This is the first question almost everyone asks us, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a number pulled from the air.
The honest position is this: anyone who quotes you a firm surrogacy price before understanding your medical situation has given you a marketing figure, not a quote. What we can do, and what this guide does, is show you exactly what sits inside the cost, what moves it up or down, and how to judge whether the number someone gives you is realistic.
Why Ghana costs less than the US or Europe
Families come to Accra from Europe, North America, and across the continent largely because a full surrogacy journey here costs a fraction of what the same journey costs in the United States, without the medical standard dropping to match.
The saving is not magic. Clinical care, laboratory work, accommodation, and professional fees simply cost less to deliver in Ghana than in London or California. Care is delivered in English, the country is stable and welcoming, and direct flights into Accra are easy from most of Europe.
What should not vary between countries is the standard of screening, the quality of the embryology lab, and the care your surrogate receives. If an agency is cheaper because it has cut those, you are not saving money, you are buying risk.
What a surrogacy programme fee actually covers
Costs group into five buckets. When you compare agencies, compare bucket by bucket, because the headline number means nothing until you know what it includes.
- Agency and coordination: recruiting and screening surrogates, matching, managing the journey, and being reachable when something goes wrong at 11pm
- Medical: IVF cycle, embryo transfer, medication, antenatal care, scans, delivery, and care for the baby
- Surrogate compensation and support: her agreed payment, plus maternity clothing, nutrition, travel to appointments, and time off around the delivery
- Screening and counselling: medical and wellbeing screening for the surrogate, plus independent counselling before anyone signs anything
- Legal and administrative: the agreements between you and your surrogate, and the paperwork after the birth
What moves the number up or down
- Whether you already have embryos, or need a full IVF cycle in Accra
- Whether you need an egg donor, a sperm donor, or both
- How many transfer attempts are needed, this is the single biggest variable and nobody can promise it will be one
- Whether the pregnancy is straightforward or needs extra medical care
- Whether you are travelling in, and how often, since flights and accommodation are real costs even when they sit outside the programme fee
That third point is the one that catches people out. A quote built on the assumption of a single successful transfer will look wonderfully cheap next to an honest one that plans for the possibility of two. Ask what happens, and what it costs, if the first transfer does not take.
Questions to ask any agency, including us
- Can I have this quote in writing, itemised, before I commit to anything?
- What is not included in this figure?
- What happens to the money if the first transfer is unsuccessful?
- How much of this goes to the surrogate, and when is she paid?
- Who pays if there is a medical complication?
- Can I speak to a lawyer of my own choosing before signing?
An agency that answers all six plainly is one you can work with. An agency that gets vague around the second or fourth question is telling you something important.
How we handle it
We do not publish a price list, because a single figure would be either meaningless or misleading. What we commit to instead is simple: after your free consultation, you receive a written, itemised breakdown covering every bucket above, before you pay us anything. No fees appear later that were not on that sheet.
The consultation itself costs nothing and carries no obligation. Many people use it purely to understand what their situation would realistically involve, then go away and think. That is a completely reasonable way to use it.
A note on the legal side
Surrogacy arrangements in Ghana rest heavily on carefully drafted agreements between the parties, and the legal steps that follow a birth depend on your own country's rules as much as on Ghana's.
Take independent legal advice, both here and at home, before you commit. Any agency that discourages you from doing so is not one you should be working with.
Book a free consultation
Tell us your situation and we will walk you through what it would realistically cost, in writing.
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