US Startup Offers Free Egg Freezing in Exchange for Donated Eggs
US company Cofertility lets young women freeze their eggs for free if they donate half of what's retrieved to people seeking an egg donor. One participant's experience reveals both the procedure's risks and how the company's attitude shifted based on profit.
A rapidly growing US market is encouraging young women in their twenties to freeze their eggs now to preserve future fertility options. Los Angeles-based Cofertility, founded in 2022, offers this without direct payment — in exchange, clients give up half of the eggs retrieved to people who need an egg donor to have a child. Known as egg sharing, this model hadn't been widely commercialized in the US before Cofertility.
Egg freezing in the US typically costs tens of thousands of dollars. Cofertility covers medical and psychological screening, hormonal stimulation, and surgery, then recoups costs by selling a portion of the retrieved eggs to intended parents, who choose donors based on profiles listing height, weight, ethnic background, family medical history, and other traits.
The company runs two program variants — in one, a donor is matched with specific intended parents before the cycle; in the other, eggs are retrieved first and buyers found afterward. The process involves weeks of hormone injections followed by a surgical egg retrieval, which carries risks including the rare but serious complication of ovarian torsion.
One client, a 24-year-old musician from New York, said that after a successful first retrieval yielding 26 eggs — all donated to the company — its attitude toward her noticeably cooled when she wanted to delay her second retrieval, the one meant for her own eggs. The relationship warmed again only after she offered to undergo additional retrieval cycles. The company denies that care quality is linked to whether eggs are donated or kept.
