How Much Does a First-Time Surrogate Get Paid?

Two questions usually arrive together: what you would be paid, and whether you would be accepted at all. The second is where the law and agency policy are most often confused with each other.

What a first-time surrogate is paid at Worldwide Surrogacy

Base compensation for a first-time gestational surrogate is $65,000 to $75,000, paid in monthly installments across the pregnancy, the first once your pregnancy is medically confirmed by heartbeat rather than at delivery. Three numbers get used interchangeably and they are not the same:

• $65,000 to $75,000 is your base compensation. This is what you are paid for carrying the pregnancy, before any payment that depends on a specific circumstance.
• Up to $95,000 or more is total compensation, once the additional payments on the schedule are included. Those depend on circumstances that may not arise, such as carrying more than one baby or delivering by cesarean.
• Your expenses are separate, and paid on top. Travel, medical care, insurance and your own attorney are covered by the intended parents or reimbursed to you as they are incurred. Lost wages are a separate payment on the schedule.

A first-time surrogate with an uncomplicated singleton pregnancy and a vaginal delivery earns the base plus the standard payments, and that is the number to plan around. Before it begins, a $500 medical clearance bonus is paid once you are medically cleared, a $500 contract signing bonus follows when the contracts are signed, and a $350 monthly allowance starts at that point. Every line, with the amount and the trigger, is on when and how surrogates are paid and on the published compensation and benefits schedule.

Your health insurance, a $750,000 life insurance policy, six weeks of lost wages after delivery and your own attorney are paid for by the intended parents. New York requires a life policy of at least $750,000, in force before any medication and running twelve months after the pregnancy ends (N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act § 581-402). Worldwide Surrogacy assists with procuring the policy, and how long it runs follows the law of the state where your match takes place. New York sets a term. Most states do not, and there the term is set in your agreement. Ask when yours attaches and when it ends, and get the answer in writing before your transfer.

Why first-time compensation is lower than experienced surrogate compensation

It is lower. Worldwide Surrogacy's compensation page says that experienced surrogates typically receive higher pay. For experience, the reason is that a completed journey lets a clinic see how a body responded to a transfer protocol rather than predict it.

It is not a judgment about you. A first-time surrogate is not carrying a lesser pregnancy or taking a lesser risk, and she is paid a full base rate for the same work, with the same protections in the same agreement. Experienced pay is an addition on that side rather than a deduction on yours, and your first journey is the thing that makes you experienced.

What changes a first-time surrogate's compensation

Two things, and neither is a lever you can pull on a first journey: your experience, and where you live. Experience applies on a second journey by definition. Where you live can move the number, which is why these pages are written state by state.

Your own health insurance is worth understanding here, although it is not a factor in what you are paid. Most health policies exclude surrogacy. Where a policy excludes it, a surrogacy-friendly policy is bought for the pregnancy and paid for by the intended parents at no cost to you. If your existing policy already covers a surrogacy pregnancy, that cost simply does not arise.

No state statute sets your number. Base compensation is set in your Gestational Surrogacy Agreement, although what you are paid can vary with the state you live in. New York's comes closest, and even it only requires that compensation be "reasonable and negotiated in good faith between the parties" (N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act § 581-502). You request your preferred base compensation before the contract phase, as long as it falls within standard industry ranges. Worldwide Surrogacy is finalizing a higher base for surrogates in a small number of states where intended parents most often ask for a local match. We have not named the states or the amount here until it is in effect.

What it takes to qualify as a first-time surrogate

Compensation is what you are paid. Eligibility is whether you can be matched at all, and these are the eight initial requirements published on the surrogate requirements page:

• You are between 21 and 43 years of age
• You are a United States citizen or hold a permanent green card
• You live in a state where surrogacy is legally supported
• You have delivered at least one child
• Your body mass index is 33 or less
• You have had no more than three cesarean sections
• You are not currently taking any anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication
• You are a non-smoker and a non-drug user

Worldwide Surrogacy does not currently accept surrogates living in Louisiana, Nebraska or Texas. If you live anywhere else, the residency requirement is not the thing that will stop you.

Some of those carry detail that decides most borderline cases. A prior pregnancy carried to term is required rather than recommended, and having had your tubes tied does not affect your eligibility. You must have been off anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication for at least six months with documentation from your physician, and secondhand smoke shows up in blood work. If you have recently given birth, your application can be processed right away, but a transfer will not happen until at least six months after your delivery date, and if you are still breastfeeding you will need two regular menstrual cycles first.

What screening involves

Screening starts with a short prescreen, then a full application of roughly fifty questions, documentation, a psychological evaluation using the PAI personality assessment, and a background check covering you and your spouse or live-in partner. Your pregnancy and delivery records then go to a reproductive endocrinologist, and medical clearance requires a letter from your own treating obstetrician on top of the records review. The records are usually the slow part, at two weeks to a month. Our write-ups of how Worldwide Surrogacy screens surrogates and what first-time surrogates should expect during screening go through each stage in order.

Screening decides whether you can be matched. It does not hand anyone authority over your body. You always have complete bodily autonomy and the right to make medical decisions for yourself, you choose your own medical providers, and those rights are written into the Gestational Surrogacy Agreement, which your own independent attorney reviews with you before you sign anything.

Which surrogate requirements are the law, and which are agency and clinic policy

Knowing which is which tells you what can bend: an agency or clinic policy may allow an exception, and a statute does not.

What the surrogacy statutes require

Connecticut, Washington and New York are three states that write eligibility rules into their surrogacy statutes, and those rules are narrower than most requirement lists suggest. Connecticut, where Worldwide Surrogacy is based, requires that a person acting as surrogate "have attained twenty-one years of age," "have previously given birth to at least one child," complete medical and mental health evaluations, have independent counsel of her own choice, and hold health coverage through the pregnancy and eight weeks after the birth (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-522). Washington sets similar requirements and adds that she may not enter more than two surrogacy agreements resulting in a birth (RCW 26.26A.705). New York requires 21 years of age, citizenship or lawful permanent residence, that she did not provide the egg, a medical evaluation, informed consent, independent counsel, comprehensive health insurance and a $750,000 life policy, leaving further health criteria to the state commissioner of health (N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act § 581-402).

All three set a minimum age of 21 and require independent legal representation, and two of the three require a prior birth. None of the three sets an upper age limit, and none of the three mentions body mass index.

California's statute, Cal. Fam. Code § 7962, regulates the agreement rather than the person: separate independent attorneys of each party's choosing, notarized signatures, and no embryo transfer or injectable medication "until the assisted reproduction agreement for gestational carriers has been fully executed." It sets no age range, no body mass index limit and no prior-birth requirement. If a page tells you that you must be 21 to 37 with a body mass index under 32 "to qualify under California law," you can check it in about two minutes.

Where the age limit and the body mass index number come from

They come from medicine and from agency policy. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, whose standards Worldwide Surrogacy follows in screening, publishes the guidance the clinics work from: carriers "must be of legal age, and preferably between the ages of 21 and 45 years," and "ideally, the carrier should not have had more than a total of five previous deliveries or three deliveries via cesarean section" (ASRM Practice Committee, 2022). Most fertility clinics cap a carrier at 41 or 42, inside that outer guidance, and Worldwide Surrogacy publishes 21 to 43 and says the limit is set by the IVF clinics, with exceptions possible.

And ASRM's 2022 opinion contains no body mass index criterion at all. That number comes from individual IVF clinics, which Worldwide Surrogacy also says on its own site. It is there because of how body mass index relates to response to IVF treatment and to pregnancy risk, which makes it a medical judgment you can discuss with the people making it rather than a legal rule.

What happens if your first embryo transfer does not work

A transfer that does not result in a pregnancy does not undo what you have already been paid, and it does not end the arrangement by itself. The transfer fee is $1,000 per embryo transfer, not per journey, and your $350 monthly allowance continues. What is owed at every other point where a journey can end is on do surrogates get paid if they miscarry.