Should You Freeze Your Eggs?

Egg freezing is having a moment. After the American Society for Reproductive Medicine lifted its “experimental” label in 2012, use of egg freezing increased 880% in the U.S. from 2010 to 2016, and it has continued to climb steadily. The most recent data is from 2022, when about 29,000 egg freezing cycles were recorded in the U.S., up from about 22,000 cycles the year before. 

Its popularity is understandable. Many people are delaying childbearing for a variety of reasons, including not yet finding a partner, waiting to gain more financial security, or waiting until reaching certain career milestones. Egg freezing promises an unprecedented level of control over one’s fertility and the ability to separate the reproductive from the romantic and career timelines.

But does all of this mean that egg freezing is the right choice for you? Let’s dig into some of the common questions:

• What is egg freezing?
• What are the success rates?
• Who is it right for?

This is a general overview so you can have more-informed conversations with your doctors.

Note: This article focuses on choosing to freeze eggs outside of circumstances where the decision is urgent (such as for those with cancer). The overall process is the same in those situations, but because of the urgency, much of the workup testing and decision-making process are necessarily condensed.

What is egg freezing?

Egg freezing is, well, freezing your eggs. That’s the simple part. 

The real journey, so to speak, is getting to the part where your eggs can be frozen. This part of the process is effectively the same as the first part of the IVF process. You’ll need to give yourself daily hormone injections over a period of about two weeks, all while going into your doctor’s office every one to three days for ultrasounds and blood work to monitor how your body is responding. The process ends with a minor surgery (under anesthesia) to remove the eggs. 

Where egg freezing diverges from IVF is after the retrieval process. With egg freezing, the process ends when the eggs are frozen, whereas with IVF the eggs are fertilized with sperm and grown into embryos that are put back into the uterus to implant. 

Understanding that egg freezing and IVF go hand in hand is also helpful for planning the long game; by freezing your eggs, you are essentially doing the first stage of IVF at an earlier age. Since younger eggs tend to mean a higher success rate, there is a possible benefit relative to harvesting the eggs when you want to conceive. However, with this process you are also signing up for the second half of the IVF process should you decide to use those eggs at a later date. So you’ll need to have the eggs fertilized in the lab and the resulting embryo(s) transferred back into your uterus once you are ready to use them.  

Even for people who freeze their eggs, when you are ready to conceive, your doctor will usually recommend trying to conceive first without assistance and using the eggs as a backup option later if needed. This is because although IVF is a great option, it generally isn’t the first option. 

There are some downsides to egg freezing, including the time commitment involved, the cost, and the discomfort and risks of the process. No one loves the multiple daily injections, and the egg retrieval does have slight risks of bleeding, infection, and damage to the intestines and bladder. 

What are the success rates?

As with all things fertility, the younger you are when you freeze your eggs, the higher the chances of success. There are a number of calculators available online that can give you a sense of how many eggs you may want to freeze. These calculators use a model that takes your age and number of eggs frozen to generate a percent chance of having up to three children. 

You can expect approximately 70% to 80% of the thawed eggs to fertilize and about 60% of those to grow into embryos. You may choose to undergo genetic testing of the resulting embryos to select those with the highest chances of becoming a healthy live birth; the percent expected to be genetically normal (euploid) depends on age. Across all ages, each frozen egg has about a 6.7% chance of becoming a live birth, and the chances range from about 8.7% for women under age 30 to 1.1% for women ages 43 and 44. 

The chance of having a live birth from frozen eggs also depends on how many eggs you freeze. That, in turn, depends on how many eggs are harvested, and varies across women. There is no one “good” number for the number of eggs, but it is important to talk to your provider about your long-term goals because this will determine (for example) whether you want to do more cycles to produce more eggs.

The calculator is also based on a model that assumes two things: first, an egg thaw survival rate of 85% to 95%. This is a reasonable assumption for most reputable, high-quality labs, but you should ask your provider about their specific lab’s survival rate. Though it is rare, there are cases where none of the eggs survive the initial thaw. This is a devastating thing to have happen, and cases like these are a reminder that egg freezing is not a guarantee. 

The second assumption is that thawed eggs have the same capacity to yield embryos, pregnancies, and live-born children as do fresh (not previously frozen) eggs. There is moderate data to support this. The highest-quality evidence we have is this randomized controlled trial of about 600 women who were randomized to receive either fresh or frozen donor eggs. The study authors found that there was no statistically significant difference in ongoing pregnancy rates between the two groups.

Who is it right for? 

Egg freezing can be a tool that increases reproductive autonomy, but it does so at a steep financial cost. Most insurance plans do not cover what is sometimes called “elective” or “planned” egg freezing (egg freezing outside of fertility preservation for cancer), and that’s if you are lucky enough to live in one of the 19 states with mandated fertility coverage. Some employers offer egg freezing as a benefit, but it’s not common. 

That means that egg freezing is largely an out-of-pocket expense, and depending on where you look, it can range from $5,000 to $15,000 per cycle. This does not include the annual storage fees, plus the cost associated with using the eggs (i.e. going through the second part of IVF), which, again depending on where you look, can also be in the $5,000 range. 

That is where the tension in egg freezing comes in: ideally you want to freeze eggs at a relatively young age to increase the chances of having a live birth but also at a late enough age that you are likely to use the eggs. This assumes that you are less likely to use the eggs if you are very young because you may eventually find a partner and get pregnant without assistance before age becomes an issue. But at what age do you see this balance start to tip? 

This study attempts to answer that question by constructing a model of hypothetical 25- to 40-year-olds who are interested in egg freezing and comparing the probability of live birth with egg freezing versus no egg freezing. The authors found that egg freezing became most cost-effective and had the greatest benefit in probability of live birth compared with no action at age 37, though the highest probability of live birth alone was when egg freezing was done before age 34. 

Another study suggests that the majority of those who freeze eggs, even after age 37, do not use those eggs. The authors of this study examined the outcomes of about 230 patients who froze their eggs at a large fertility center 10 to 15 years later. This is significant because few studies have looked at follow-up after egg freezing, especially as far out as the authors of this study, although keep in mind that egg freezing was deemed experimental until 2012, so the long-term data surrounding its use is limited. 

The authors found that only about 38% of the patients had used their eggs at the same center where they had been frozen; 3% of the eggs were transported elsewhere and about 11% were discarded, leaving about 47% of the eggs unused at that point. The mean age at first egg cycle retrieval was 38, and most of the women in their study were over 45 years old at the time that they did their analysis. So, the authors conclude, those who had not used their eggs were unlikely to do so at that point. 

The bottom line 

• Egg freezing is effectively the same as the first part of IVF and involves taking daily hormone injections over a period of about two weeks, going into your doctor’s office for monitoring, and a minor surgical procedure to retrieve the eggs.
• If you decide to use your eggs at a later date, you will go through the second part of IVF.
• On average, each frozen egg has about a 6.7% chance of becoming a live birth. The younger you are when you freeze your eggs, the higher the chances of the eggs resulting in a healthy live birth.
• It may be most cost-effective to freeze your eggs before age 37, though the data suggests that most people who freeze their eggs do not use them. 

We recognize that readers of ParentData identify in different ways — read more about our approach to gender-inclusive language here.

---

About our sponsor

Community Guidelines