IVF Success Rates Abroad: How to Read a Number That Is Designed to Impress You

Per cycle or per transfer, pregnancy or live birth, own eggs or donor: four choices that let a clinic double its own success rate without treating anyone better.

Written and kept up to date by the CureBooking medical travel team · Last updated October 2026

The short answer

A clinic's advertised success rate is almost always the most flattering of several true numbers. The four levers are: per transfer instead of per started cycle, pregnancy instead of live birth, donor eggs mixed in with own-egg cycles, and no breakdown by age.

The only comparable figure is live birth per started cycle, in your age band, with your own eggs. Ask for exactly that. A clinic that cannot produce it either does not audit its results or does not want to show them.

Age dominates everything else. A good clinic cannot make a 42-year-old's own eggs behave like a 32-year-old's, and the difference between a good and an average clinic is much smaller than the difference between those two patients.

The four ways a number gets inflated

Per transfer, not per started cycle. Cycles that are cancelled, or that produce no transferable embryo, vanish from the denominator. For older patients this is where most of the failures live, so the gap between the two figures is widest exactly where it matters most.
Clinical pregnancy, not live birth. A positive test and a heartbeat at six weeks are not a baby. Miscarriage rates rise with maternal age, so the gap between these two numbers also widens with age.
Donor cycles included. Donor-egg results are far better than own-egg results at older ages. A single blended figure for a clinic with a large donor programme tells you almost nothing about your own-egg chances.
No age breakdown. A headline rate reflects the clinic's patient mix. A centre treating mostly women under 35 will beat a centre treating mostly women over 40 without being better at anything.

What to ask for, word for word

"Live births per started cycle, own eggs, for women aged X to Y, for the last full year." Then the same figure for the previous year, to see whether it is stable.
"How many cycles did that represent?" A 70% rate from twelve cycles is noise, not performance.
"What proportion of started cycles reached transfer?" This is the number that reveals cancellations.
"What is your miscarriage rate after positive test in my age band?"
"Are these your own audited figures, or national registry figures?" National registries exist in many countries and are the harder currency.

Why "we have the highest rate" is usually meaningless

Fertility clinics can legitimately differ in laboratory quality, embryologist skill, protocol choice and how carefully they screen patients. They also differ in something less flattering: how readily they decline difficult cases. A clinic that treats only good-prognosis patients publishes excellent numbers and is not necessarily the right place for a difficult case.

So the strongest practical signal is not a rate. It is whether the clinic will tell you honestly that your own-egg prospects are poor, offer a realistic number of cycles, and describe the point at which it would advise you to stop. Clinics that never say any of that have a different objective.

The Cyprus and Turkey question specifically

Patients searching for success rates in Cyprus are usually looking at donor-egg or sex-selection programmes, which are legal there and not in Turkey. Comparing a Cyprus donor-cycle rate with a Turkish own-egg rate is comparing two different treatments, and the gap says nothing about the clinics.

In Turkey, donor eggs are prohibited, so every figure you are quoted is an own-egg figure by definition. That makes Turkish numbers more honest to compare with each other — and lower than donor numbers elsewhere, which is a feature of the law, not a weakness of the clinics.

What actually moves your odds

Age, and therefore how soon you start rather than how long you research.
Ovarian reserve: AMH and antral follicle count, which set realistic expectations about response.
Male factor: a full semen analysis, repeated, because one poor sample is not a diagnosis.
Weight. Both high and very low BMI reduce success, and weight is one of the few variables a patient can change before a cycle. It is also the part of this picture we do arrange treatment for.
Smoking, in both partners.
The uterine environment: fibroids, polyps, adhesions, untreated thyroid problems. Cheap to investigate, expensive to ignore.

Questions people ask

What is a normal IVF success rate?

It depends almost entirely on age and whether the eggs are the patient's own. National registry data in most countries shows live birth per started cycle falling steadily from the mid-thirties and dropping to low single digits with own eggs in the mid-forties. Any clinic quoting one number for everyone is not describing your case.

Are success rates abroad lower than at home?

Not inherently. What differs is patient mix, whether donor cycles are legal and included, and how the figure is calculated. Ask for live births per started cycle by age band and the comparison becomes possible.

How many cycles should I plan for?

Cumulative success rises over the first three to four cycles, which is why planning one cycle and hoping is the most common financial mistake in fertility treatment. Ask the clinic what cumulative outcome they would expect across three cycles in your age band.

Does a more expensive clinic do better?

There is no reliable relationship between price and outcome. There is a relationship between outcome and laboratory quality, protocol individualisation and honesty about prognosis — none of which correlate neatly with price.