What is the Cost of IVF?

The cost of IVF can vary between countries, clinics and individual circumstances. This article aims to answer the questions about IVF costs, but the information represents averages. You may find that the actual costs are much higher than quoted here.

In the United States, the average cost for a single cycle of IVF is around $12,000. However, the cost could be as high as $15,000 or as low as $10,000, but it will rarely be any lower than this.

Any quote that you find that is lower than $10,000 is likely to be an incomplete quote. What this means is that there will probably be extra expenses or items that haven’t been accounted for in the base quote. Be sure to ask exactly what the quote includes, and ask for a written, itemized quote so you can compare quotes between different clinics.

If you have frozen embryos stored from a previous IVF cycle, it will be much cheaper to have these transferred than going through a full cycle. Frozen embryo transfer costs an average of $3,000.

What additional costs could be encountered?

If you require additional assisted reproductive technologies, your costs will increase by up to $12,000.

• ICSI, when an individual sperm is injected directly into the egg, could cost an extra $1,000 or $1,500.
• PGD, genetic testing of individual embryos, would cost an extra $3,000.
• Storage of frozen embryos will cost you from about $300.
• Using an egg donor will cost from $25,000 to $30,000 for a single IVF cycle.
• Using a sperm donor will cost you between $200 and $3,000 on top of the basic IVF costs, making the total cost of a single cycle $13,000 – $17,000.
• Using a donated embryo can be cheaper than a basic IVF cycle, costing from $5,000 to $7,000. This cost is for a created, frozen embryo; if you were to have an embryo specially created for you, it would be very expensive.

Many fertility clinics have payment plans to make it easier for people to afford IVF. Ask about these options at different clinics before you decide that you cannot afford to go ahead with IVF.

Some clinics have refund programs – you pay a set IVF fee which is commonly $20,000 to $30,000, part of which is refunded if you don’t fall pregnant after a specific number of IVF cycles, usually three or four.

The term “successful cycle” is open to different interpretations, so be sure to ask what the individual clinic means by ‘completing a successful cycle’. Some clinics consider a positive pregnancy test to be a ‘success’; if you then miscarry, you won’t qualify for a refund, so make certain you understand the terms and conditions and that you are comfortable with them.

Another important point, when considering which fertility clinic to go with, is to look at the success rate of the individual clinic. A clinic which has a cheaper price may not have a high success rate and you may need to have multiple repeat cycles to achieve a pregnancy. This will quickly negate any initial savings you may have made.

When you get an itemized quote from a clinic, make sure that it is for a traditional IVF treatment, not a mini-IVF or micro-IVF treatment. This new type of fertility treatment involves lower doses of medications, less monitoring of the embryos before transfer and the results are as yet unclear. The cost will be less, around $5,000, but the treatment may not be suited to you.

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