a procedureSperm donation

Screened, frozen sperm from a man who is not the patient's partner, thawed and either placed in the uterus around ovulation — donor insemination, a few minutes in a clinic room with no anaesthetic — or used to fertilise eggs in an IVF or ICSI cycle. The sperm is bought as a unit: a straw, a vial, a sample. Almost everything that varies across borders concerns the donor rather than the technique: whether he may be paid, how much, how many families he may create, and whether the child may one day know his name.

Sperm is the gamete that travels on its own. It freezes and ships, so the patient does not always have to move; when the patient does move, the reason is usually a rule about who may be treated rather than the price of the vial.

The UK numbers show how small this treatment is beside the arguments about it. The HFEA's 2023 report counts around 820 babies born following donor insemination, and around one in five of all UK IVF and DI births — 4,300 births — following treatment with donor eggs, sperm or embryos.

The UK also shows what a regulated market looks like priced out. A sperm donor may claim up to 45 pounds per clinic visit, raised from 35 pounds on 1 October 2024; his sperm may create children in up to ten UK families; anonymity ended for donations made after 1 April 2005, and a person conceived from one can have the donor's name, date of birth and last known address at 18, with non-identifying information from 16.

Trade practice — a capped payment and an identity release produce a shortage, and a shortage produces importing. Inference — the traffic in this treatment is therefore two-directional in a way the others are not: patients cross borders, and so do straws, and the second movement is invisible in every patient-counting exercise.

Priced as a unit of sperm plus a treatment, and the two are on different lines. Reprofit lists donated sperm from its own cryobank at 490 EUR and an intrauterine insemination including capacitation of the sperm at 310 EUR; Newlife IVF in Thessaloniki lists donor sperm from 415 EUR and an insemination at 565 EUR. Fertilab in Barcelona prices the same insemination at 940 EUR with a partner's sperm and 1,450 EUR with a donor's — the 510 EUR between them is the vial.

The legal facts that move this treatment are attached to the donor. Whether donor sperm may be used at all: Türkiye's 2010 regulation on assisted reproduction practices and centres bans donor gametes, and the same instrument reaches citizens who go abroad for them. Whether the donor is anonymous: an identity-release jurisdiction and an anonymous one are selling different products under one word, and patients choose between them deliberately. Who may be treated: rules on marital status and on single and same-sex patients sit in national statute in many jurisdictions, and they decide whether a clinic at home will take the patient at all. The rule records carry the map.

As of September 2026 the published prices read off pages for this record put a vial of donor sperm at 415 to 490 EUR in Greece and Czechia, and the treatment it is used in at 310 to 1,450 EUR depending on the country and on whether the insemination price already contains the sperm. The UK cap on what the donor himself receives stands at 45 pounds a visit.

This page describes a treatment and the published prices and caps attached to it. It is not medical advice and it is not legal advice.