Frequently Asked Questions

What is GoStork?

GoStork is the only centralized online platform that brings together top fertility providers across the US - all on one platform in one uniform structure - helping intended parents make more informed decisions in their choice of providers.

The platform structures an otherwise scattered industry by leveraging proprietary technology paired with thorough human vetting to help intended parents find, compare, and connect with egg donors, surrogacy agencies, and IVF clinics. Our mission is to bring transparency to the fertility industry, saving intended parents time and effort. We offer intended parents all the information they need in an organized structure that’s easy to follow - empowering them to make the best, most informed decisions for themselves.

How does a fertility provider benefit from joining GoStork?

The below outlines how we improve transparency and accessibility in the fertility industry, and help providers reach new clients:

  • We feature top fertility providers across the US in one centralized, easy-to-access location for thousands of intended parents.
  • We enable advanced filtering by intended parents’ preferences, including location,  services offered, costs, and ratings and reviews. 
  • Intended parents learn about unique features of the provider as well as virtually meet executive staff and case managers via short videos if the provider wishes to include them in their profile.
  • Our comparison tool facilitates a side-by-side view of each provider’s offerings.
  • We enable booking appointments: 
    • Customers can book an appointment directly with their choice of surrogacy agency, automatically adding it to both the intended parent’s and the provider’s calendars. 
    • For egg donor agency; when a client is interested in one of their egg donors, we alert the provider and provide the client’s contact information - allowing them to contact the lead directly.

How do I join GoStork? 

If you are an IVF clinic, surrogacy agency, egg donor agency, or any other fertility provider (fertility lawyer, therapist, etc) and are interested in partnering with us, please email [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!

What is GoStork?

GoStork is the only online platform where intended parents can find, compare, and connect with egg donors from various egg donation agencies, surrogacy agencies, and (coming very soon!) IVF clinics - all in one simple platform and all free of charge. There are so many options and so much information out there in the fertility industry. It can be hard to make sense of, hard to know if you’re making the best decisions, and overall very time consuming to research on your own. By bringing much needed organization and transparency to our industry, GoStork reduces the amount of work and confusion intended parents often run into when starting their journey to parenthood.

To start, we have gathered and vetted top providers from across the US for inclusion on our unique platform. We allow intended parents to filter providers by their preferences, select their favorites and then easily compare them side-by-side. The process is then even further streamlined through direct scheduling! With surrogacy agencies, intended parents can book a meeting right from GoStork’s scheduling tool. Intended parents can also easily connect with their preferred egg donors (via their egg donor agencies) by simply marking that they’re ‘Interested’. GoStork then makes the connection and the agency reaches out to schedule the meeting.

GoStork works independently from any agency or clinic.

See more details about what we offer intended parents below!

What does GoStork offer?

GoStork offers access to over 10,000 egg donors as well as over 50 of the top surrogacy agencies in the US. Our users can view comprehensive information about each provider and filter them by personal preferences. Each listing includes clear cost breakdowns, as well as answers to the most commonly asked questions.

The following egg donor criteria can be viewed on GoStork:

  • Age, height, hair and eye color, ethnicity, education level, and more
  • An overview of personal and family health and genetics/family history
  • Complete and transparent costs breakdown, including agency fees, egg donor fees, legal and screening fees, complications insurance, and escrow account service fee.  No other platform offers this all in one place, saving you time, and reducing confusion

GoStork also enables intended parents to filter their search results by any of the above criteria. 

For surrogacy agencies, one can sort by:

  • Year the agency was founded
  • Number of babies born via the service
  • Average time it takes to match parents with a surrogate
  • Average time from contract-signing to baby’s birth
  • Whether the service is offered to the LGBTQ+ community or international parents
  • Full list of services offered by the agency

Our first-of-its-kind comparison tool then facilitates a side-by-side/point-by-point view of each agency’s offerings, such as: 

  • Location
  • Detailed cost breakdown
  • How long they’ve been in business
  • Length of time for the entire process
  • What services they offer such as counseling and support, fertility loans, case management and a comprehensive list of other potential services
  • If they work with international or lgbt intended parents
  • Number of babies born through their services

In addition, GoStork goes a step further by making it easy to chat directly with the agency and book an appointment with one’s preferred agency through the platform itself. Once scheduled, the time is instantly booked on both your calendar as well as the provider’s.

Who are GoStork’s providers?

GoStork brings structure and transparency to the complex fertility industry by featuring the top fertility providers in the US on a time-saving and cost-saving platform, built with intended parents in mind. 

Egg Donation Agencies 

Egg donation is a process where a woman (the egg donor) donates her eggs for use in fertility treatments. Egg donation typically involves in vitro fertilization technology, with the eggs being fertilized in a laboratory setting or frozen for later use. 

GoStork offers more than 5,000 egg donors from various egg donor agencies across the United States - and we are continuously expanding. We allow you to filter by your preferred attributes (see above question for more details on attributes) to find your ideal options, compare them side by side to make a more informed decision, and easily connect with their agency to take the next steps.

Surrogacy Agencies

A surrogacy agency provides a broad range of services for both intended parents and prospective surrogates, aiming to make the surrogacy experience as straightforward and stress-free as possible. They also ensure that the whole process is completed safely and in line with all legal requirements.

Services offered by surrogacy agencies vary from agency to agency. This depends on whether they are a one-stop shop for everything surrogacy-related or offer partial services. Generally, though, surrogacy agencies provide matching of the surrogate and intended parents, screening services, coordination with surrogacy attorneys, and counseling services.

As mentioned prior, GoStork allows you to view comprehensive information about top surrogacy agencies, filter by personal preferences, and compare agencies side by side to easily see how well they match up to your needs. Each agency’s profile includes clear cost breakdowns, a list of the services they offer, carrier screening process, reviews and rating as well as detailed answers to questions most commonly posed by intended parents. Read more about surrogacy and the terms you need to be aware of, in our Resources center. 

IVF Clinics (Coming Very Soon!)

An IVF clinic supports couples or individuals on their journey to parenthood when pregnancy is difficult to achieve. IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization, a procedure in which the egg and sperm are combined in a laboratory setting. The resulting embryo(s) are then directly placed in the uterus.

IVF clinics differ in the services they offer. Limited-service IVF clinics offer limited treatment options while full-service clinics offer a comprehensive spectrum of treatments, including artificial insemination, ovulation induction, embryo-transfer and pre-implantation genetic testing.

Once this service is launched on GoStork, you will be able to view comprehensive information for top IVF clinics across the US, with an easy search + filter + scheduling system similar to what we offer for surrogacy agencies. Each clinic’s profile will include clinic success rates, clear cost breakdowns, a list of the services they offer and more.

How much does it cost to use GoStork?

GoStork is completely free for intended parents to use. In fact, the information and transparency we provide actually helps you save money! Clear cost breakdowns for all providers, and the in depth information that is unique to GoStork’s platform and is provided upfront enables you to make more informed decisions about which providers to move forward with. 

What are all the important terms I need to be aware of related to the fertility industry?

The fertility industry can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to the many technical terms and creative acronyms involved. To help out with this, we’ve created a handy dictionary of some of the more common terms one usually comes across.

First things first:

Infertility: the inability to achieve pregnancy in one year. Infertility affects 1 in 8 women of reproductive age.

Surrogacy: a method of assisted reproductive technology where a woman (the surrogate) carries a pregnancy for an individual or a couple. All surrogacy terms are explained in more depth in our ‘Surrogacy 101’- a great resource to refer to!

Parties, Individuals and Entities

Agency Surrogacy: When the surrogacy process takes place via an agency. Agencies assist intended parents by providing expertise throughout the surrogacy journey, providing all (or a selection of) the services required.

Egg Donor: a woman who donates her eggs or oocytes for use in fertility treatments by intended parents. Check out our article ‘How to choose an egg donor’ - a helpful resource as you begin your process.

Sperm Donor: a man who donates his sperm for use in artificial insemination or other fertility treatments.

Fertility Clinic: medical clinics that assist individuals and couples become parents, when pregnancy cannot be achieved. Clinics apply diagnosis tests and medical treatments to achieve conception and pregnancy.  Here’s more about ‘How to choose an IVF clinic’ from our Resources center.

Intended Parent(s): the person or persons who become the legal parents of a child born through egg/sperm donation and/or surrogacy, and who will raise the child.

Surrogacy Attorney: A surrogacy attorney helps ensure that the rights of the surrogate and the intended parents are protected at all times. Their role includes: explaining local surrogacy laws and regulations, ensuring that the process is completed in a legal manner, finalizing the surrogacy contract, and establishing intended parents’ parental rights as early as possible.

Processes and Procedures

Assisted Reproduction Technology: ART is the term used to describe medical infertility procedures, such as IVF (see below), in which the fertilization of oocytes (eggs) occurs in a laboratory setting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define ART as fertility treatments in which both eggs and embryos are handled. ART procedures involve the surgical removal of eggs from a woman’s ovaries, combining them with sperm in the laboratory, and returning them to the woman’s body or donating them to someone else.

In-Vitro Fertilization: IVF involves the combination of an egg with sperm in a laboratory setting. There are five main steps to this procedure: 

  1. Stimulation (to boost egg production)
  2. Egg retrieval
  3. Insemination and fertilization
  4. Embryo culture (monitoring of the embryo to ensure its growing well - procedures that check for genetic disorders can be offered at this stage)
  5. Embryo transfer

Third Party Reproduction: when someone other than the individual or couple that will raise the child is involved in the reproductive process. This includes pregnancy through donated eggs, sperm, or embryos, as well as gestational-carrier arrangements where the pregnancy is carried by someone other than the parents who will raise the child.

Matching: the process of finding an egg donor, sperm donor and/or surrogate mother for intended parents, and intended parents that match a surrogate’s preferences.

Artificial Insemination: a procedure in which sperm are inserted directly in a woman’s cervix, fallopian tubes, or uterus.

Ovulation Induction: the use of hormonal therapy to stimulate egg production. Medication is prescribed to women who do not ovulate on their own, or to increase the number of eggs reaching maturity in a single cycle. Treatment improves the quality and quantity of eggs, thus enhancing pregnancy rates.

Egg Retrieval: the egg donor or intended mother undergoes an egg retrieval procedure, following a combination of hormonal medications given to stimulate the development of multiple eggs within the ovary. This hopefully leads to the retrieval of multiple viable eggs.

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI): sperm and eggs are retrieved from partners or donors, and a single sperm is injected directly into an egg. ICSI bypasses the stage where the sperm has to naturally penetrate the egg. The fertilized egg is then implanted in the uterus.

Blastocyst: the stage of embryo development at around 5 days following the fertilization of an egg.

Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Aneuploidies (PGT-A): Previously known as preimplantation genetic screening (PGS), PGT-A provides information on the embryo’s genetic health, specifically the number of chromosomes, to help select the best embryo for transfer and improve the chances of a successful pregnancy.

Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Monogenic disorders (PGT-M): Formerly known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), PGT-M tests for inherited disorders caused by mutations in a single gene, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease.

Embryo Transfer: once an egg fertilizes and starts cell division, the resulting embryo is transferred into the surrogate’s or mother’s uterus. Transfers can be done using a fresh embryo or a frozen embryo from an earlier cycle.