IVF Cost Calculator
IVF across the cycles it may take
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Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Educational estimate only. Confirm the assumptions, current rules, fees, and rounding that apply to your situation before making a decision.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter your clinic's price for one cycle from its own written quote, then how many cycles you would attempt before stopping. Those two fields are what the page waits for.
- 02
Add the medications for a cycle, genetic testing of embryos if you would have it, and a frozen embryo transfer. Together with the cycle price these make the cost of one full attempt.
- 03
Replace the success rate with the figure your clinic quotes for your own age and history. It opens on the national SART figure for ages 35-37, and rates vary enormously: 53.2% under 35 against 4.1% over 42.
- 04
Enter any employer fertility benefit as a lifetime dollar figure, then a multi-cycle refund programme's price and refund percentage if you have been offered one, and a financing rate and term.
- 05
Read the expected cost to one live birth together with the chance of no live birth beside it, then follow the cycle-by-cycle table, which shows the cumulative chance and the cumulative spend at each step.
Formula
One cycle, all in = the cycle price + medications + genetic testing + a frozen embryo transfer. With a success rate p per cycle and up to n cycles: the chance of still needing cycle k = (1 − p) raised to the power (k − 1); expected cycles run = those chances added up across all n; expected spending = one cycle all in × expected cycles run. Cumulative chance of a live birth within n cycles = 1 − (1 − p) to the power n, and the chance of none is the rest. The employer benefit, a lifetime figure, comes off expected spending but never takes it below zero. Expected cost to one live birth = expected spending after the benefit ÷ the cumulative chance of a birth, and the page shows an em dash instead when the success rate is zero. If every cycle is attempted = one cycle all in × n, less the benefit. Refund programme, on average = its price − its price × the refund percentage × the chance of no live birth. The financed payment is the ordinary amortizing-payment formula on expected spending after the benefit.
Example
A clinic quotes $15,000 for a cycle, with $5,000 of medications, $4,500 for genetic testing and $5,000 for a frozen embryo transfer: $29,500 for one full attempt. The household would attempt three and uses the national SART figure for ages 35-37, 39.9% live births per intended egg retrieval. Across three cycles the chance of a live birth is 78.3% and the chance of none is 21.7%. Expected spending is 1.96 cycles, $57,885, and a $25,000 lifetime employer benefit covers $25,000 of it, leaving $32,885. Divided by the 78.3% chance of a birth, that is $42,003 per live birth. If all three cycles are used the cost is $63,500 after the benefit. A refund programme at $40,000 that returns 70%, $28,000, when there is no birth costs $33,922 on average, $1,037 more than paying cycle by cycle, but it caps the worst case. Financing $32,885 at 12% over 60 months is $732 a month and $11,005 of interest. Change only the success rate to the under-35 figure of 53.2% and the cost per live birth falls to $27,596; at the 38-40 figure of 26.2% it rises to $70,793.
Definitions
- Cycle
- One round of ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval with the intention of creating embryos to transfer. Clinic prices usually cover the cycle itself, with medications, genetic testing and transfers quoted separately.
- Live births per intended egg retrieval
- SART's measure: the percentage of cycles started with the intent of egg retrieval that led to a live birth, counting all the embryo transfers that followed from it. It is the fairest per-attempt figure because it counts cycles that never reached a transfer.
- Frozen embryo transfer
- Placing a previously frozen embryo into the uterus in a later cycle. Because several transfers can follow one retrieval, a transfer price is quoted separately from the cycle.
- Refund or shared-risk programme
- A package covering several cycles for one up-front price, returning part of it if there is no live birth. It costs more on average than paying per cycle and exists to cap the worst outcome.
- Lifetime maximum benefit
- An employer fertility benefit expressed as a total dollar figure for as long as you are covered, rather than an amount that renews each year. Once it is used it is gone.
Good to know
Pricing a course of treatment rather than a single cycle
Almost every published IVF price describes one cycle, and almost nobody needs exactly one. That mismatch is the reason a household can budget carefully from a clinic's quote and still be taken aback by what the year costs. This page prices the course instead. It starts by assembling what one full attempt actually costs, because the headline cycle price rarely includes everything: in the example a $15,000 cycle carries $5,000 of medications, $4,500 for genetic testing of embryos and $5,000 for a frozen embryo transfer, making $29,500 for one attempt. Ask the clinic which of these its quoted figure includes, because the convention differs from practice to practice, and medications in particular are often billed by a separate pharmacy. Then it applies a success rate per cycle. If each attempt succeeds with probability p, the chance of still needing a second is 1 − p, the chance of still needing a third is that squared, and so on. Adding those chances together gives the number of cycles you should expect to run. At a 39.9% success rate across up to three attempts that comes to 2.0 cycles, or $57,885 of expected spending, which an employer benefit of $25,000 reduces to $32,885. It is worth being clear about what an expected figure is and is not. It is an average across many households in the same position. No individual household spends $57,885; they spend one cycle, or two, or three. The page therefore also prints the extreme: if all three cycles are used, the cost is $63,500 after the benefit. Both numbers belong in a budget, the expected one for planning and the maximum for deciding whether the course is affordable at all. The cycle-by-cycle table shows the cumulative spending at each step beside the cumulative chance of success, so it is possible to see exactly where a household would stand after each attempt rather than only at the end.
What the national success rates say, and what they cannot say
The most important field on this page is the success rate, and it is the one most likely to be wrong if left alone. It opens on a national benchmark so the page has somewhere to start, but the label asks you to replace it, and the reason is visible in the data itself. SART's Final National Summary Report for reporting year 2023, covering a patient's own eggs, reports live births per intended egg retrieval including all the embryo transfers that followed: 53.2% under 35, 39.9% at 35 to 37, 26.2% at 38 to 40, 13.2% at 41 to 42 and 4.1% over 42. Those bands came from 57,602, 38,895, 37,878, 19,367 and 13,989 cycle starts respectively, so they are not small samples. They are, however, national averages across every clinic and every patient history, and the spread between the top and bottom band is more than twelvefold. The effect on the answer is dramatic, which is precisely why the page makes you confront it. Holding every price constant and changing only the success rate, the expected cost to one live birth is $27,596 at the under-35 rate, $42,003 at the 35-to-37 rate and $70,793 at the 38-to-40 rate. The chance of no live birth after three attempts moves from 10.3% to 21.7% to 40.2% across the same three figures. No other input on the page moves the result that far. Two cautions matter when you replace the number. A clinic's advertised rates may be calculated on a different denominator, for example per transfer rather than per intended retrieval, which flatters them by excluding cycles that never reached a transfer; ask which basis is being quoted. And a population rate is not a personal forecast. It describes what happened to a large group of people, not what will happen to you, and this page never presents it as a prediction.
Refund programmes are insurance, not a discount
Many clinics offer a multi-cycle package, sometimes called a shared-risk or refund programme, in which you pay a larger sum up front for several cycles and receive part of it back if there is no live birth. These are frequently presented as a saving, and the arithmetic on this page is designed to show what they really are. The programme is priced by people who know the success rates better than the patient does, and it is priced to be profitable on average. In the example a $40,000 programme returning 70%, which is $28,000, when there is no birth costs $33,922 on average once weighted by the 21.7% chance of that outcome, against $32,885 paying cycle by cycle: about $1,037 more. That is the normal result, and it is not evidence of anything unfair. It is the price of transferring risk, exactly as with any insurance policy. The case for buying one is therefore not that it is cheaper on average but that it caps the worst outcome. The worst outcome here is severe: three cycles used, $63,500 spent after the employer benefit, and no baby. A household for whom that result would be financially ruinous, rather than merely painful, is buying something real by paying $1,037 more on average to bound it. A household with the reserves to absorb the worst case is usually better off paying per cycle and keeping the difference. The arithmetic can also flip. Where the odds are poorer, the refund is more likely to be triggered and the programme can become cheaper on average as well as safer: at a 26.2% success rate the same $40,000 programme costs $28,745 on average against $42,338 paying per cycle, $13,593 less. Before signing, read the definitions rather than the headline. What counts as a live birth, which cycles are included, what happens if you withdraw or are disqualified partway, and whether medications and testing are inside or outside the price all change the deal materially.
Employer benefits, pre-tax dollars and financing
Three things reduce what a course of IVF actually costs a household, and they work in a particular order. The first and largest is usually an employer fertility benefit. These are normally expressed as a lifetime dollar maximum rather than an amount that renews each year, and they are often administered by a specialist fertility benefits company rather than by the health plan, with their own network and their own authorisation rules. In the example, a $25,000 benefit covers $25,000 of $57,885 of expected spending. Before relying on the figure, confirm four things: whether medications count against it or are covered separately, whether you must use a particular clinic network, what authorisation is required before a cycle starts, and what happens to the unused balance if you change jobs mid-treatment. The second is paying with pre-tax dollars. IRS Publication 502 lists fertility enhancement as a medical expense, naming procedures such as in vitro fertilization, including temporary storage of eggs or sperm, which means HSA and FSA money can be used. The same publication names surrogacy expenses as not includible, so the boundary is worth checking against your own situation. Paid out of pocket instead, the spending counts toward the itemized medical deduction, but only the part above 7.5% of adjusted gross income, and only if you itemize at all, so it helps a minority of households. The third is financing, which lowers nothing but spreads what is left. In the example, financing the $32,885 of expected spending at 12% over 60 months costs $732 a month and $11,005 of interest. Two features of this are easy to miss. The payment is fixed while the treatment is not, so a household that succeeds on the first cycle may be repaying a loan sized for a course it did not need. And a refund programme has to be paid in full up front, which is why the page prices financing against the expected out-of-pocket figure rather than against the programme price.
Frequently asked questions
How much does IVF cost in total?
Ask what one full attempt costs, then how many attempts are realistic. In this page's example one cycle is $29,500 all in: $15,000 for the cycle, $5,000 of medications, $4,500 for genetic testing and $5,000 for a frozen embryo transfer. Across up to three cycles at a 39.9% success rate, expected spending is about two cycles, $57,885, and a $25,000 employer benefit brings it to $32,885. If all three are used it is $63,500 after the benefit. Prices vary widely by clinic and region, so the quote in your hand is the figure to enter.
What is the cost per live birth with IVF?
It is expected spending divided by the chance of a birth within the cycles you would attempt, and it is an average across many households rather than a price anyone is quoted. In the example it is $42,003. Change only the success rate and it moves sharply: at the SART under-35 rate of 53.2% it is $27,596, and at the 38-40 rate of 26.2% it is $70,793. That sensitivity is the reason to use your own clinic's figure rather than a national one.
What are the national IVF success rates by age?
SART's Final National Summary Report for reporting year 2023, for a patient's own eggs, gives live births per intended egg retrieval including all embryo transfers: 53.2% under 35, 39.9% at 35-37, 26.2% at 38-40, 13.2% at 41-42 and 4.1% over 42. Those came from 57,602, 38,895, 37,878, 19,367 and 13,989 cycle starts. They are population averages, not a forecast for any individual, and your clinic's own rates for your age and history are the ones that matter.
Are IVF refund or shared-risk programmes worth it?
They are insurance rather than a discount, and they are priced to cost more on average. In the example a $40,000 programme returning 70%, $28,000, when there is no birth costs $33,922 on average against $32,885 paying cycle by cycle, so it costs $1,037 more. The case for one is that it caps the worst outcome. Where the odds are poorer the arithmetic flips: at a 26.2% success rate the same programme costs $28,745 on average against $42,338, so it is $13,593 cheaper. Read what counts as a live birth, which cycles are included and who is eligible.
How does an employer fertility benefit work?
Usually as a lifetime dollar maximum rather than a yearly one, and often administered by a separate fertility benefits company rather than by the health plan itself. In the example a $25,000 benefit covers $25,000 of $57,885 of expected spending, leaving $32,885. Confirm the figure, whether medications count against it, whether it requires using a particular network of clinics, and what happens to it if you change jobs mid-treatment.
Can I pay for IVF with an HSA or FSA?
Yes. IRS Publication 502 lists fertility enhancement as a medical expense, naming procedures such as in vitro fertilization, including temporary storage of eggs or sperm. Surrogacy expenses are named there as not includible. Paid out of pocket instead, the same spending counts toward the itemized medical deduction, but only the part above 7.5% of adjusted gross income, so it rarely helps unless the year's medical spending is large relative to income.
What does financing IVF cost?
In the example, financing the $32,885 of expected spending at 12% over 60 months is $732 a month and $11,005 of interest. Two things are worth noting. The payment is fixed but the spending is not, because you may need fewer cycles or more. And a refund programme has to be paid in full up front, which is why the page prices financing against the expected out-of-pocket figure rather than against the programme price.