Egg freezing statistics: how many cycles, what age, and who ever uses the eggs

She was 34, not trying to conceive, and not sick. What she wanted was a number I could stand behind: if she froze eggs this year, what were the odds those eggs would ever become a baby. She did not want a marketing chart or a model built on donor eggs. She wanted an actual rate from people who had already done what she was considering.

That conversation is harder than clinics make it sound. Egg freezing is no longer experimental, cycle volume has exploded, and employer benefits keep the topic in the business press. How often eggs are used, and what birth rates look like when they are, still rest on a thinner evidence base than most consent forms imply.

What follows comes from primary sources. SART and CDC surveillance, peer-reviewed thaw cohorts, Mercer and KFF employer surveys, and ASRM documents. Together they describe cycle volume, age at freeze, thaw and live-birth rates, and utilization and coverage.

Year	Cycles
2020	16786
2021	22270
2022	28207
2023	38126

Source: Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology National Summary Reports, reporting years 2020-2023 (oocyte banking for fertility preservation).

Age at first freeze	1-9 eggs	10-14 eggs	15-19 eggs	≥20 eggs
Under 35	33%	35%	64%	71%
35-37	32%	53%	45%	78%
38-40	21%	44%	49%	53%
41 or older	10%	29%	38%	36%

Source: Cascante et al., Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics, 2024 (NYU Langone Fertility Center planned oocyte cryopreservation thaw cohort; CLBR per patient).

How fast cycle volume is growing

Start with the count clinics actually report. According to SART's final national summary for 2023, member clinics recorded 38,126 oocyte banking cycles for fertility preservation inside 425,869 total ART cycles. Egg freezing is no longer a niche add-on; it is a large, growing share of U.S. lab work.

The growth line is steep. The same SART reports put those oocyte banking cycles at 16,786 in 2020, 22,270 in 2021, and 28,207 in 2022. From 2020 to 2023 the volume more than doubled. From 2022 to 2023 alone it rose from 28,207 to 38,126, roughly 35% in one year.

Federal surveillance shows the same direction for banking more broadly. CDC's National ART Summary for 2022 counted 435,426 ART cycles and 184,423 banking cycles (eggs or embryos). Egg or embryo banking was a reported reason in 42.6% of 2022 cycles. Those CDC totals mix embryo with egg banking and medical with planned indications, so they are not interchangeable with SART's oocyte-banking line. They confirm freezing is now a dominant mode of U.S. ART practice.

Most clinicians date the inflection to 2012-2013, when ASRM and SART practice committees removed the experimental label from mature oocyte cryopreservation. Planned freezing could leave research protocols, employers could build benefits around it, and the 2020-2023 SART series is what that growth looks like. For the broader treatment picture, see our review of infertility and IVF statistics.

Who freezes, and at what age

Age at freeze is the variable that most strongly predicts later birth rates, so average patient age matters more than raw cycle count.

In the JAMA Network Open national analysis of planned oocyte cryopreservation, which included 67,893 autologous freezing cycles among 47,363 patients from 2014 through 2020, mean age was 34.5 years (standard deviation 4.7). That is younger than many single-center planned-thaw series, which tend to capture earlier freezers who returned later.

SART's 2022 age breakdown shows where volume concentrates. Of 28,207 fertility-preservation oocyte banking cycles that year, 12,120 started under age 35, 8,868 at 35-37, 5,164 at 38-40, 1,323 at 41-42, and 732 over 42. Under-35 cycles were the largest band, but a substantial minority still froze at ages where egg quality and yield are already falling.

Thaw cohorts skew older. Cascante and colleagues' 2024 NYU Langone planned-thaw series had a median age at first freeze of 38 years. Their earlier 15-year report averaged age 38 among 543 patients who later thawed. Blakemore's 10-15-year follow-up of 2005-2009 freezers found a mean of 38.2 at first retrieval, with 90% between 35 and 42. Those are returners, not a clean mirror of who freezes today.

The practical implication is plain. National freeze volume is rising and shifting younger. Yet published birth-rate tables are still built heavily on late-thirties freezers. Counseling a 32-year-old with a 38-year-old thaw table understates her odds if she banks enough eggs. Reassuring a 41-year-old with the same table overstates hers. Age at retrieval is most of the story: the same gradient that drives natural fecundity and IVF in our fertility and age statistics.

Age group	Cycle starts	Share of 2022 oocyte banking
Under 35	12,120	43.0%
35-37	8,868	31.4%
38-40	5,164	18.3%
41-42	1,323	4.7%
Over 42	732	2.6%

Source: SART National Summary Report, reporting year 2022 (oocyte banking for fertility preservation by age of woman). Shares calculated from reported cycle starts totaling 28,207.

Thaw survival and live birth by age

Once eggs leave storage, three numbers matter in sequence: how many survive warming, how many fertilize, and how many lead to a live birth. Clinics sometimes quote only the last of those, and only among patients who reached transfer. That is not the counseling denominator most people think they are hearing.

Blakemore and colleagues followed 231 women who planned freezes from 2005 through 2009. Among the 88 who later thawed, mean survival was 74.2% of oocytes warmed and mean fertilization was 68.8% of surviving oocytes. Live birth among the 80 patients with a final outcome was 33.8%. Storage averaged 5.9 years and did not erase the age effect at freeze.

The larger NYU planned-thaw program supplies the U.S. figures reporters most often lift. Cascante and colleagues' 2022 Fertility and Sterility report covered 543 patients with 800 freeze cycles and 605 thaws: overall, 39% had at least one child from frozen eggs. Women who thawed at least 20 mature eggs had a 58% live birth rate across ages; women under 38 who thawed at least 20 reached 70%.

The 2024 Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics update expanded the complete-outcome set to 731 patients. Overall cumulative live birth / ongoing pregnancy was 43%. Median mature eggs thawed were 12; median surviving were 10. Age at first freeze and total mature eggs thawed independently predicted cumulative live birth; the number of freeze cycles did not, once egg count was accounted for. Multi-cycle packages help when they produce more eggs, not because repeating the process is independently magic.

Stratified 2024 rates are the ones worth putting on a clinic wall. With at least 20 mature eggs thawed: 71% under 35, 78% at 35-37, 53% at 38-40, and 36% at 41 or older. With fewer than 10 eggs thawed: 33%, 32%, 21%, and 10% across those same age bands. Small banks at older ages are a weak insurance policy.

ASRM's 2021 outcomes guideline remains more cautious than clinic marketing. The Practice Committee found insufficient evidence for precise planned-OC live-birth predictions at every age and egg count, while noting better rates with younger freezes. Most planned-thaw series are still single-center; national thaw-specific reporting for planned freezers remains thinner than patients deserve.

How few eggs are ever used

Utilization is the least advertised statistic in egg freezing, and the one that most changes how the procedure should be sold and covered.

Fouks and colleagues, writing in JAMA Network Open in 2024 with SART CORS data, studied planned nonmedical oocyte cryopreservation from 2014 through 2020. Among 47,363 patients, only 1,203, or 2.5%, returned for oocyte warming. Poor ovarian responders (fewer than five oocytes vitrified across cycles) returned at 4.0%, versus 2.3% among normal responders. Mean time from freeze to warming was on the order of two years. That is short relative to many family-building timelines. The headline still holds: the vast majority had not used their eggs by the end of follow-up.

Longer follow-up raises utilization without making it universal. Blakemore's early NYU cohort, frozen 2005-2009 and followed 10-15 years, found that 38.1% had thawed, 47.2% still had eggs in storage, 11.7% had discarded, and 3.0% had transported eggs elsewhere. The combined no-use rate was 58.9%. That cohort froze when the procedure was still experimental for many payers, at a mean age of 38.2, so it is not a clean forecast for a 32-year-old freezing under an employer benefit in 2026. It does show that even with more than a decade of opportunity, most early freezers never used the eggs.

Kakkar and colleagues' 2023 literature collation put average usage around 12% across published social-egg-freezing series. Cost-effectiveness models often assume return rates near 50% or higher; real U.S. national utilization has not matched those assumptions. Freezing is option value under uncertainty, not a deferred pregnancy with a high probability of being cashed in. A patient who freezes, conceives spontaneously at 36, and never thaws has paid for a hedge that expired unused. Counseling that omits the low cash-in rate is incomplete counseling.

What a cycle costs

There is no CDC or BLS price series for egg freezing. The citable figures come from peer-reviewed cost discussions, White House fertility fact sheets on adjacent IVF care, and clinic-side compilations cited in the medical literature.

Kakkar and colleagues, in their 2023 Journal of Clinical Medicine review of social egg freezing, reported U.S. costs of roughly $15,000 to $20,000 per cycle, drawing on FertilityIQ's widely cited compilation. That is not a government-audited national average; local prices run lower or higher.

The stimulation drugs are the same class used for IVF. The White House's October 2025 fertility fact sheet stated that an IVF cycle can cost $12,000 to $25,000 and that fertility drugs often cost over $5,000 per cycle, with CMS estimating potential medication savings of up to $2,200 under a then-announced discount pathway. Those drug costs apply whether retrieval is for immediate IVF or planned cryopreservation. The freeze-year bill usually stops short of fertilization and transfer, so it is often lower than a full fresh IVF cycle. Thawing later reintroduces fertilization, culture, possible genetic testing, and transfer fees the original quote never included.

Storage is the quiet line item. Annual fees run for as long as eggs remain banked, often for years. Peer-reviewed U.S. series document multi-year storage among returners but do not fix a national storage price; patients should get the annual fee in writing before retrieval. Many women need more than one freeze cycle to hit an age-based egg target, which multiplies procedure and medication spend. Insurance that covers medical fertility preservation before chemotherapy is not the same as coverage for planned, age-related freezing.

The employer coverage gap

Employer fertility benefits are why egg freezing keeps landing in business coverage. The surveys show a clear hierarchy: IVF is covered more often than freezing, and large employers cover more than mid-size ones.

Mercer's 2024 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans found that 47% of large employers (500 or more workers) covered IVF, up from 45% the prior year, while 70% of the largest employers (20,000 or more) covered IVF, up from 62%. Elective egg freezing was covered by 21% of large employers; elective sperm freezing by 20%. Among large employers offering fertility benefits, 64% described those benefits as inclusive, not limited to a clinical infertility definition, which is what makes planned freezing administratively possible.

KFF's 2024 Employer Health Benefits Survey, among firms with 200 or more employees offering health benefits, found lower rates in a broader pool: 27% covered IVF and 12% covered cryopreservation. Thirty-eight percent of large employers answered "don't know" on cryopreservation, but the IVF-versus-freezing gap remains in both surveys.

That gap has a clinical shadow. IVF coverage after an infertility diagnosis does nothing for the 34-year-old who wants to freeze before age erodes her odds. A lifetime fertility cap that funds one freeze cycle can leave the same patient under-banked. Self-funded employer plans sit outside most state insurance mandates: a structural limit also visible in broader IVF access data.

Useful questions: Does the plan cover planned oocyte cryopreservation, or only medical fertility preservation? Are medications included? How many retrievals? Is storage covered, and for how long? Does a lifetime maximum also have to fund later thaw and transfer?

What the data supports in counseling

Put the primary sources together and a defensible script emerges. Freeze younger when possible. Bank enough mature eggs for the age at freeze. Expect most planned freezers not to use the eggs within a few years. That matters for counseling. Treat multi-cycle packages as a way to raise egg count, not as an independent success factor. Price the full sequence from freeze through transfer, not just the retrieval weekend.

ASRM's removal of the experimental label in 2012-2013 was about safety and laboratory performance relative to fresh oocytes in appropriate candidates: not a guarantee that planned freezing is cost-effective for every 30-year-old, or that one cycle at 38 equals two at 33. The 2021 outcomes guideline still flags limited predictive evidence. NYU and SART-based papers since then have filled some of that gap without closing it.

Patients who freeze also need a plan for the years eggs sit in storage. If conception is already being attempted, tools such as our ovulation calculator, period calculator, and IVF date calculator help with timing questions freezing itself does not answer. Pregnancy loss risk still rises with uterine age and any fresh eggs used later; frozen eggs do not erase that biology for pregnancies conceived without them, as our miscarriage statistics review lays out.

The woman who asked me for a number left with a narrower promise than the internet had sold her: freeze before the late thirties if you can, aim for egg counts the NYU tables associate with higher cumulative live birth, budget for never thawing, and read the employer benefits summary as carefully as the clinic consent. Less glamorous than "stop the biological clock." Closer to what the data support.

Frequently asked questions about egg freezing statistics

How many egg freezing cycles are done in the United States each year?

SART member clinics reported 38,126 oocyte banking cycles for fertility preservation in 2023, inside 425,869 total ART cycles. The same reports show 28,207 such cycles in 2022, 22,270 in 2021, and 16,786 in 2020. CDC's broader 2022 ART summary counted 184,423 egg-or-embryo banking cycles of all types, a larger category than planned egg freezing alone.

What is the average age at egg freezing?

In a JAMA Network Open analysis of 47,363 U.S. planned freezers from 2014 through 2020, mean age was 34.5 years. Single-center thaw series often run older (median 38 in NYU Langone's 2024 planned-thaw cohort) because they include earlier freezers who returned years later. SART's 2022 age breakdown still shows the largest share of oocyte banking cycles starting under age 35.

What are egg freezing success rates by age?

In Cascante et al.'s 2024 NYU Langone planned-thaw series, overall cumulative live birth / ongoing pregnancy was 43%. With at least 20 mature eggs thawed, rates were 71% under 35, 78% at 35-37, 53% at 38-40, and 36% at 41 or older. The 2022 NYU report found 70% live birth among women under 38 who thawed at least 20 mature eggs. Age at freeze and egg count drive outcomes more than storage time.

What share of frozen eggs are ever used?

Very few in national data with limited follow-up. Fouks et al. found that only 2.5% of 47,363 planned freezers from 2014-2020 returned to warm eggs. In Blakemore's 10-15-year single-center follow-up, 38.1% eventually thawed and 58.9% had discarded or still-stored eggs without use. Short follow-up understates lifetime use; even long follow-up shows most early freezers never use the eggs.

How much does egg freezing cost?

Peer-reviewed discussion of U.S. social egg freezing commonly cites about $15,000 to $20,000 per freeze cycle (Kakkar et al., 2023, citing FertilityIQ). The White House's 2025 fertility fact sheet priced IVF at $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle and noted fertility drugs often exceed $5,000. Annual storage and later thaw and transfer costs are usually separate. Many patients need more than one freeze cycle.

Do employers cover egg freezing?

Some do; most do not. Mercer reported that 21% of large employers covered elective egg freezing in 2024, versus 47% covering IVF (70% among employers with 20,000 or more workers). KFF's 2024 survey of firms with 200 or more employees found 12% covering cryopreservation and 27% covering IVF. Benefits often separate medical fertility preservation from planned freezing, and lifetime caps may not fund both freeze and later use.