. A Premium Starter Kit at roughly $165, and then 100 PV of personal purchasing every month, indefinitely, at every commission-eligible rank from Associate upward - approximately $1,200 a year. Stop buying and eligibility ends, however active the organization beneath you happens to be. The unilevel pays 8, 5, 4, 4 and 4 per cent on the Personal Volume your downline orders, and it draws no distinction anywhere between volume a Brand Partner bought for herself and volume sold to somebody outside. That distinction is the whole question and it is not published.
Layered over the unilevel are two bonuses that pay for headcount. The Fast Start Bonus gives the enroller 25% of up to 1,000 PV of a new enrollee's orders across that enrollee's first three months - about $41 on a $165 kit, against roughly 8% on ordinary repeat volume. The Rising Star Team Bonus wants three autoship-enrolled downline legs at 300 PV each, then two more at 500, then two more at 1,000. Neither of them pays anybody for selling a bottle to a customer.
The product side is genuinely good and belongs on the page. The company owns farms and distilling operations across the United States, France, Ecuador, Croatia and Oman among others, has been sourcing and distilling for more than three decades, and publishes batch-level test results. Anyone can buy every product in the catalog at retail without enrolling in anything, which for most people reading this is the correct relationship to have with it. And it publishes a rank-by-rank disclosure carrying medians beside averages, which most of this sector never manages.
Premium Starter Kit, no separate membership fee - then 100 PV a month, roughly $1,200 a year, to stay commission-qualified at any rank
- Take the 100 PV monthly floor off commission eligibility, or pay a rate that clears it. Roughly $1,200 a year of your own purchasing against a published median of $13 is the arithmetic that produced this grade.
- Publish the split between volume ordered by Brand Partners for their own use and volume sold to people outside the organization. The unilevel pays on both identically, so that number is the one an outside reader needs.
- Stop paying 25% on an enrollee's first three months against roughly 8% on ordinary repeat volume. Paying triple for the entry purchase tells a new recruit which activity the plan actually values.
- A participant contract that does not contradict itself. A federal appeals court held in April 2020 that the Member Agreement's Utah forum clause could not be reconciled with the arbitration clause in the Policies and Procedures.
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 WITH A CORPORATE CRIMINAL CONVICTION ON FILE - no court or regulator has ever found Young Living to be a pyramid scheme. There is no FTC action, no consent order and no state attorney-general enforcement action that could be located. What the file does contain is materially heavier than most: on 18 September 2017 the corporate entity pleaded guilty in federal court in the District of Utah to misdemeanour violations of the Lacey Act and the Endangered Species Act over rosewood and spikenard oil imports between June 2010 and January 2016, paying $760,000 in total and serving five years’ probation under a mandated compliance program. Separately, on 12 July 2018, Judge Christine S. Johnson of Utah’s Fourth Judicial District Court found - in litigation Young Living itself had brought and lost at trial - that the company lacked an honest belief in the propriety of its claims, awarding $1,810,344.11 in fees plus roughly $50,000 in costs against it, after spoliation sanctions had already been imposed during the case for the destruction of relevant computers. Two federal class actions alleging an illegal pyramid structure (Penhall, filed December 2019; Shaughnessy, at the Fifth Circuit in 2020) never reached a merits ruling - one settled and was dismissed with prejudice in November 2023, the other produced only a procedural arbitration holding. A separate consumer class action over health-benefit marketing settled for up to $5 million in May 2024 with no admission of liability.
Confidence: Medium-High
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 Utah essential-oils company - Young Living Essential Oils, LC, organized in 1994 and based in Lehi - selling oils, blends, household cleaning products and the NingXia Red wellness drink through US independent distributors it calls Brand Partners, on a five-level unilevel compensation plan with rank-achievement, recruitment-depth and generation bonuses layered above it.
The product side is genuinely strong and it should be said first. Essential oils are a real consumer category with demand entirely independent of any income opportunity: people buy lavender and peppermint oil at supermarkets and pharmacies without ever hearing a compensation pitch. Young Living owns and operates farms and distilleries across the United States, France, Ecuador, Croatia and Oman among others rather than sourcing from anonymous contract manufacturers, has been distilling for over three decades, publishes batch-level testing, and separates its ingestible Vitality line from its standard oils with distinct labeling. It also publishes a rank-by-rank US income disclosure with medians alongside averages - more granular than most of this sector manages, and the reason the participant economics below can be stated from the company’s own document rather than inferred.
Then the disclosure itself. In the 2024 US statement, 68.1% of Brand Partners sit at the bottom Associate rank, where the average annual income is $31 and the median is $5. Across all Brand Partners at every rank, the median annual income is $13 - down from $23 in 2023, when the bottom-rank median was $0. Against that: a Premium Starter Kit at roughly $165, and 100 PV of personal purchasing every month, about $1,200 a year, required indefinitely to stay commission-qualified at any rank whatsoever. The company states the figures are gross and exclude costs. Only about 1.0% of participants reach Silver or above, where the median first clearly exceeds the qualifying-purchase floor.
The conduct record is what separates this file from an ordinary weak-plan grade, and every item needs its stage label. On 18 September 2017 the corporate entity pleaded guilty in federal court in the District of Utah to misdemeanour Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act violations over rosewood oil from Peru and Brazil and spikenard oil from Nepal imported between June 2010 and January 2016 - $500,000 fine, $135,000 restitution, $125,000 in conservation payments, five years’ probation and a mandated compliance program. That is a criminal conviction of the company, requiring an admission of the conduct, and it is categorically heavier than a warning letter or a civil settlement. On 12 July 2018, in a trade-secret case Young Living had itself brought against former employees who left to found a competing essential-oil company and had lost at trial on every count, Judge Christine S. Johnson of Utah’s Fourth Judicial District Court found the company had lacked an honest belief in the propriety of its claims and awarded $1,810,344.11 in fees plus roughly $50,000 in costs against it; spoliation sanctions had already been imposed for destroying relevant computers. Neither item is a consumer-protection finding, and no court or regulator has ever found this to be a pyramid scheme.
The health-claims boundary is where the live exposure sits, and the ingestion question is its sharpest edge. Young Living markets the Vitality line explicitly for dietary and culinary use, distinct from its standard oils, which are not labeled for internal use - a labeling separation that is better practice than blending internal-use messaging through the whole catalog. But the FDA’s 10 June 2022 warning letter cited Vitality-line marketing directly, over claims about inflammation, infection and stomach upset, taking the position that calling a product dietary does not exempt it from drug-claim scrutiny once disease benefits are asserted. FDA and poison-control literature broadly caution against undiluted or unsupervised internal use of concentrated essential oils, citing mucosal irritation, hepatotoxicity risk in some compounds and drug interactions. Both the 2014 and 2022 letters, and the DSSRC record from 2016 through 2024, reflect a recurring pattern of individual distributors making disease-treatment and ingestion claims beyond what the labeling or company-sanctioned messaging supports. Current official company ingestion-safety guidance could not be retrieved directly in this research pass and is listed as unverified.
Where US Brand Partners sat in 2024
Young Living’s own published US Income Disclosure Statement for 2024. Percentages of US Brand Partners; incomes are gross and the company states they exclude costs and expenses.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Premium Starter Kit Contains eleven or twelve oils and blends, a diffuser, NingXia Red and Thieves samples, roller fitments and a product guide. No separate enrollment or membership fee is charged - buying the kit and becoming a Brand Partner happen together, which is cleaner than a bare fee. The exact 2026 price could not be confirmed on the company’s own site and is triangulated from consistent third-party sources. Cheaper basic starter options historically ran $35 to $45. |
~$165 one-time |
25% Fast Start to the enroller |
| 100 PV monthly qualification Required at every commission-eligible rank from Associate upward, per the official compensation plan effective 1 April 2025. Roughly $1,200 a year. Stop buying and commission eligibility ends, however active the downline is. This is the single largest cost in the file and it is not stated as a lump sum anywhere in enrollment materials. |
~$100/mo recurring, indefinite |
— |
| Lavender Essential Oil Third-party retailer listing. Comparable GC/MS-tested pure lavender runs roughly $10 to $18 for the same 15 mL at Whole Foods or on general e-commerce. |
$36.51 (15 mL) per unit |
8% at level one |
| Thieves Essential Oil Blend The signature clove, cinnamon, lemon, eucalyptus and rosemary blend. Equivalent blends from mainstream aromatherapy suppliers run roughly $10 to $20 at comparable size. |
$52.30 (15 mL) per unit |
8% at level one |
| Peppermint Essential Oil Roughly two-and-a-half to four times the price of comparable peppermint oil at ordinary retail, which runs about $8 to $14. |
$33.22 (15 mL) per unit |
8% at level one |
| NingXia Red A wolfberry-based antioxidant drink, frequently bought by the case to reach volume thresholds. Named in the FDA’s 2022 warning letter over claims about inflammation, cholesterol and blood sugar. The exact current official single-bottle price could not be confirmed; third-party and marketplace listings were used as a proxy. |
~$45–$50 (750 mL) per unit / case |
unilevel |
| Essential Rewards autoship The loyalty and autoship program, with points back on orders and cancellable at any time with no fee - a genuine credit. Note the two easily-conflated thresholds: 50 PV keeps loyalty status, but 100 PV is what commission qualification requires. Enrolling downlines onto autoship is a prerequisite input to the Rising Star Team Bonus, so the plan pays uplines for autoship enrollment rather than for one-off retail sales. The 50 PV figure comes from third-party distributor guides, not the primary program terms. |
~50 PV minimum (~$50/mo) monthly |
feeds the Rising Star bonus |
| Vitality ingestible line Oils explicitly labeled for dietary and culinary use, segregated from the standard line. Lemongrass and Peppermint Vitality were both cited in the FDA’s 10 June 2022 warning letter over claims about inflammation, infection and stomach upset - the agency’s position being that dietary labeling does not exempt a product from drug-claim scrutiny once disease benefits are asserted. |
varies by SKU per unit |
unilevel |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
The most consequential single fact on this page, and it has to be stage-labeled carefully. In 1983 Young was arrested and pleaded guilty to practicing medicine without a license - an actual criminal plea, resulting in a $250 fine, a 60-day suspended sentence and a year of probation. His credentials were a home-study nutrition course, attendance at the unaccredited Burroughs Vita-Flex Institute and the unaccredited Donsbach University, and a claimed 1985 naturopathy doctorate from Bernadean University, which independent sources including Skeptical Inquirer describe as a diploma mill. Contemporaneous Los Angeles Times reporting described his Tijuana clinic as using fraudulent diagnostic methods, including analyzing animal blood represented as belonging to patients; in 1988 a California court ordered the Chula Vista clinic closed after the state alleged unfair and deceptive advertising. A clinic employee was charged with unlicensed practice of medicine between 2000 and 2002, and a 2005 suit alleging kidney failure after high-dose vitamin C infusions was settled. Young died on 12 May 2018; the cause is disputed between family members in press accounts and has never been adjudicated. The company’s own account of a logging accident and self-directed healing is company narrative and is not corroborated by independent medical or court records in any source reviewed.
Married Gary Young in 1994 and co-founded the business with him; described in company and trade profiles as a trained opera singer before entering the business. She has run the company as CEO since 2015 and continued after her husband’s death in 2018. No regulatory action, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against her personally could be located in any source reviewed. Because the company is private, her biography rests on trade-profile pages rather than any primary filing, which is a limit on confidence rather than a criticism.
Trade profiles list David Stirling as Chief Operating Officer and Steve Bentley as Chief Financial Officer. Jared Turner was named President and Chief Operating Officer in a January 2018 press release carried by Direct Selling News and PR Newswire; whether he remains in that role in 2026 could not be reconfirmed and is listed as unverified. The material point for a prospective participant is that the founder whose record dominates the ownership dimension has been dead since 2018 and the company is now run by professional management - which is a real, if partial, mitigation and belongs in the assessment.
Two items on the corporate side sit above anything in the personal record, and their stage labels matter. First, on 18 September 2017 the corporate entity - not an employee, not a subsidiary - pleaded guilty in federal court in the District of Utah to misdemeanour Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act violations over rosewood oil from Peru and Brazil and spikenard oil from Nepal, imported between June 2010 and January 2016. The Department of Justice put the fair market retail value of the plant products involved at more than $3.5 million and not more than $9 million. Penalties totaled $760,000: a $500,000 criminal fine, $135,000 in restitution and $125,000 in community-service payments directed to plant-species conservation, plus five years’ probation, a mandated compliance program, audits and a requirement to publish statements about the conviction. A guilty plea requires the company to admit the conduct as a matter of law; it is categorically stronger than a warning letter, which adjudicates nothing, and stronger than a civil settlement, which typically admits nothing. Second, on 12 July 2018 Judge Christine S. Johnson of Utah’s Fourth Judicial District Court found that the company had litigated in bad faith a case it had itself brought and lost, and awarded $1,810,344.11 in fees plus approximately $50,000 in costs against it. Neither item concerns the compensation plan, and neither is a consumer-protection finding - but together they are a corporate-conduct record, not an inference.
Registered address
Lehi, Utah, USA
Privately held and not SEC-registered, so no audited financials exist. Trade-publication compilations estimate revenue at roughly $2.2 billion in 2020 and 2021, about $2.0 billion in 2022 and 2023, and about $1.8 billion in 2024 and 2025 - a decline of roughly 18% from the peak, leveling off over the last two years. A trade estimate also puts commissions paid at around 35% of revenue, roughly $630 million a year. Every one of those numbers is an outside estimate with undisclosed methodology, not a company figure and certainly not an audited one, and this report treats them as directional only. The company states distribution in more than 200 countries and territories and owns farms and distilleries in the United States, France, Ecuador, Croatia and Oman among others; the farms are real and verifiable, the exact country count is a company claim.
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
Young Living Essential Oils, LC, a privately held Utah limited liability company in Lehi, run since 2015 by co-founder Mary Young. Not SEC-registered, no audited accounts, so all revenue figures are trade-publication estimates.
|
| What does it really cost? |
CONCERN
Roughly $165 for the Premium Starter Kit with no separate membership fee, then 100 PV a month - about $1,200 a year - required indefinitely to stay commission-qualified at any rank.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes, rank by rank with medians as well as averages - a real credit. It shows a $13 median annual income across all US Brand Partners in 2024, down from $23 in 2023, with 68.1% at the bottom rank on a $5 median.
|
| Has any regulator found this to be a pyramid scheme? |
OK
No. No court and no regulator, ever. No FTC action, no consent order, no state attorney-general action. Two class actions alleged it; neither reached a merits ruling.
|
| Is there a criminal record? |
RED
Yes, on the corporate entity. It pleaded guilty on 18 September 2017 in federal court in the District of Utah to misdemeanour Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act violations over rosewood and spikenard oil imports, paying $760,000 with five years’ probation and a mandated compliance program.
|
| What happened in the trade-secret case? |
RED
Young Living brought it in 2012 against former employees who founded a competing essential-oil company, lost at trial on all counts in June 2017, and on 12 July 2018 was found by Judge Christine S. Johnson to have lacked an honest belief in its claims - with spoliation sanctions for destroying computers and $1,810,344.11 in fees plus about $50,000 in costs awarded against it.
|
| Are the products real? |
OK
Yes, and this is the strongest part of the file. Company-owned farms and distilleries across several countries, three decades of distilling, published batch testing, and a category with genuine demand independent of any income offer. Pricing runs roughly two-and-a-half to four times comparable tested oils at ordinary retail.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
WATCH
Mixed, and closer to miner. A real retail margin exists and customers can buy without enrolling - genuinely good. But commissions are paid on downline purchase volume with no published split between self-purchase and retail sale, the enroller takes 25% of a new person’s first three months, and everything above the base unilevel is gated on legs and organizational volume.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Join and buy the kit | ~$165 Premium Starter Kit; no separate membership or renewal fee |
| Stay commission-qualified for a year | ~$1,200 100 PV a month at every rank, indefinitely, plus shipping and tax |
| Cover that $1,200 from level-one commission alone | ~$15,000 of level-one downline volume at the 8% level-one unilevel rate |
| Beat the published all-participant median | ~92x the median outcome against a 2024 median annual income of $13 across all US Brand Partners |
Read this twice
Both sides of this arithmetic come from the company’s own documents. The cost side is the compensation plan effective 1 April 2025, which requires 100 PV of personal purchasing every month at every commission-eligible rank from Associate upward - roughly $1,200 a year, before shipping, tax, extra diffusers, sample vials, business materials or convention tickets, none of which is stated as a lump sum anywhere in enrollment materials. The income side is the 2024 US Income Disclosure Statement: a median of $5 a year at the Associate rank where 68.1% of participants sit, and $13 a year across all Brand Partners at every rank combined. The company states in terms that these are gross figures excluding costs and expenses. So the median participant is roughly $1,350 net-negative in year one once the kit is included, and about $1,190 negative every year after. That is the finding, and it is not contested by anyone. Three caveats belong here in fairness. First, a participant who does not seek commissions has no monthly requirement at all - they simply buy oils at member pricing, and the honest question for them is only whether member pricing on a $36.51 lavender beats an independently tested $12 one, which on the evidence it does not. Second, a real retail margin exists and customers can buy without enrolling, so a participant with a genuine customer base is spending materially less of that $1,200 on themselves than the arithmetic assumes. Third, Silver rank and above - about 1.0% of the US field - shows a 2024 median of $13,228, which clears the qualifying floor by a wide margin and is real money; the point is not that nobody earns, it is that reaching Silver requires 10,000 OGV, 1,000 PGV and two legs at 4,000 each, which is an organization, not a customer list.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
Modeled on the retail margin - the difference between the member price a distributor pays and the retail price a customer pays - which is the only earning a participant controls without an organization. A customer ordering around $100 a month is worth roughly $24. Cost is the real floor: 100 PV a month of personal purchasing is required to stay commission-qualified, and the starter kit spread over a first year brings the monthly figure to about $114. That is the number that matters, because it is payable whether or not a single customer ever orders. Downline income is excluded deliberately: the unilevel pays on organizational volume rather than on verified retail sales, and the Fast Start bonus - 25% on an enrollee’s early orders, worth about $41 on a $165 starter kit - is paid for an enrollment rather than for a sale, so modeling it would turn this into a recruiting calculator. For calibration, from the company’s own most recent income disclosure: roughly two-thirds of participants sit at the bottom rank with a median in single-digit dollars for the year, and the median across all participants is in the low tens of dollars. Your own subscription cost of $114/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
Young Living’s prices from third-party retailer listings, set against ordinary open-market equivalents at supermarkets, pharmacies, general e-commerce and named specialist aromatherapy suppliers. Comparators are given as bands because sizes and grades differ, and several of them are themselves GC/MS-tested - the relevant point is not that cheaper oils exist but that independently tested pure oils of the same commodity chemistry exist at a fraction of the price.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Lavender Essential Oil - $36.51 (15 mL) | NOW Foods lavender oil, 10 mL, pharmacy or general e-commerce | ~$8–$12 |
| Lavender, same size | Aura Cacia 100% pure lavender, GC/MS-tested, 15 mL, Whole Foods | ~$10–$15 |
| Lavender, organic positioning | Garden of Life USDA Organic lavender, 15 mL, Whole Foods | ~$12–$18 |
| Thieves blend - $52.30 (15 mL) | Clove-cinnamon-lemon-eucalyptus-rosemary blend from Plant Therapy or NOW Foods | ~$10–$20 |
| Peppermint Essential Oil - $33.22 (15 mL) | NOW Foods or Aura Cacia peppermint, comparable size | ~$8–$14 |
| NingXia Red - ~$45–$50 (750 mL) | Supermarket tart-cherry or mixed-antioxidant juice, comparable volume | ~$10–$25 |
| Premium Starter Kit - ~$165 | A diffuser at ordinary retail plus six or eight tested single oils | ~$60–$110 |
| 100 PV monthly qualification - ~$1,200/yr | No requirement, no rank, no qualification to maintain | $0 |
| Total as sold ~$1,365 in year one for a minimum-qualified participant |
Total, built yourself ~$60–$200 of comparable tested oils, bought when wanted |
Price-to-value
On the products alone the premium is roughly two-and-a-half to four times, which is not absurd for a vertically integrated producer that owns its farms and distilleries and publishes batch testing - some of that gap buys something real, and a buyer who values a controlled supply chain is not being irrational. What decides the exercise is the structure around the product. A customer can buy every one of these oils without enrolling, and should, because the moment the 100 PV monthly qualification enters the picture the comparison stops being about oil at all: roughly $1,200 a year of purchasing committed indefinitely against a published all-participant median income of $13. The sourcing claim that would justify the premium most directly is self-certified with no named external certifier, and the 2017 federal plea established it failing for two named botanicals over a six-year window.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Personal user and casual sharer
joins for member pricing, buys oils for the household, mentions them to friends
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 1% | −$220 |
| 6 mo | 2% | −$300 |
| 1 yr | 2% | −$450 |
| 3 yr | 3% | −$1,100 |
| 5 yr | 3% | −$1,750 |
Minimum-qualified Brand Partner
holds 100 PV a month, a handful of customers, no serious recruiting
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 5% | −$450 |
| 6 mo | 7% | −$760 |
| 1 yr | 9% | −$1,340 |
| 3 yr | 11% | −$3,700 |
| 5 yr | 12% | −$6,000 |
Aspiring builder
20+ hrs/wk, Fast Start and Rising Star, enrolling downlines onto autoship, chasing Executive then Silver
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 3% | −$1,000 |
| 6 mo | 5% | −$1,900 |
| 1 yr | 8% | −$3,600 |
| 3 yr | 13% | −$9,000 |
| 5 yr | 15% | −$13,500 |
Methodology note. These are modeled outcome ranges, not claims about any individual and not company figures. ANCHORED to Young Living’s own published documents: the 2024 US Income Disclosure Statement, which puts 68.1% of Brand Partners at the Associate rank with an average of $31 and a median of $5, gives an all-rank median of $13 and an all-rank average of $753, and shows Silver at a $13,228 median for about 0.7% of the field; the 2023 statement, with an all-rank median of $23 and a bottom-rank median of $0; and the compensation plan effective 1 April 2025, with its 100 PV monthly qualification at every rank, its 8/5/4/4/4 unilevel, its 25% Fast Start Bonus on up to 1,000 PV of a new enrollee’s first three months, and its OGV and leg thresholds. Anchored also to the ~$165 Premium Starter Kit and to the third-party retail prices used in the pricing comparison. MODELED by us: the dollar expense side beyond the qualifying purchases, because the company publishes no expense figure and states only that its income numbers are gross; the share of each cohort in cumulative profit at each horizon; and the cohort definitions themselves, which the company does not segment. One calibration note in the company’s favor: the 100 PV can in principle be met by genuine customer orders rather than self-purchase, and a participant with a real customer base sits materially better than these medians - the medians describe the typical participant, and the disclosure suggests the typical participant does not have one. One calibration note against: the top column at the five-year horizon reflects reaching roughly Silver, which about 1.0% of the US field achieves.
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
151A corporate federal criminal guilty plea in 2017
2A judicial finding of bad faith, in a case the company itself brought
3Spoliation sanctions for destroying relevant computers
4The founder’s pre-company record
5A median annual income of $13 across all US Brand Partners
6100 PV of personal purchasing every month, indefinitely, at every rank
7Commissions are paid on downline purchase volume, not on verified retail sales
8The bonuses above the base unilevel are headcount gates
9Two FDA warning letters eight years apart on near-identical claims
10The sourcing claim carrying the product premium is self-certified
11Watchdog and self-regulatory friction recurring across nine years
12A $5 million consumer class settlement in 2024
13Revenue down roughly 18% from the peak, on outside estimates
14The participant contract was found internally contradictory by a federal appeals court
15No audited financial disclosure of any kind
Green flags
101A real product with demand entirely independent of the income offer
2It owns its farms and distilleries and publishes batch testing
3A public, itemised, rank-by-rank income disclosure with medians
4No pyramid finding by any court or regulator, ever
5No renewal fee, no reinstatement fee and no cancellation fee
6It complied with the November 2020 "therapeutic grade" ruling rather than fighting it
7The 2022 self-regulatory case expressly recognized good-faith corrective action
8A court-supervised compliance program, not a voluntary promise
9The ingestible line is labeled and segregated rather than blended through the catalog
10Customers can buy everything without enrolling in anything
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Independent, named third-party certification of the sourcing claim - a recognized external standard with published audit results, rather than internal compliance programs and unnamed auditors - which is the single largest available upgrade because the criminal plea landed on exactly that claim.
- A published compensation-plan disclosure separating volume generated by verified sales to non-participant customers from volume generated by participant purchases, plus elimination or substantial reduction of the 100 PV monthly qualification.
- Three consecutive years with no new FDA warning letter, self-regulatory case or watchdog notification on health or income claims, alongside an income disclosure showing the all-participant median recovering rather than falling further from $23 to $13.
Downward
- Any further corporate guilty plea, any FTC enforcement action as opposed to a warning letter, or any state attorney-general action.
- A merits ruling - as opposed to a settlement - that the compensation plan operates as an illegal pyramid scheme.
- A further fall in the published all-participant median below $13, continued revenue decline below the roughly $1.8 billion estimate, or a third FDA warning letter on the same unapproved-drug claim categories.
Grade is D. Real farms, real oils, real demand - attached to a published median annual income of $13 across all US Brand Partners and a corporate criminal plea over the sourcing the brand is built on.
Start with what is genuinely good, because it is substantial. Essential oils are a real consumer category: people buy lavender, peppermint and cleaning blends at supermarkets and pharmacies with no income offer anywhere in sight, and they would keep buying them if every compensation plan in the sector disappeared. Young Living owns and operates farms and distilleries across several countries rather than white-labeling from a contract manufacturer, has been distilling for over three decades, publishes batch-level testing, segregates its ingestible line with distinct labeling, and publishes a rank-by-rank US income disclosure with medians as well as averages - which most of this industry does not. It complied with a 2020 self-regulatory ruling against the phrase "therapeutic grade" rather than fighting it, and a 2022 self-regulatory case expressly recognized its good-faith corrective action on distributor COVID claims. There is no renewal fee, no reinstatement fee and no cancellation fee. Any of those, on their own, would count in a company’s favor.
Then the company’s own disclosure. In 2024, 68.1% of US Brand Partners sat at the bottom Associate rank, where the average annual income was $31 and the median was $5. Across all ranks combined the median was $13 for the year, down from $23 in 2023. Set that against a Premium Starter Kit at roughly $165 and 100 PV of personal purchasing every month - about $1,200 a year - required indefinitely at every commission-eligible rank. The company states its figures are gross and exclude costs, so the typical participant is net-negative by well over a thousand dollars in the first year and roughly $1,190 a year thereafter. Only about 1.0% reach Silver or above, where the $13,228 median first clears that floor by a comfortable margin - and reaching Silver requires 10,000 in organizational volume, 1,000 in personal group volume and two legs at 4,000 each. That is an organization, not a customer list. The bonuses above the base unilevel confirm what the plan values: 25% to the enroller on a new person’s first three months of orders, and a team bonus that counts autoship-enrolled legs.
The third element is the conduct record, and it needs stating precisely because it is easy to overstate and easy to wave away. On 18 September 2017 the corporate entity itself pleaded guilty in federal court to misdemeanour Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act violations over rosewood and spikenard oil imported between June 2010 and January 2016, paying $760,000 and serving five years’ probation under a mandated compliance program. A guilty plea requires the company to admit the conduct as a matter of law - that is heavier than a warning letter, which adjudicates nothing, and heavier than a civil settlement, which typically admits nothing. It is also narrower than it sounds: misdemeanours about import sourcing, not fraud on participants, and the probation has long since run. Separately, on 12 July 2018, in a trade-secret case Young Living had brought against former employees who left to found a competing essential-oil company and had lost at trial on every count, Judge Christine S. Johnson of Utah’s Fourth Judicial District Court found the company lacked an honest belief in the propriety of its claims, after spoliation sanctions for destroying relevant computers, and awarded $1,810,344.11 in fees plus roughly $50,000 in costs against it. What ties the criminal plea to the grade is not the fine. It is that the sourcing-integrity claim is the product’s core differentiator, it is self-certified with no named external certifier, and the company has admitted in federal court that it failed for two named botanicals across a six-year window.
Buy the oils as a customer, or buy tested oils elsewhere
Every product is available without enrolling, and nothing about the compensation plan improves the oil. If you like this brand specifically, buy it as a customer with no kit, no monthly volume and no agreement. If what you want is pure, independently tested essential oil, GC/MS-tested lavender runs about $10 to $18 for 15 mL at Whole Foods or on general e-commerce against $36.51 here, and comparable peppermint about $8 to $14 against $33.22. That is the whole decision for most people.
Do the $13-against-$1,200 sum before you enrol
Both numbers are the company’s own: a median annual income of $13 across all US Brand Partners in 2024, and 100 PV a month - roughly $1,200 a year - required at every commission-eligible rank. If you intend to build, the honest question is not whether anyone earns, because Silver’s median of $13,228 is real money. It is what specific, written reason you have to believe you will be in the 1.0% who get there, and whether that reason is a plan or a hope.
Ask your sponsor what share of their group volume came from non-participant customers
The compensation plan pays on Personal Volume ordered by the downline organization and does not distinguish self-purchase from retail sale. That single ratio is what separates a real distribution business from a chain of qualifying purchases, and the company does not publish it. A sponsor who can answer it from their own back office has a real customer base; one who cannot, or who changes the subject to rank, has told you something important.
If the category interests you, sell into it without the plan
Aromatherapy, sleep, scent and non-toxic cleaning are large, durable search categories with real commercial intent and no shortage of tested open-market supply. Honest comparison content on oil chemistry, GC/MS testing, dilution and safety - including ingestion safety, which is precisely the subject this field is contractually restricted from discussing freely - is a merchant business with genuine demand. It needs no kit, no 100 PV, no rank and no permission to speak.
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.
- Young Living Sales Compensation Plan, USA - effective 1 April 2025 (PDF)
Young Living Sales Compensation Plan, USA, effective 1 April 2025 - five-level unilevel at 8/5/4/4/4; 100 PV monthly personal-purchase qualification at every commission-eligible rank; OGV, PGV and leg thresholds from Star through Royal Crown Diamond; Fast Start Bonus at 25% of up to 1,000 PV over a new enrollee’s first three months; Rank Achievement Bonus at $100/$150/$200 a month; Generation Leadership Bonus pooling 6.25% of companywide commissionable volume, capped at $100,000 per account per period
- Young Living Sales Compensation Plan flyer, USA - effective 1 April 2025 (PDF, rank/leg/OGV table)
- Young Living Generation Leadership Bonus FAQ, effective 1 April 2025 - 6.25% pool, $100,000 per-account monthly cap (PDF)
- Young Living US Policies and Procedures (PDF) - §5.3.2 income claims and the IDS-presentation requirement
- Young Living 2024 U.S. Income Disclosure Statement (PDF) - Associate 68.1%, $31 average / $5 median; all Brand Partners $753 average / $13 median
Young Living 2024 US Income Disclosure Statement - 68.1% of Brand Partners at Associate with a $31 average and $5 median; Silver at 0.7% with a $13,228 median; all-Brand-Partner average $753 and median $13; figures stated as gross and excluding costs
- Young Living 2024 U.S. Income Disclosure Statement - international-distribution PDF served by Young Living
- Young Living Digital Library - U.S. Annual Income Disclosure Statement (current edition)
- Young Living 2023 U.S. Income Disclosure Statement (PDF, mirrored by TINA.org, January 2024) - Associate 64.1%, $0 median; all Brand Partners $881 average / $23 median; top range to $2,802,046
Young Living 2023 US Income Disclosure Statement (mirrored by TINA.org, January 2024) - 64.1% at Associate with a $0 median; all-Brand-Partner average $881 and median $23; per-rank income ranges from $0 to $2,802,046
- TINA.org, "2023 Young Living Income Claims Database" (published 14 February 2024)
- DOJ press release: "Essential Oils Company Sentenced for Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act Violations, to Pay $760,000", 18 September 2017
US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, press release on the sentencing of an essential-oils company for Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act violations, 18 September 2017 - corporate guilty plea, $500,000 fine, $135,000 restitution, $125,000 community-service payment, five years’ probation, mandated compliance program; government valuation of the plant products at more than $3.5 million and not more than $9 million
- United States v. Young Living Essential Oils, D. Utah No. 2:17-cr-00541 - docket (guilty plea and sentence entered 18 September 2017, Magistrate Judge Dustin B. Pead)
- Misdemeanor Information, United States v. Young Living Essential Oils, L.C. - CITES/Endangered Species Act and Lacey Act counts (PDF)
- Deseret News, "Lehi company pleads guilty to trafficking oils from endangered plants", 18 September 2017
- doTERRA press release quoting the Utah Fourth Judicial District Court ruling of Judge Christine S. Johnson - $1,810,344.11 in fees plus ~$50,000 costs, 12 July 2018
Utah Fourth Judicial District Court, ruling of Judge Christine S. Johnson dated 12 July 2018 on the defendants’ post-trial motion for attorney’s fees - finding that the plaintiff lacked an honest belief in the propriety of its claims and had knowingly misrepresented facts about the discovery of a central document, following spoliation sanctions imposed during the case; award of $1,810,344.11 in fees plus approximately $50,000 in costs. Suit filed 21 June 2012; jury verdict against the plaintiff on all counts, June 2017. Parallel federal proceedings in the District of Utah, docket 2:13-cv-00502, on cross-claims of false advertising. Contemporaneous coverage: Salt Lake Tribune, 12 July 2018; Salt Lake Tribune archive article 5509719, June 2017
Not established by this document: No public copy of the Utah Fourth Judicial District Court's 10 July 2018 Ruling itself, nor of the parallel federal docket D. Utah 2:13-cv-00502, could be retrieved - Utah state district court records are not published online and the federal docket is not on CourtListener. The citations above are contemporaneous accounts quoting the ruling at length, including one by defense counsel of record.
- Salt Lake Tribune, "Judge finds Young Living acted in 'bad faith,' orders it to pay doTERRA $1.8 million", 12 July 2018
- Young Living press release: "Young Living Appeals Recent Court Ruling in doTERRA Lawsuit", 12 July 2018
- Defense counsel's account of the 10 July 2018 fee Ruling in Young Living Essential Oils, LC v. dōTERRA, Inc. et al., Utah Fourth Judicial District Court
- Deseret News, "Young Living to cover $1.8M in Doterra attorney fees following yearslong court battle" - quotes the judge's "knowing falsification of the evidence" finding
- FDA Warning Letter to Young Living Essential Oils, Denver District Office, 22 September 2014 (archived copy of the FDA page, ucm416023)
FDA Warning Letter to Young Living Essential Oils, Denver District Office, 22 September 2014 - unapproved new drugs under 21 U.S.C. § 321(g)(1)(B) and misbranding under § 352(f)(1); twelve named oils and blends. FDA Warning Letter, Office of Human and Animal Food Operations West Division 4, reference 615777, 10 June 2022 - five oils, the Lemongrass and Peppermint Vitality ingestibles, NingXia Red and several Nature’s Ultra CBD products
- FDA Warning Letter - Young Living Essential Oils Corporate, reference 615777, 10 June 2022
- Reuters, "FDA issues warning letters on Ebola treatment claims" - confirms the 2014 letter to Young Living, 24 September 2014
- NutraIngredients-USA, "Young Living warning letter points to need among MLMs to have plan to police language used by distributors", 20 July 2022
- DSSRC Case #64-2022 - Compliance Report, Young Living Essential Oils, LLC (COVID-19 distributor claims; closed 21 March 2022)
BBB National Programs, Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council case #64-2022, compliance report closed 21 March 2022 - COVID-19 distributor claims, good-faith corrective action recognized; DSSRC decision of 20 February 2020 on unsubstantiated distributor health claims; TINA.org brand file logging notifications dated 22 November 2016, 18 December 2017, 3 June 2019, 7 February 2022 and 14 February 2024
- DSSRC Case #13-2020 - Challenge, Young Living Essential Oils, LLC (decision of 20 February 2020 on unsubstantiated distributor health claims)
- TINA.org brand file - Young Living (chronology of notifications from November 2016 onward)
- TINA.org, "Young Living Distributor Violates Law with COVID Claims" - the February 2022 complaint underlying DSSRC #64-2022
- TINA.org, "Young Living's Unapproved Drug Treatment Claims, Part 5?", 28 July 2022
- BBB National Programs: "NAD Recommends that Young Living Essential Oils Discontinue 'Therapeutic Grade' and Health-Related Claims for its Essential Oils; Advertiser to Appeal" (22 July 2020) - the decision the NARB affirmed in November 2020
National Advertising Review Board decision, November 2020 - the term "therapeutic grade" found unsupported and recommended for discontinuation; company agreement to comply
Not established by this document: The NARB panel's own November 2020 decision text is not published free-to-air; BBB National Programs releases full NARB decisions only to Online Archive subscribers and the press. The citations above are the underlying NAD decision page, the company's own compliance FAQ, and a federal appellate opinion that records the NARB affirmance and its date.
- Young Living "Updated Therapeutic Grade FAQ", December 2020 (PDF) - the company's own notice that it is removing "therapeutic grade" and "100% pure" following the NAD/NARB directive
- MacNaughton v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC, 2d Cir. No. 22-0344 (2 May 2023) - opinion recording the NARB panel's 24 November 2020 affirmance that "therapeutic grade" is unsupported (PDF)
- NutraIngredients-USA, "Young Living appeals NAD decision that it must stop making 'therapeutic grade' claim on its essential oils", 27 July 2020
- Penhall et al. v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC, S.D. Cal. No. 3:19-cv-02340 - docket (filed 11 December 2019; voluntarily dismissed with prejudice 22 November 2023 following settlement)
Penhall v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC, filed 11 December 2019, voluntarily dismissed with prejudice 22 November 2023 following settlement; Shaughnessy (O’Shaughnessy) v. Young Living Essential Oils, L.C., US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, decided 28 April 2020, affirming denial of the motion to compel arbitration; MacNaughton et al. v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC, filed 27 February 2024, settlement of up to $5 million announced 30 May 2024 with $2-per-product refunds capped at $20 per claimant
- Penhall v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC - class action complaint alleging an unlawful pyramid scheme (PDF)
- Penhall et al. v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC - plaintiffs' motion for voluntary dismissal with prejudice, 22 November 2023 (PDF)
- Julie O'Shaughnessy v. Young Living Essential Oils, L.C., 5th Cir. No. 19-51169 (28 April 2020) - affirming denial of the motions to compel arbitration (W.D. Tex. 1:19-cv-412) (PDF)
- Julie O'Shaughnessy v. Young Living Essential Oils - Justia case page, 5th Cir. No. 19-51169
- MacNaughton et al. v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC - official settlement website, Circuit Court of St. Clair County, Illinois, Case No. 24LA0329 ($2 per product, $20 cap; final approval hearing 15 July 2024)
- MacNaughton v. Young Living Essential Oils, LC, 2d Cir. No. 22-0344 (2 May 2023) - the appellate ruling that revived the New York GBL and unjust-enrichment claims before settlement
- Young Living Seed to Seal - sourcing, science and standards documentation, including the Lacey Act Compliance Program
Young Living Seed to Seal standards documentation; third-party retailer price listings for 15 mL singles (Lavender $36.51, Thieves $52.30, Peppermint $33.22); Happi and Business For Home company profiles for revenue estimates of roughly $2.2 billion in 2020–21 falling to roughly $1.8 billion in 2024–25 and a commissions estimate of about 35% of revenue; Skeptical Inquirer profile of the founder, and Wikipedia’s sourced biography citing contemporaneous court and press records
Not established by this document: The specific third-party retailer price listings for 15 mL singles (Lavender $36.51, Thieves $52.30, Peppermint $33.22) and the Happi and Business For Home revenue estimates (~$2.2bn in 2020–21 falling to ~$1.8bn in 2024–25) were retrieved as live storefront and trade-profile snapshots without a stable citable URL that could be re-verified here; no substitute link is asserted rather than risk a wrong one.
- Young Living, "Seed to Seal" - company quality-standard page (US)
- William M. London, "D. Gary Young (1949–2018), Diploma Mill Naturopath and Promoter of Essential Oils", Skeptical Inquirer, 9 January 2019
- Wikipedia, "Young Living" - sourced company article citing contemporaneous court and press records
- Wikipedia, "D. Gary Young" - sourced biography of the founder
What we could not get
- The most useful line on this page: Young Living did NOT receive a 2020 FTC COVID-19 warning letter, so far as an exhaustive search can establish. This is a widely repeated premise and it appears to be wrong. The FTC’s own index of corporate recipients in its 2020 coronavirus sweep does not include Young Living Essential Oils, LC; a direct probe of the FTC warning-letter repository following the agency’s standard naming convention returned a 404. What does exist is an FTC COVID warning letter dated 22 September 2020 to a same-surnamed but entirely unrelated individual promoting an alkaline-diet health philosophy, with no affiliation to this company or to its founder. That is a name coincidence, not a regulatory action, and the two should never be conflated. The consequence matters: the company’s most consequential adverse actions on health claims are the two FDA warning letters and the self-regulatory case history - not an FTC action, because there is not one.
- The exact judge and federal docket number for the 2017 Lacey Act criminal case - the Department of Justice press release retrieved does not state them, and a PACER search would be needed. The court (District of Utah), the sentencing date, the charges, the penalties and the probation term are all confirmed.
- The outcome of Young Living’s stated appeal of the July 2018 bad-faith fee ruling. The company announced it would appeal; whether it was pursued to conclusion, and with what result, could not be confirmed.
- The exact court and district for the Penhall pyramid-scheme class action, and the exact court and docket for the 2024 MacNaughton settlement. Filing and disposition dates are confirmed; the caption details are not.
- The exact current 2026 price and contents of the Premium Starter Kit direct from the company’s own site, which returned access restrictions. The roughly $165 figure is triangulated from consistent third-party sources across 2024 and 2025.
- The Essential Rewards minimum of approximately 50 PV a month, and the $50-per-share value of the Rising Star Team Bonus. Both come from third-party distributor guides rather than the primary program documents, which could not be retrieved. The 100 PV commission-qualification threshold, by contrast, is confirmed in the official compensation plan.
- Current official company guidance on essential-oil ingestion safety. A current safety or FAQ page was not retrieved in this pass, so nothing is asserted here about the company’s present internal-use advice beyond the labeling distinction between the Vitality line and the standard oils.
- Whether any state attorney general has ever taken enforcement action - none was found, but a targeted fifty-state database search was not exhaustive, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also unconfirmed: whether Jared Turner, named President and COO in January 2018, remains in that role in 2026, and the company’s current headcount and executive roster beyond what trade profiles report.
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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Young Living - frequently asked
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Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Young Living’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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Young Living is graded D as of July 31, 2026. Grades move when the evidence moves - a new income disclosure, a regulatory action, a rewritten compensation plan. Leave your address and you will get one email if this one does.
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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 Young Living 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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