How much does IVF cost?
The details below on IVF costs are the result of people volunteering information to me in response to a request on social media. It is ordinary people like you and me, disclosing how much their IVF cycles cost them (73 IVF cycles in total). The survey was not subject to any scientific rigmarole, with self-selecting respondents and no independent verification. It was also before the UK was hit by the cost of living crisis. Nonetheless, the information on IVF costs is hopefully helpful.
Summary of the average costs from 73 IVF cycles:
£7,800 - 1 round of IVF in the UK, including IVF drugs
£1,200- drugs for 1 round of IVF in the UK
£10,800 - Average cost of 2 rounds of IVF in the UK
£17,300 - Average cost of 3 rounds of IVF in the UK
£2,100 - Average cost of 1 frozen embryo transfer in the IVF in the UK
How much does one round of IVF cost in the UK?
According to the NHS website, ‘The cost of private treatment can vary, but 1 cycle of IVF can cost up to £5,000 or more. There may be additional costs for medicines, consultations and tests’. That is both helpful, in that it anchors it around £5k. It is desperately non-specific as the costs could be much less, or much more, especially as medicines, consultations and tests make up the majority of the IVF process. So back to my original question, how much does IVF actually cost?
Comparing the market for IVF costs isn’t straight forward and it feels overwhelming. I’d have no idea where to begin. I put ‘IVF costs’ into the Shopping function on Google (arguable because I’m a moron) and Google’s first suggestion is that I buy a cushion adorned with ‘May the embryo be ever in your favour’, which proves that Goole neither understands my query, nor my taste in interior design. Maybe the answers are slippier than courgetti in a fertility boosting broth because everyone’s IVF treatment is different and the costs vary accordingly. So let’s try to get specific.
How much does IVF cost at my clinic? What is included in an IVF fee schedule?
According to the fee schedule at my private IVF clinic, a fresh cycle of IVF will cost £3,600, which sounds reasonable. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t have £3,600, but perhaps we could hoodwink a credit company in to some interest free lending. Or make a large withdrawal from the Bank of Mum and Dad, our business case playing heavily on their desire for more grandchildren, delivering our pitch with easily accessible and highly emotive tears.
But is £3,600 all we can expect to pay? Is that a fixed cost, an average cost, or the starting point? I refuse to be one of those Grand Designs idiots who immediately race through all their funds, along with contingency, and spend the next 3 years eating pot noodles from a caravan in the garden.
How do I make a reasonable estimate? Do I employ the ‘wedding budget approach’ of dreaming up the absolute maximum anyone could charge for hiring napkins before being imprisoned for fraud, and then doubling it? Or the ‘house DIY budget’ of calculating everything needed for the job and adding an extra 50% for unexpected tools and a mid-job change of colour? Or maybe the £3,600 covers most of the IVF and it is just a 10%, 20% or 30% contingency fund on top? I just don’t know. But, how is anyone to know?
It is not obvious from the fee schedule what is included in the £3,600. It is clear that patients are charged separately for their IVF drugs, along with a £50 private prescription fee. Feeling like I’m on a tedious and never ending treasure hunt, I now ask myself: what is a reasonable amount to budget for IVF drugs?
How much are the drugs for IVF?
The clinic’s IVF fee schedule has an asterisk next to the cost for IVF to say that the drugs are NOT included. A simple line in the small print, similar to electronic goods declaring ‘batteries not included’. The difference being that spare batteries can be picked up for a few quid from Sainsburys, in contrast to IVF drugs, which can cost thousands.
To play Devil’s advocate and to see it from the IVF clinic’s viewpoint (although arguably they are playing God) the treatment is tailored to the patient, and the varying costs reflect the varying treatment, making an average difficult. Exactly how much will depend on the drugs protocol (i.e. which drugs you are put on, for how long, at what dose and where you buy them). A set of illustrative examples would be helpful and is nearly always lacking. Bearing in mind the caveats that drug cost will vary wildly depending on your drugs protocol, according to my unscientific survey of fellow IVFers, the cost of their IVF drugs ranged from £800 to £2,000. The average cost of the drugs was around £1,200 per fresh IVF cycle. Imagine hiding a grand of costs in the small print. Shame on you, asterisk.
Where do you buy IVF drugs? Do you have to get drugs from your clinic’s pharmacy? Where else do you buy them?
Another consideration is whether you have to buy your drugs from the Clinic’s pharmacy, and if not, whether there are cheaper options. Due to an administrative error at my IVF clinic, I was sent both a prescription to buy the drugs myself and charged for the cost of the clinic’s online pharmacy supplying me the drugs directly. Although annoying at the time, this did allow a direct comparison of costs which is handy for this article, and the results were shocking. The clinic’s pharmacy were intending to charge me £220 for the initial batch of drugs (note: this was a frozen embryo cycle, not IVF), but when I bought the exact same drugs from my local pharmacy (I didn’t even bother to shop around) the cost was only £86. That’s a 60% discount for having the prescription sent in the post and me wandering 5 minutes down the road to the pharmacy on my lunch break.
Some clinics supply the IVF drugs, some don’t. Some demand you buy the drugs from their pharmacies, some don’t. It is worth a discussion with your clinic.
So, how much did my IVF round cost?
IS the NHS estimate of £5k correct? Let’s take a look at my clinic’s fees:
IVF fee of £3,600
£50 private prescription charge
HFEA fee of £80 (the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is the authority that regulates IVF)
£1,200 average costs of drugs from my informal, scientifically unsound survey
Equals a total cost for IVF of £4,930.
Remarkably close to the NHS’s estimate of £5k. So maybe the NHS does know something about healthcare. The average overall cost of one round of IVF from the informal survey was higher than mine, at £7,800.
NOTE: the NHS paid for my first round of IVF, which meant that I had the luxury of not paying attention (or being exposed) to costs, and therefore cannot share my actual costs. I did, however, pay privately at the same clinic for two frozen embryo cycles. So how did my actual costs for these compare to the clinic’s fee schedule? It was pretty accurate. The clinic’s schedule says £1,800 plus drugs and actual cost was £1,700 per cycle (which included approx £120 of drugs).
Paying upfront for multiple rounds of IVF
Some clinics offer a package of multiple rounds of IVF at a lower cost than paying for each round individually. It means that if you take the maximum number of rounds paid for to fall pregnant, then you are quids in. If you are successful at the first IVF attempt, then you are out of pocket as you forego the costs of the subsequent rounds that you no longer need. It just adds a further gamble to the IVF process.
£10,800 - Average cost of 2 rounds of IVF in the UK
£17,300 - Average cost of 3 rounds of IVF in the UK
IVF is a gamble
You spin the wheel of IVF and it is all or nothing - either you end up with a baby, or you don’t. There is no second prize and no consolation. It doesn’t help to fix the reason why you cannot have children, it simply bypasses it. After IVF I would be no healthier, no more fertile, than before. Failed IVF would have left me tired and broke, in all senses of that word.
What else would we spend the money on? For us, it was a kitchen.
If the choice is £7,800 on a baby or a new kitchen, there is no comparison. The clear choice is a baby. But the reality is that IVF is buying a chance at a baby, not a baby. More accurately, there is 100% chance of a new kitchen (provided the builder doesn’t do a runner with our money) or a 30% chance of a baby. Choosing the baby route means a 70% chance at being left with nothing to show for it other than broken hearts and years of staycations, eating bread and soup in our back garden repeating to ourselves ‘our garden is just as lovely as the Amalfi Coast’, and other lies. We would still have our shabby old kitchen, with brown floor tiles, a jutting out washing machine and wonky cupboards doors that slam shut. Nothing would eradicate the desire for another baby, but warmed feet from underfloor heating through Fired Earth tiles would certainly take the edge off.
But if we went the kitchen route, would I stand in my beautiful Shaker kitchen, pining after my baby, with no sound from the new soft-closing cupboard doors to interrupt my thoughts? To say we tried IVF, we did all we could, we gave it all we had - that is worth the money. Right? There is no right answer, that’s the trouble. It’s all a gamble.