The research and references behind our compensation estimates
Our compensation estimates are built on real market data — not guesses. Below are the primary categories of sources we use. We review and update our data annually. For a full explanation of how data is applied, see our Methodology page.
We reviewed publicly available compensation information from 30+ licensed agencies across the United States. Agencies surveyed include national agencies with multi-state operations as well as regional specialists in high-volume states (CA, NY, TX, FL, IL). Agency data provides the primary basis for our state tier ranges.
Every clinic figure on this site comes from this one federal dataset. Fertility clinics that perform assisted reproductive technology cycles report annually to the CDC, which publishes clinic counts and cycle volumes by clinic and location. We extract three fields: how many clinics report in a state or metro, how many of those run a donor-egg program, and how many run a gestational carrier program. That extract covers all 50 states and 61 metro areas.
How a metro figure is built. The CDC reports each clinic at its own street address and publishes no metro grouping, so the metro totals on city guides are ours rather than the CDC's. A clinic counts for a city when it sits within about 40 miles of that city's centroid, using 2025 Census Gazetteer (place + ZCTA centroids). Neighbouring metros therefore overlap — a clinic between two cities is counted for both, because it is genuinely reachable from both. Until 3 August 2026 we matched only clinics whose own address named the city, which undercounted every metro and left twelve city guides with no figure at all.
We use it for one thing: telling you how far you are likely to travel. Egg donation involves 10 to 15 in-person monitoring visits inside a few weeks, and that travel is the largest time cost of a cycle. Where no local clinic runs the relevant program, the guide says so and explains that agencies match you elsewhere and pay for the travel.
What we deliberately do not claim from it. The CDC's cycle totals count all ART cycles, the large majority of which are conventional IVF by intended parents using their own eggs. The dataset does not break out donor-egg or gestational-carrier cycles, so we do not publish those totals or present them as a measure of demand for donors or surrogates. We also do not claim that clinic density sets your compensation — agencies set compensation and recruit across state lines. Both claims appeared on this site until 2 August 2026 and were removed as unsupported.
The CDC publishes this series with a two to three year lag, so the 2022 report is the most recent extract we hold. Clinic counts appear on 172 state and metro guides.
cdc.gov/art →ASRM publishes the practice guidance the US fertility industry works to. Two of its recommendations are stated as fact across our guides, so they are named here rather than left implicit: that a donor should undergo no more than six retrieval cycles in her lifetime, and that compensation should not be tied to the number or quality of eggs retrieved. ASRM's 2024 Gamete and embryo donation guidance also recommends oocyte donors be 21–34. Agencies commonly screen to 21–31, which is a tighter commercial limit and not what ASRM says — our FAQ previously credited the 21–31 figure to ASRM and was corrected on 3 August 2026.
These are professional recommendations, not law. No state statute caps donation cycles, and an agency is free to set stricter criteria of its own. Where a guide describes an age, BMI or cycle limit, it says whether the limit comes from ASRM guidance, from agency screening, or from a statute — those three are routinely conflated elsewhere and they carry very different weight.
asrm.org →Egg donors are screened as tissue donors under federal law. FDA rules on human cells and tissues (21 CFR Part 1271) require infectious-disease testing and donor-eligibility determination before a retrieval, which is why the medical screening described in our guides is not optional and is paid for by the agency rather than by you.
fda.gov →RESOLVE provides consumer-facing information about third-party reproduction including egg donation and surrogacy processes, costs, and expectations. Used for process context and consumer-perspective validation.
resolve.org →SEEDS publishes ethical guidelines for egg donor and surrogate compensation, advocating for fair and transparent practices. Their compensation guidance is used as a cross-reference for reasonableness of our ranges.
seedsethics.org →Reproductive attorneys and law firms publish state-by-state legal guides covering surrogacy laws, enforceability of contracts, parentage orders, and compensation legality. We used publicly available legal analyses to inform our state tier classifications and legal disclaimers, particularly for states where compensated surrogacy may be restricted.
Sources include publications from reproductive law practices and state bar association family law sections. We do not cite specific firms to avoid the appearance of endorsement. For legal guidance specific to your state, consult a licensed reproductive attorney.
Where a state guide describes surrogacy law, the statement is drawn from that state's own statute or from a controlling decision of its courts, not from a secondary summary. Secondary summaries go stale: one widely cited law-firm map still showed Illinois requiring a genetic connection more than a year after the legislature removed it. Every primary source cited across the state guides is listed here.
14 states are listed nowhere above, and that is the finding, not a gap. Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin have no surrogacy statute and no controlling published decision. There is no primary source to link because there is no governing law. Each of those guides says so plainly: nothing in the law of those states sets a minimum age, requires a prior birth, guarantees you your own attorney, or protects your medical decisions. In a silent state your contract is the only floor you have. Where an adjacent provision — an adoption-code carve-out, a parentage act — or a persuasive case bears on the question, the guide names it in the text.
Statutes were last verified 31 July 2026. Surrogacy law moves: Michigan legalised compensated surrogacy in 2025, Illinois removed its genetic-connection requirement in December 2025, Hawaii's statute took effect in January 2026, and Utah's gestational agreement provisions were renumbered in September 2025. Confirm current law with your own attorney before signing anything.
We reviewed anonymized, self-reported compensation data shared in egg donor and surrogate communities including Reddit (r/EggDonation, r/Surrogacy), dedicated surrogacy community forums, and Facebook groups. This data provides a real-world check on agency-reported ranges and helps us understand the gap between published ranges and actual paid compensation.
State-level cost of living indices (MIT Living Wage Calculator, Bureau of Labor Statistics regional data) were used to validate and contextualize geographic compensation differences between our tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 states. Higher-tier states generally correlate with significantly higher cost of living, which is a key driver of higher compensation rates.
| Data Type | Last Updated | Update Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Agency compensation ranges | 2025–2026 | Annual |
| CDC clinic counts (state & metro) | 2022 report | When CDC publishes a newer release |
| State tier classifications | 2025 | Annual or on major legal changes |
| Education premium data | 2024–2025 | Annual |
| Experience premium data | 2024–2025 | Annual |
| Allowance estimates (surrogate) | 2025–2026 | Annual |
Know of a data source we should include? Want to report inaccurate data?
Contact Us