Egg freezing can cost $47,000 in New York City, and 10 findings show why

Deciding whether and when to have children can carry a price tag, and a growing number of women are paying it before any pregnancy. Studies show more women choosing to freeze their eggs as they postpone motherhood to pursue education and careers. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., put the practice in the headlines when she announced back in August that she is freezing her eggs. The 36-year-old, who represents New York's 14th congressional district, wrote that the choice took time "to consider, weigh and save up for." Her phrasing names something many women recognize. Freezing eggs is a medical step and a financial one at once, and the money can shape the timing. Ocasio-Cortez said on ABC's "This Week" that a run for president or the U.S. Senate remains possible. She did not reply to a request for comment.

Cost stands between many women and the procedure. Few health insurers pay for elective egg freezing, and the gap leaves many patients covering the full bill themselves. The spending does not end with the medical work. Ongoing storage fees and taxes can lift the total after a clinic retrieves the eggs, turning a one-time treatment into a longer obligation. A woman building a budget has to juggle several unknowns. She must guess how many rounds she will need, whether an employer will share the expense, what storing her eggs will cost over time, and what she might owe the government afterward. The answers depend on personal circumstances such as age, health, workplace, and income. No two women face the same math.

CNBC laid out what egg freezing runs in the U.S. in a personal finance explainer that followed the congresswoman's news. The reporting combines interviews with a former gynecologist, the director of a university reproductive health center, a physician who works as a certified financial planner, and the CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility and Family Building Association. It draws on figures from FertilityIQ and Mercer. The piece reports no original research. Its scope centers on the U.S., its city-level price examples come from New York City, and France serves as an international point of comparison. The findings below follow the dollars from the first cycle through coverage, storage, and taxes.

Illustration: Quartz

Dr. Stephanie Kuku puts the price of one egg-freezing cycle in the U.S. at $10,000 to $20,000 for a typical patient. Kuku, a former gynecologist, serves as a senior adviser to the World Health Organization. She has worked with several tech companies on projects involving IVF accessibility. Her estimate covers one round of treatment, and it sets the baseline beneath every larger tally a woman might face.

The top of Kuku's bracket doubles its bottom. A $10,000 spread separates the cheapest round she describes from the priciest. Two women who each complete one cycle could pay sums that differ by the full charge for a low-end procedure. A gap this wide leaves a planner guessing where her own bill will fall.

FertilityIQ pegs the mean cost of one cycle at $16,000, inside the span the physician gives. The FertilityIQ number clears the midpoint of her range, $15,000, by $1,000. The figure sits in the upper half of her range, nearer the $20,000 end than the $10,000 end. A clinician's estimate and FertilityIQ's data land on compatible numbers. Their agreement gives a would-be patient firmer footing for a first savings goal, and it suggests the average woman should budget toward the upper reaches of what Kuku quotes.

Kuku warns that the per-round price marks a beginning. In her telling, the overall bill can dwarf one round once a patient needs several cycles or adds extras such as storage and implantation. Her caution turns the single-cycle quote into something closer to an entry fee, with each later expense stacked on top. A woman who saves to Kuku's $10,000 low end could fall $6,000 short of the FertilityIQ mean before any extra arrives. A savings plan tied to the bottom of the range leaves no cushion for a second round or the first storage invoice.

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Women under 35 should aim to freeze at least 20 eggs, according to Dr. Marcelle Cedars, a professor and director at the University of California, San Francisco's Center for Reproductive Health. Cedars said many women fall short of that goal in a single round and must return for another to bank the number they want.

The target Cedars describes counts eggs, yet clinics bill by the cycle. A patient knows the total she hopes to reach before treatment begins, but she cannot know how many attempts it will take to get there. Each return visit brings another full cycle of treatment and another invoice. The distance between her goal and what her first attempt yields becomes added expense.

The bar climbs after 35. Cedars said women past that age tend to need more than 20 eggs. An older woman begins with a larger quota and more ground to cover before she can stop. A bigger quota makes it more likely that one session will leave her short and send her back for a second or third.

Age accounts for part of the variation. A woman's overall health and the techniques her clinic uses also shape how many rounds she will undergo. Two people born the same year could walk out with different cycle counts, depending on their bodies and on the methods each facility applies.

Clinic technique gives a patient one factor she can influence. She cannot change her birth year, and her health may lie beyond her control, but she can choose where she gets treated. Her choice of facility may bear on how many visits she books and how many bills follow.

A woman who prices egg freezing by one cycle may be budgeting for less than the full job.

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A 38-year-old woman in New York City who needs three rounds of egg freezing could face a bill of $47,000, according to an analysis by FertilityIQ. The estimate sketches one patient in one city and does not stand in for a national average.

Her age accounts for much of the cycle count. At 38, she belongs to the group that, by Cedars' account, tends to need more eggs than women under 35. A three-round plan matches that guidance. Health and a clinic's techniques also shape how many rounds a woman needs. Two 38-year-olds in New York City could end up paying different totals.

The $47,000 sum lands at more than double the top of Kuku's single-cycle range. Each added pass through the process stacks a fresh set of clinic charges onto the tab. By the third round, the outlay exceeds anything one attempt would cost.

FertilityIQ offers no line-item breakdown. Readers cannot see how the $47,000 divides among the stages of each round, or whether it folds in the storage and implantation fees Kuku says can push spending higher.

The scenario sits close to the circumstances of the congresswoman whose news prompted the coverage. Ocasio-Cortez, in her mid-30s and representing a New York district, described saving up for the decision. A New York City woman two years her senior matches the FertilityIQ profile on both age and city.

A woman in her late 30s who sees one cycle's price should treat it as the first installment on a larger expense. The $47,000 itself may not mark the ceiling.

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No state covers elective egg freezing for people enrolled in Medicaid, according to Danielle Melfi, CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility and Family Building Association. Women who depend on the public program for their health care find no help with the procedure anywhere in the country.

Medicaid's exclusion admits no regional exception. An enrollee cannot relocate to a more generous state in search of benefits, since none offers them. Her remaining options run through her own money or a private plan she may not have.

Private insurance offers scant relief. Melfi describes insurer payment for elective freezing as uncommon. A patient holding a private policy cannot count on it to absorb the expense, and she has little reason to budget as though it will. Uncommon means some patients receive it. Whether a private policy pays depends on the terms of a woman's particular plan.

The label "elective" pushes the bill toward the patient. It marks freezing a woman chooses on her own timeline, apart from treatment for a diagnosed condition. Melfi's assessment shows how few insurers reimburse that kind of personal choice.

Access to a workplace health plan separates the women who get assistance from those who pay everything. People who cannot join one fund the entire treatment themselves in most cases, Melfi says. A change of employer or a layoff can move a woman from one group to the other. Melfi's remarks make the employer the party most likely to share the burden.

The Medicaid gap and the workplace gap compound each other. A woman on Medicaid has no public option, and a woman without an employer plan loses the private route to support. Both women lean on personal savings, the resource Ocasio-Cortez said she needed time to build. The job a woman holds, more than any public program, decides whether she pays the whole bill herself.

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## 5. Employer coverage grows at large companies

Around 22% of employers with 500 or more workers covered elective egg freezing in 2025, up from 5% in 2015, according to Mercer. The share more than quadrupled across the decade and gained 17 percentage points. A perk that a sliver of sizable businesses offered in 2015 reached more than one in five of them by 2025.

Companies with more than 5,000 employees moved faster. Mercer found that 40% of those firms offered the coverage in 2025, compared with 8% a decade earlier. Their rate jumped fivefold and added 32 percentage points, almost twice the increase posted by the broader group. The distance between the biggest companies and the 500-plus pool widened from 3 percentage points to 18 over the same stretch. Company size shaped both the starting level in 2015 and the pace of growth that followed.

The two tiers overlap, and the overlap sharpens the picture. Mercer's 500-plus figure includes the giants above 5,000 workers. With those firms at 40%, organizations between 500 and 5,000 staff must sit below the 22% mark. Mid-size workplaces trail the headline number. An employee at one of them has a slimmer chance of the benefit than the combined figure implies.

Danielle Melfi, CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility and Family Building Association, points to workplace benefits as the arena where coverage for egg freezing is posting meaningful growth. Mercer's numbers back her, showing advances in both brackets the data track. Her view casts employers as the chief driver of new access to the procedure.

Most large employers have yet to add the procedure to their plans. After 10 years of expansion, 78% of companies with 500 or more workers and 60% of those above 5,000 did not cover elective egg freezing in 2025. Benefit rates at the largest firms run about 1.8 times those of the wider set. A worker's odds of finding the perk rise with the headcount of the company issuing the paycheck.

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Employers that cover egg freezing often limit lifetime benefits to around $20,000, according to Mercer. A ceiling at that level turns the perk into a fixed budget, and the procedure's price can outrun it.

The cap covers two rounds at the bottom of the per-cycle range Dr. Stephanie Kuku cites and a single round at the top. Many women need more than one cycle to bank the number of eggs they want, Dr. Marcelle Cedars says. A patient paying a price in the middle of Kuku's range would exhaust the benefit partway through a second round. FertilityIQ's New York City scenario for a 38-year-old who needs three cycles totals more than twice the cap.

Age widens the gap between benefit and bill. Cedars says women over 35 tend to need more eggs than their younger peers. The employees who press hardest against a fixed lifetime limit are those who began freezing later in life. Health and the techniques a clinic uses shape how many cycles a patient requires as well. Two women holding identical benefits can face unequal leftover bills.

Every dollar above the ceiling lands on the employee. The cap applies to workers whose employers offer the benefit in the first place, a group that stays a minority even among the largest companies Mercer tracks. Women who need the most cycles absorb the largest share of the overflow.

Later charges strain the budget. Kuku warns that the total climbs once storage and implantation enter the picture, and those bills arrive after retrieval. A benefit spent on cycles leaves little or nothing to absorb them. Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner, says an employer's payment for elective freezing counts as taxable earned income. A worker who draws the full cap owes the IRS on that money.

A woman in her late 30s freezing eggs in a high-cost city should plan to fund part of the bill herself, even with employer coverage.

Illustration: Quartz

## Storage costs $5,500 over five years in NYC

Holding frozen eggs in a New York City facility for five years can cost $5,500, according to a FertilityIQ analysis. Spread across that span, the example works out to about $1,100 a year. The billing starts after retrieval wraps up and the clinic has finished its medical work. A patient who has paid for every cycle in full keeps owing money for each year her eggs remain in a freezer. A budget built around cycle prices alone misses this line.

Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner who founded Life Planning Partners in Jacksonville, Florida, describes storage as an ongoing expense. In her experience, continued payment is the norm for women once a clinic extracts their eggs. Her account makes storage the one piece of the process with no built-in finish line. Retrieval concludes with the final cycle. The freezer bill lasts as long as the eggs stay frozen.

The FertilityIQ example prices a fixed five-year window. McClanahan's description sets no such limit. Any woman who stores her eggs beyond that span adds to the total with each additional year. An amount that looks modest year to year accumulates into thousands of dollars over time. Duration, more than any single invoice, drives what storage costs. The fee buys time and nothing more. It comes due every year whether or not the owner ever thaws them.

Timing decisions set the size of the storage tab. A woman who freezes at a younger age and postpones pregnancy for many years carries a longer stretch of fees than one who freezes close to the point she plans to use her eggs. Holding off on parenthood adds a cost that grows with every year of waiting. A shorter gap between extraction and use keeps the total down. Anyone weighing the procedure should budget for storage as a recurring line item, scaled to how long she expects to wait.

Illustration: Quartz

Thawing frozen eggs and implanting them brings a separate charge that Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner, says "costs a lot." The bill arrives long after retrieval, if it arrives at all, and it stacks on top of the money a woman spent to extract and store her eggs. McClanahan attaches no dollar figure to her warning. A woman who freezes eggs today must budget for a final outlay whose size she cannot pin down at the outset.

The steep expense of this step dictates the order in which many couples pursue pregnancy. Most couples try to conceive without medical help before turning to frozen eggs or embryos, McClanahan says. She ties the sequence to what thawing and implantation demand from a household's savings. Frozen eggs serve these couples as a reserve, held back until other routes fail. Some women who become pregnant on their own may never return for the eggs they paid to retrieve and keep on ice.

Eggs left waiting in a freezer do not sit for free. Each year a couple spends trying the natural route adds another year of storage charges. A long wait means the eventual thaw lands atop a deep pile of accumulated fees.

Coverage for this phase hinges on motive. Insurers pay for in vitro fertilization more often when infertility drives the treatment than when personal choice does. A woman who froze her eggs as a hedge against delayed motherhood may discover that her reason for thawing them decides how much support her plan offers. One who faces infertility down the road could qualify for broader coverage than one who chose to delay. The distinction rewards a medical diagnosis over a personal timetable. The full price of egg freezing stays unsettled on retrieval day and turns on whether a woman ever uses her eggs and why.

Illustration: Quartz

A $20,000 egg-freezing benefit can leave a single woman earning $80,000 a year with an extra $4,400 owed to the IRS, according to Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner who founded Life Planning Partners in Jacksonville, Florida.

Company money spent on elective egg freezing counts as earned income in McClanahan's view, and earned income is taxable. She expects the employer to report the amount on the worker's W-2. The perk reaches the employee as medical care but lands on her return as pay. A worker owes tax on the perk as wages regardless of whether she thinks of it as a raise.

The worker in McClanahan's scenario keeps $15,600 of the perk's worth after she settles with the IRS. The figures describe one illustration, a single filer at one salary, and they set no general rate. A different income or filing status would produce a different bill. The example signals the scale of the cost and offers no price quote.

The benefit in her example matches the roughly $20,000 lifetime ceiling that Mercer found many covering employers set. A worker who exhausts a cap of that size could owe the IRS thousands of dollars, a cost the benefit itself does not pay. Women planning around a workplace benefit would need cash on hand for that bill.

Paying out of pocket brings no tax break either. McClanahan describes freezing eggs to postpone childbirth as a personal choice, and she says filers cannot deduct the expense. Her reasoning turns on purpose. Delaying a family puts the procedure outside the costs a filer can write off.

The employer benefit leaves its recipient ahead of a woman paying her own way, who shoulders the full cost with no deduction to soften it. Both paths end with the patient funding part of the procedure herself. The tax narrows the gap between covered and uncovered women without closing it.