Infertility treatment ranges from a few hundred dollars for basic diagnostic testing to $40,000 or more for advanced procedures involving donor eggs. The total you’ll pay depends on which treatments you need, how many cycles it takes, whether you need donor material, and how much your insurance covers. Here’s what to expect at each stage.
Diagnostic Testing: $400 to $2,000+
Before any treatment begins, you’ll go through a round of diagnostic tests to figure out what’s causing the problem. A common imaging test that checks whether the fallopian tubes are open runs $400 to $1,800 without insurance. Bloodwork to measure hormone levels and a semen analysis add to the tab, though these tend to be less expensive individually. Many insurance plans cover diagnostic testing even when they don’t cover treatment itself, so this phase is worth checking your benefits for before paying out of pocket.
IUI: $2,400 to $7,500 Per Cycle
Intrauterine insemination, where sperm is placed directly into the uterus around ovulation, is the most affordable active treatment. A minimal stimulation cycle (using fewer or no injectable drugs) runs about $2,400 to $3,000 total, including roughly $500 in medication costs. If your doctor recommends a more aggressive approach with stronger ovulation-stimulating drugs, the price jumps to $4,300 to $7,500 per cycle, with medications alone accounting for $500 to $3,000 of that range.
Most people try two to four IUI cycles before moving to IVF, so the cumulative cost can reach $10,000 to $30,000 even with the “cheaper” option. Success rates per cycle are lower than IVF, typically in the 10 to 20 percent range depending on the underlying cause. That trade-off between lower per-cycle cost and lower per-cycle success is worth discussing with your doctor before committing to multiple rounds.
IVF: $14,000 to $20,000 Per Cycle
A single IVF cycle has a base cost of $14,000 to $20,000, and that number is just the starting point. It typically covers monitoring appointments, the egg retrieval procedure, lab fertilization, and embryo transfer. What it often doesn’t include: medications, genetic testing of embryos, and embryo freezing.
Medication Costs
IVF protocols require daily injectable hormones for roughly 8 to 14 days to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs. These medications run $3,000 to $8,000 per cycle, and the dose depends on your age, hormone levels, and how your body responds. Oral fertility medications are far cheaper at $30 to $130 per cycle, but they’re used for simpler protocols, not standard IVF.
Frozen Embryo Transfers
If your first transfer doesn’t work, or if you freeze embryos for future use, a frozen embryo transfer is a separate cost of about $3,500 to $3,600. This includes the required lab work, ultrasounds, thawing, and the transfer itself. It’s significantly less than a full IVF cycle because you skip the egg retrieval and stimulation phase entirely.
What a Realistic Total Looks Like
Adding medications and one round of genetic testing to the base cycle cost, a single IVF attempt often lands between $20,000 and $30,000. Many people need more than one cycle. Live birth rates per single embryo transfer at top clinics run about 56 to 62 percent for women under 40, dropping to around 51 percent for women 41 to 42. Those are strong odds per attempt, but they also mean that roughly 4 in 10 transfers don’t result in a baby, and another round adds another $3,500 (frozen transfer) to $25,000+ (full new cycle) to the bill.
Donor Eggs and Third-Party Reproduction
Using donor eggs pushes the total cost substantially higher. A fresh donor egg cycle, where a donor goes through stimulation and retrieval specifically for you, typically costs $25,000 to $40,000 or more. That figure includes the IVF procedure itself plus several additional layers: agency fees, donor compensation ($8,000 to $15,000 in 2025), legal contracts, medical screening for the donor, insurance, and sometimes travel expenses.
Using frozen donor eggs from an egg bank is generally less expensive than a fresh cycle, though you’ll still pay for the eggs themselves, shipping, and the IVF transfer. Donor sperm is considerably cheaper, usually a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per vial plus the cost of the insemination or IVF procedure.
What Insurance Actually Covers
Coverage varies enormously depending on where you live and who your employer is. Around 17 states currently mandate that private insurers cover some form of infertility services: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. But the details matter. Some mandates only cover diagnosis, not treatment. Ohio, for example, covers infertility testing when it’s related to a suspected medical condition but doesn’t require coverage of fertility drugs or IVF. Some states exclude small employers, religious organizations, or self-insured plans (which is how many large corporations structure their benefits).
Even in states with strong mandates, you may face lifetime caps, limits on the number of covered cycles, or requirements to try less expensive treatments first. If you’re on a self-insured employer plan, state mandates don’t apply to you at all, regardless of where you live. Call your insurer directly and ask specifically about infertility benefits, cycle limits, and whether IVF requires prior authorization. The difference between good and poor coverage can easily be $30,000 or more.
Grants and Financial Assistance
Several nonprofit organizations offer grants that can offset a meaningful portion of treatment costs. The Baby Quest Foundation awards $2,000 to $16,000 in combined funds and medications, and is open to all U.S. permanent residents regardless of gender, marital status, or sexual orientation. The application fee is $50. The Cade Foundation provides up to $10,000 per family for fertility treatment or domestic adoption, with the same $50 application fee.
Some grants have geographic or community requirements. The Jewish Fertility Foundation awards grants roughly monthly in nine U.S. communities, with no application fee. ANEDEN Gives offers at least $5,000 per family but currently only serves patients at specific clinics in Houston and Seattle. RESOLVE, the National Infertility Association, maintains a regularly updated directory of these programs on their website.
Beyond grants, many fertility clinics offer multi-cycle discount packages, refund programs (where you get a partial refund if treatment doesn’t result in a live birth), and payment plans. Specialty lending companies also offer fertility-specific loans with fixed interest rates. These don’t reduce the cost, but they can make it more manageable month to month.
How Costs Add Up Over Time
The numbers above represent individual procedures, but infertility treatment is rarely a single event. A common path might look like this: $1,000 to $2,000 in diagnostic testing, two IUI cycles at $3,000 to $7,500 each, then one or two IVF cycles at $20,000 to $28,000 each. That sequence can total $50,000 to $70,000 or more over a year or two, not counting time off work, travel to a clinic, or the emotional toll of repeated cycles.
If you’re weighing your options, the most important financial question isn’t just “how much does one cycle cost?” It’s how many cycles you’re likely to need given your age, diagnosis, and the treatment approach your doctor recommends. Asking your clinic for their success rates broken down by age and diagnosis, and then doing the math on expected total cost rather than per-cycle cost, gives you a much more realistic picture of what you’re committing to financially.