Suzanne froze her eggs – then a calculator gave her a reality check

Article written by: Angus Thomson and Kate Aubusson published in The Sydney Morning Herald 

Women considering their fertility options can now consult Australia’s first independent egg-freezing calculator to gain realistic and evidence-based advice about their chances of having a baby.

The number of women choosing to freeze their eggs has tripled over the last three years, accounting for 13 per cent of more than 112,000 IVF cycles performed each year, but experts say egg-freezing marketing can oversell the success rates.

Suzanne Lang, 36, froze her eggs last year, and said the new egg freeze estimator would have enabled her to fact-check the information she was receiving from her IVF clinic. Audrey Richardson

The YourEggFreeze Estimator, developed by the University of NSW’s National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit (NPESU), asks women to enter their age and the number of cycles they plan to undergo. It then offers a personalised estimate of how many eggs they can expect to freeze, and their chance of having a baby.

Suzanne Lang egg-freezing calculator

The federal government-funded tool is also designed to address common misconceptions about IVF, such as the belief that freezing a certain number of eggs guarantees a baby.

“There’s a lot of advertising for [egg freezing], but … there’s been no independent information that really informs women who are contemplating this,” said Professor Georgina Chambers, who leads NPESU and the national IVF registry.

Suzanne Lang was 37 when she chose to freeze her eggs last year. Her long-term relationship had broken down, and she had moved from London back to Australia.

She had been on the fence about having children but, faced with questions about her own fertility, the desire to have a family hit her “like a biological force” she had no control over.

Lang said she did not feel comfortable placing her trust in a commercial provider that stood to benefit financially from her going through with the procedure.

Elective egg freezing typically costs $8000 to $12,000 per cycle, plus storage fees.

“What I wanted was a sense of pure relief and control,” Lang said. “That is never going to be attainable, and I had to come to terms with that.”

Lang underwent one cycle. Her specialist retrieved 16 eggs, of which 13 could be frozen. She was given a 70 per cent chance of having a live birth.

After using the estimator on Thursday, which put Lang’s chance of having a baby closer to 60 per cent, she said she would more seriously consider undergoing another cycle within the year.

Suzanne Lang said she did not feel comfortable placing her trust in a commercial provider that stood to benefit financially from her going through with the procedure.Audrey Richardson

The calculator on the YourIVFSuccess website is based on real-world data from every IVF clinic in Australia. The website attracts 25,000 visits a month, and traffic grew 400 per cent between 2024 and 2025.

“For every person who does elective egg freezing, there’s a multitude of women who want information about it to see whether it’s right for them or not,” Chambers said. “There’s a real insatiable appetite for this information, and the government should be applauded for actually funding this.”

City Fertility senior specialist Dr Devora Lieberman said having an independent tool was important given the marketing of egg freezing was often fearmongering and overpromising.

“Oftentimes, women think that having eggs equates to having babies in the freezer, but eggs have such a long way to go before they become embryos, let alone a baby,” Lieberman said.

Lieberman said data from the national registry showed most women were freezing about 10 eggs, which was probably not enough to give many of them a good chance of having a baby.

“Women need to weigh up the cost of freezing eggs versus the regret that they didn’t freeze more,” Lieberman said.

Associate Professor Kiri Beilby at Monash University’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology tested various scenarios using the calculator and concluded it was a good representation of egg-freezing success rates.

“So much data has gone into this,” Beilby said. “Women can use this technology to feel empowered … and make informed decisions about whether they want to have the treatment.”

Beilby said a large proportion of women did not return to use their frozen eggs. Though she expected this would increase, she said many women who consider doing so find a partner and have children without IVF.

The data entered into the calculator is not stored, and cannot be accessed by the government, IVF clinics or UNSW.

Article originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald