Most people researching donor conception end up staring at the same three options: a known donor they find themselves, vials from a licensed sperm bank, or some combination of the two. The comparisons you usually find online are either sales pages for banks or advocacy pieces for known donation, and neither gives you the actual trade-offs in one place. This is that comparison: what each route costs in money, what it costs in effort and risk, and the situations where each one is the defensible choice.
Sperm bank pricing in the UK currently sits around £800 to £1,200 per ICI-ready vial once you include shipping and storage, and a single vial is one attempt, not a guarantee. Cryopreserved sperm survives freezing less well than fresh, so clinics commonly recommend one or two vials per cycle. A realistic bank-based home insemination budget for several cycles, including a failed attempt or two, lands between £3,000 and £6,000 before any clinical fees. In the US the per-vial numbers are similar in dollars, and known-donor testing through a fertility clinic runs roughly $500 to $1,500 depending on how complete the panel is.
A known donor arrangement, by contrast, can cost very little in cash. The real expenses are the medical screening, travel, and sometimes shipping if the donor is not local. Motivated recipients screen their donor properly: the full panel matters more than the price, and our guide to what a known sperm donor should test lists the actual panel worth asking for.
| Known donor (fresh) | Sperm bank (frozen) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per cycle | £0 to £300 (testing amortised) | £800 to £1,200+ per vial |
| Per-cycle success | Comparable to natural conception with good timing, often 10 to 20 percent | Generally lower per cycle; frozen sperm loses viability |
| Genetic and health screening | Whatever you arrange; variable quality | Standardised, regulated panel |
| Legal parenthood | Depends on donor status and conception route; contestable | Donor is legally not a parent in licensed-treatment contexts |
| Contact and identity | Known from day one; terms negotiated | Anonymous or ID-release at 18, depending on programme |
| Supply risk | Donor can withdraw at any time | Limited vials; donors sell out |
The risk people associate with a known donor is legal, and it is real but manageable. In England and Wales, whether your donor is a legal father turns on whether he is "through marriage" treated as such, whether conception happened at a licensed clinic with proper consents, and what agreements were signed. A known donor who contributes at home, without clinic involvement, is potentially the legal father with parental responsibility and financial obligations, whatever a private agreement says. A well-drafted donor agreement does not change the statutory position; it documents intent. We cover this properly, with the caveats, in legal agreements for donor arrangements.
The risk people underweight with sperm banks is supply and attrition. Donor profiles sell out, sometimes mid-treatment, and banks are not obliged to hold vials for your second child. People who conceived a first child with a specific donor sometimes find, years later, that no vials remain and their children are genetic only-children. Buying and storing extra vials in advance is the standard hedge, and it costs storage fees of roughly £200 to £400 a year.
Both routes share the medical risks of any conception: miscarriage rates by age, chromosomal risk, and the ordinary uncertainties. A known donor properly screened has no meaningful health disadvantage against bank sperm; the difference is that bank screening is guaranteed and known-donor screening is only as good as the panel you insist on.
A bank asks for money and patience. The process is transactional in the neutral sense: you order, it ships, you inseminate on schedule. There is no relationship to maintain, no personality to accommodate, no possibility the donor changes his mind mid-cycle because life happened.
A known donor asks for the opposite. You are maintaining a relationship with someone who has an ongoing stake in the outcome, and the terms need negotiating in advance: contact during childhood, what the child is told and when, whether the donor's family knows, what happens if you move abroad. These conversations are uncomfortable and worth having before conception rather than after. The donors who make good known donors are the ones who engage with these questions seriously rather than waving them off.
The logistics also differ more than people expect. Fresh donation means the donor produces and you inseminate within roughly an hour, which requires a donor who is local, available, and reliable on short notice around your ovulation window. Get the timing wrong and the cycle is wasted regardless of sperm quality, which is why our piece on getting the timing right is the most-read article on this site.
Some recipients use bank vials as a backstop while arranging a known donor, or vice versa after bank cycles fail. This is legitimate but needs a decision made in advance about which genetic parent any resulting child has, because mid-treatment ambiguity is where arrangements go wrong. If the known donor's sample is used in a cycle, he is the genetic and potentially legal father on the statute; if the bank vial is used, the bank donor is not a parent. Mixing routes across cycles is fine. Mixing them within a decision you have not actually made is not.
There is no universally correct route. People who prioritise legal cleanliness and are happy to pay tend toward banks. People who want a known genetic origin for their child, donor contact, or lower costs tend toward known donation, and accept the work of screening and agreements in exchange. What is not defensible is drifting: using a known donor without screening because he seemed nice, or buying bank vials without checking residual supply, are both avoidable mistakes that people make under time pressure.
Decide what you can afford, what you can enforce, and what you want your child to be able to ask you at sixteen. Then pick the route that answers those three questions honestly, and read the deeper guides linked above before the first attempt rather than after the first failure.