Donor egg IVF success rates in the CDC clinic data

By Berkcan K., editor · Published 2026-10-24

Nationally in 2022, 45.1% of transfers of frozen embryos made from donor eggs led to a live birth, according to the CDC. Most donor transfers are of that type: 18,449 of the 24,255 donor transfers reported by the 449 clinics with a page on this site. The other three types had national rates of 52.0% (fresh embryos from fresh donor eggs), 45.2% (fresh embryos from frozen donor eggs) and 42.2% (donated embryos). Unlike own-egg rates, these figures are not split by the recipient’s age, and they are counted per transfer, so they cannot be set directly beside the own-egg rates per retrieval.

What are the donor egg success rates by embryo type?

Live births per transfer, patients using donor eggs or donated embryos, CDC 2022 Final. Transfer and clinic counts are summed here from the CDC clinic files for the 449 clinics with a page on this site; the clinic median covers clinics with 20 or more transfers of that type, the point at which the CDC prints a percentage instead of a fraction.

Donor embryo type	National live births per transfer (CDC)	National singleton live births per transfer (CDC)	Transfers at the 449 clinics	Clinics with any	Clinics with 20+	Median clinic (20+)
Frozen embryos	45.1%	42.8%	18,449	363	218	46.8%
Donated embryos	42.2%	39.0%	2,923	141	43	43.8%
Fresh embryos from frozen donor eggs	45.2%	42.7%	2,285	140	32	47.9%
Fresh embryos from fresh donor eggs	52.0%	49.1%	598	50	6	too few clinics

Donated embryos are, in the CDC’s words, “donated embryos from patients who previously used ART”: embryos created during another patient’s treatment and donated to the recipient. Transfers of fresh embryos made from fresh donor eggs are now rare: 598 in the whole dataset, and only six clinics did 20 or more. Its higher national rate rests on a small, specialised group and says little about what any one clinic would report.

Why are donor rates not split by age?

The CDC defines a donor egg cycle as one “where an embryo is formed from the egg of one woman (the donor) and then transferred to another woman (the recipient).” Because the egg’s age is the donor’s, the CDC explains that “success rates are not presented by age group because previous data show that an intended parent’s age does not substantially affect success when using donor eggs or embryos.” Instead the rates are “presented by the types of eggs and embryos used in the transfer.”

That is why a search for donor egg success rates “over 40” finds the same national numbers as one for any other age. The CDC clinic report gives one donor rate per embryo type per clinic, whatever the recipient’s age.

Can donor rates be compared with own-egg rates?

Only with care. The CDC states that “rates for patients using donor eggs or embryos are noncumulative. They are based on transfers performed that year,” and that they cover “donor cycles started in the current year, regardless of when the donor eggs were retrieved or donor embryos were created.” Own-egg rates per intended retrieval are cumulative instead, counting every transfer within a year of a retrieval, and they include cycles that never reached a transfer.

The own-egg figure closest in form to a donor rate is the own-egg rate per transfer. Nationally in 2022 that was 49.1% for patients under 35, 41.2% at 38 to 40 and 25.4% over 40, against 45.1% for a frozen donor-embryo transfer. Even that pairing mixes different patients, and the CDC cautions that “comparison of success rates across clinics may not be meaningful” for the same reason.

How much do clinics differ on donor transfers?

For frozen donor embryos, where there are enough clinics to say something, the 218 clinics with 20 or more transfers ranged from 28.5% at the 10th percentile to 60.1% at the 90th, around a median of 46.8%. That is a wider relative spread than the under-35 own-egg band, and many donor programs are small: 145 clinics did between 1 and 19 frozen donor-embryo transfers, so their result is printed as a fraction or suppressed, not as a rate. The CDC notes that “clinics that perform fewer cycles are likely to have more variability in success rates from year to year.” On a clinic page here, a donor cell such as “9 of 15” is a count of births and transfers, not a percentage.

The singleton column is worth reading too. The gap between all live births and singleton live births (2.3 points for frozen donor embryos nationally) is roughly the number of transfers in every hundred that ended in the delivery of more than one infant. The single vs double embryo transfer guide explains how to read that gap.

Where does donor egg IVF happen?

Of the 449 clinics, 399 told the CDC they offer donor egg services and 274 offer donated embryo services. Donor transfers make up 15.8% of all transfers in the data (24,255 of 153,465), and they are concentrated in the largest states, which also have the most clinics (how many IVF clinics each state has):

State	Clinics with any donor transfer	Reporting clinics	Donor transfers, 2022
California	70	85	4,543
New York	37	44	2,978
Texas	32	44	1,631
Florida	23	26	1,211
Maryland	5	5	1,037
New Jersey	13	14	966

Maryland stands out: five clinics, more than a thousand donor transfers, most of them at one large practice. At the other end, the single reporting clinics in Alaska and New Hampshire recorded no donor transfers at all in 2022. A clinic that lists donor egg services but shows few transfers on its CDC page is a fair subject for a question about how its donor program works and whether it uses an outside egg bank.

Questions worth asking a donor-egg program

Which embryo type will my transfer be, and what is your CDC rate for that type? Check the count behind it on the clinic page.
Is the donor egg fresh or from a frozen egg bank? The CDC separates the two.
What is your policy on how many embryos to transfer? Compare the clinic’s singleton row with its overall rate.
What does the program cost in full? Agency, screening and legal fees sit outside a standard cycle quote; see the cost questions guide.

The comparison tool shows two or three clinics’ CDC figures side by side. A doctor, not a table, is the right source for what donor eggs would mean for you.

What the IVF age bands mean: the own-egg rates by age that donor eggs are usually weighed against.
Frozen vs fresh embryo transfer: how often clinics transfer frozen embryos and what the data can and cannot compare.
IVF success rates by age across clinics: the clinic-to-clinic spread for patients using their own eggs.