After one cycle at a Shanghai clinic, my bill came to RMB 137,000. They retrieved 9 eggs; only one blastocyst was good enough to transfer. Sitting in that hallway, I kept wondering: if I ever move to donor egg IVF—or even Greece surrogacy—which parts of the process and the money had I actually understood? That afternoon taught me the headline price is almost never the real price. What shows up on the poster is just the entrance fee; the rest appears one invoice at a time. Later, when I laid the Greece quote next to my Shanghai receipts, I realized the gap was never one line item. It was a stack of small, invisible steps.
In Shanghai, ovarian stimulation and blastocyst culture were billed separately
My first self-pay cycle broke down like this: stimulation medication RMB 42,000, egg retrieval plus anesthesia RMB 16,000, blastocyst culture and PGT-A RMB 23,000, and first-year embryo freezing RMB 6,000. These were five separate payments, and nobody gave me a single sheet adding them up. I assumed “IVF process” meant one straight line: period, injections, retrieval, transfer. Reality was messier. Day 2: blood tests and file setup. Day 3: start injections for 10–12 days. Around day 14: trigger shot. Day 16: retrieval. Day 19: blastocyst report. If any step stalls, the money you already paid usually does not come back.
Practical tip for anyone cycling in Shanghai: before you start, ask the clinic to put five items on one page—stim meds, retrieval, blastocyst culture, PGT screening, and freezing—and write the refund ratio for each stage if the cycle fails. When I switched to my second clinic, that one-page table saved me RMB 11,000 in duplicate fees.
Donor egg IVF: where the extra RMB 80,000–120,000 actually goes
I was also confused by the jump from self-egg to donor egg. A self-egg cycle in Shanghai runs about RMB 130,000–160,000. Switch to donor egg, and the total rises by roughly RMB 80,000–120,000. The extra cash lands in three places: donor screening (RMB 20,000–30,000) covering infectious disease, expanded carrier panel, AMH and ultrasound; synchronization and endometrial preparation (about RMB 15,000); and egg freezing plus transport (RMB 10,000–20,000).
A 35-year-old reader told me she spent RMB 310,000 on two self-egg cycles, then moved to donor egg at RMB 220,000 for one cycle. It looked more expensive on paper, but she avoided two more rounds of stimulation. Rule of thumb: if your AMH is below 1.0, your antral follicle count is under 5, or you have had two or more cycles with no transferable embryo, donor egg IVF usually gives a higher live-birth rate per attempt. One detail to confirm: ask whether the quoted donor screening includes expanded carrier screening. If it is billed separately, add another RMB 8,000–12,000.
Greece surrogacy quotes: I circled the legal and admin lines
For Greece surrogacy, all-inclusive packages commonly run EUR 90,000–130,000, or roughly RMB 700,000–1,000,000. Split out, it looks like this: surrogate compensation and insurance EUR 35,000–45,000; IVF and embryo transfer EUR 12,000–18,000; legal and court procedures EUR 15,000–25,000; agency service fee EUR 10,000–15,000; the rest is travel and miscellaneous.
The line I cared about most was legal. Greece requires court approval, which typically takes 4–8 months, and your money sits in an escrow account during that wait. A 41-year-old client budgeted RMB 850,000 and ended up paying RMB 930,000; the extra RMB 80,000 came from two extra transfers and extended accommodation.
If you are considering Greece, do this today: ask the agency to break the quote by transfer attempt—first, second, third—and state clearly from which attempt onward additional fees apply. Also ask how many weeks postpartum the surrogate’s insurance covers. Those two items, left vague, are where most overages appear.
Putting IVF and surrogacy costs on one timeline finally showed the real budget
Later I made a simple table. Left side was the timeline; right side was the cost at each step. Medical checkup RMB 6,000; ovarian stimulation RMB 40,000; donor screening RMB 25,000; embryo screening RMB 23,000; Greece legal procedures about RMB 150,000. When everything lined up by month, the totals became clear. Self-egg IVF plus Greece surrogacy: roughly RMB 950,000–1,200,000. Donor-egg IVF plus Greece surrogacy: roughly RMB 1,050,000–1,300,000.
The real difference between Shanghai IVF, donor egg IVF, and Greece surrogacy is not a single price tag. It is the stack of separate charges—meds, screening, legal, transfers, insurance, and lodging—that only becomes visible when you put them on the same timeline. Before you sign anything, get every line item in writing, map it to a calendar, and ask exactly when “all-inclusive” stops and out-of-pocket begins. If a clinic or agency refuses to give you that table, treat it as a red flag and walk away.