Donor Egg IVF Success Rates in 2022

If you're using donor eggs for your IVF cycle, you know that it can be an expensive and lengthy process, depending on how easy it is for you to find the right donor.

While many donor egg agencies will only provide lots of 6-8 eggs per cohort, that could still leave you with plenty of embryos in order to get pregnant. So the big question is, what are the chances donor eggs will lead to a baby?

The success rates when using donor eggs are actually quite good! 

Especially if you're of advanced maternal age and are using donor egg due to age-related reasons. 

Here, we are going to look at the most recent national IVF data from the CDC, which reports all IVF donor egg cycles from 449 fertility clinics across the US. 

We've made you some charts so that it's easy to read!

Every year, the CDC collects IVF success rate data from fertility clinics across the US and they aggregate these to show national averages. 

We'll be looking at the most current data available on 2022, which is the donor egg IVF success rates from IVF cycles in 2020. 

There are many reasons why someone might choose to use donor eggs during their IVF cycle. 

Donor eggs are often used in IVF for:

Many women use donor eggs due to poor egg quality. Poor egg quality is most often due to women being older in age but sometimes even younger women have poor egg quality for unknown reasons.

As women age, egg quality declines. When egg quality declines, embryo development is affected.

Using eggs donated from a much younger woman increases the likelihood of having good egg quality and furthermore, embryos that will be able to develop normally and lead to a baby.

Keep in mind that egg quality can't currently be tested, so age is used as an indication of egg quality.

However, embryos can be tested for genetic competence through PGT-A, which tests whether an embryo has the correct number of chromosomes. Data from PGT-A embryos makes it clear that as women age, their likelihood of having abnormal embryos increases.

Independent of age, a recent study found that women with diminished ovarian reserve also have impaired embryo quality and their chance of having a normal embryo was 24% lower compared to women of the same age that did not have diminished ovarian reserve.

Using donor eggs from a younger woman is a way to improve the likelihood of having euploid embryos, which means embryos that have the correct number of chromosomes needed to develop normally. 

And finally, men who are a single-parent-by-choice or in a same-sex relationship would need to use donor eggs and IVF.

There are two types of donor egg sources patients can use: fresh donor eggs and frozen donor eggs. 

Fresh donor eggs means that an egg donor underwent an egg retrieval on behalf of a specific IVF patient and the eggs were immediately fertilized in the embryology lab. The eggs were never frozen. 

In the case of fresh donor eggs, a 'live' donor is used. 

The egg donor takes fertility medications to encourage the production of as many eggs as possible, has an egg retrieval at the fertility clinic, and then the eggs will be fertilized on the same day to create embryos for the recipient. 

In this case, the donor is usually providing eggs for a specific patient or for two different patients who will split the number of eggs between them. 

As egg donors are young and often produce a lot of eggs, upwards of 20 eggs, some fertility clinics will allow two different recipients to each get half of the egg cohort, which also makes the cost of using donor eggs cheaper for the recipient, as they are splitting the costs associated with the donor's egg retrieval. 

Frozen donor eggs means that the eggs were frozen and then later purchased, usually from an egg bank. 

In this case, the egg donor usually did not undergo an egg retrieval for a specific recipient. 

Instead, they donated their eggs to an egg bank who will later offer these eggs on their database for an IVF patient to purchase and have shipped to their fertility clinic to use for their IVF cycle. 

When using frozen donor eggs, the eggs are transported to the recipient's fertility clinic, the eggs are then thawed and fertilized to create embryos. 

One big difference between fresh egg and frozen eggs is the number of eggs available to the recipient. 

When using a live donor that is specifically doing an egg retrieval to provide eggs for your IVF cycle, you get to keep all of the eggs she produces, unless you're sharing with another couple, then you get half. 

As donors often retrieve a high number of mature eggs, each recipient usually has a pretty good number to work with. 

For example, if an egg donor produces 22 mature eggs, a recipient during a fresh donor egg cycle could get all 22 or if they are sharing with another recipient, each will get 11 eggs. 

With frozen donor eggs, the number of eggs you get for the price tends to be lower. 

The reason is that an egg bank will break up the cohort of donor eggs into smaller packages in order to make donor eggs available to a greater number of recipients. 

Often, frozen donor eggs are sold in cohorts of 6-8 eggs. 

This isn't always a bad thing. As donor eggs tend to lead to a fair number of high quality embryos, this cohort size if often plenty for someone to be able to get pregnant successfully. 

Plus, it can be a difficult and lengthy process to find a live donor and it's never guaranteed that a donor will produce a certain number of eggs and you don't truly know what their egg quality is like. 

With previously frozen eggs, you may have more info on how another cohort of eggs from this donor has faired if another couple has used this donor's eggs for their IVF cycle already. 

Ok, now that we understand the difference between fresh and frozen donor eggs, let's take a look at the success rates!

One more detail to note is that when someone uses donor eggs for IVF and the embryos are created, the time at which the embryo is transferred is also differentiated when looking at success rates.

Some patients transfer a fresh embryo, meaning that the eggs are fertilized, develop in the lab for 3-6 days, and then an embryo is transferred to try to get pregnant.

Others do a frozen embryo transfer, which means that their embryos are frozen first and later an embryo is thawed and transferred to attempt a pregnancy.

So success rates are broken down by whether the egg was fresh or frozen and by whether the resulting embryo was fresh or frozen prior to the transfer.

So, let's look at the national donor egg IVF success rates from the CDC! 



This data looked at 449 clinics across the United States that report their IVF success rates. 

A frozen embryo transfer cycle using donor eggs results in a 44.5% singleton live birth rate. 

A fresh embryo transfer cycle using frozen donor eggs has a 44.1% singleton live birth rate and a fresh transfer from fresh donor eggs results in a 49.5% singleton live birth rate. 

So here we can see that success rates when using donor eggs is very good! 

Especially considering that a woman who is older than 40 using her own eggs only has a success rate of 7.2% per IVF cycle.

So even though a 41 year old woman is undergoing the embryo transfer in both scenarios, her chance of having a baby using her own eggs is much lower compared to using donor eggs on a per cycle basis.

Some women still do choose to use their own eggs for IVF even when they are older though! It's a personal choice and your success may not mirror the national average. 

But if you have been through an IVF cycle using your own eggs and your doctor has suggested you look into using a donor, this. may be helpful data. to look at when making a decision.

It's most common when using donor eggs to do a frozen embryo transfer. 

For this data, the CDC didn't separate frozen embryo transfer success rates by whether the donated egg was originally fresh or frozen prior to fertilization. 

However, they do provide this data for fresh embryo transfer cycles.

A fresh embryo transfer using fresh donor eggs resulted in a 49.5% singleton live birth rate. 

A fresh embryo transfer using frozen donor eggs had a 44.1% singleton live birth rate.

Women older than 40 using their own eggs have a 7.2% live birth rate per IVF cycle compared to 47.2% for women younger than 35.

Keep in mind that one of the reasons IVF success rates per cycle get so low as women age isn't just because they tend to retrieve a lower number of eggs, but because many of their embryos don't survive to even make it to a transfer.

If we look at the IVF success rates for a woman older than 40 using her own eggs who does get to the point of embryo transfer, the success rate is 22.6% per transfer.

It's just much harder to get to that point as women age.

When women are older, many of the embryos they make from their own eggs are chromosomally abnormal and arrest in their development prior to transfer or when genetically tested by PGT-A, are shown to be abnormal so will not be transferred.

When using donor eggs, a frozen embryo transfer results in a 44.5% singleton live birth rate.

Women younger than 35 using their own eggs for IVF have a 46% singleton live birth rate per transfer.

So with donor eggs, the success rate per embryo transfer for a 40 year old can look more similar to women younger than 35 using their own eggs for IVF.

Check out the newest national data reporting IVF success rates for women using their own eggs for IVF.