How to start a surrogacy agency
Starting a surrogacy agency means becoming the trusted center of one of the most meaningful processes in people's lives — and navigating complex law, careful screening, and long journeys along the way. This guide walks through the major steps so you can see the whole path before you take the first one.
1. Understand the legal landscape first
Before anything else, learn the law where you intend to operate. Surrogacy is treated very differently from place to place — some regions are highly supportive of compensated gestational surrogacy, while others restrict or prohibit it. This single factor shapes everything that follows: where you can place journeys, how contracts are written, and how legal parentage is established.
Engage an attorney who specializes in assisted reproductive technology (ART) law early. Their guidance is not a formality — it is the foundation your entire agency stands on.
2. Define your model and services
Decide what kind of agency you want to be. Will you focus on gestational surrogacy, egg and donor services, or both? Will you serve a single region, work nationally, or support international intended parents? Will you offer full-service matching and case management, or a narrower role alongside other providers?
These choices determine your staffing, your partners, and the systems you will need, so it helps to be clear about them up front rather than expanding in every direction at once.
3. Set up the business properly
Form your legal entity, arrange appropriate business and professional liability insurance, and set up clean financial practices. Surrogacy involves significant funds moving between parties, so understand how escrow is typically handled and partner with professionals who manage it. You will also handle sensitive medical and personal information, so build privacy and data-security practices in from day one.
4. Build your professional network
An agency is a hub that connects specialists. Strong, reputable relationships in each of these areas are often what define an agency's credibility:
- Fertility clinics and reproductive endocrinologists
- Attorneys specializing in reproductive and parentage law
- Mental health professionals for screening and ongoing support
- Escrow companies that manage and disburse funds
- Insurance specialists familiar with surrogacy
5. Recruit and screen surrogates and donors
Define clear, ethical eligibility and screening standards — medical, psychological, and background — and a thorough but welcoming application process. Screening protects every party in the journey and is central to your reputation. A smooth intake experience also matters: the way a prospective surrogate is treated in her first interaction sets the tone for everything after.
6. Reach intended parents
Intended parents find agencies through search, referrals, and fertility clinics. A clear, trustworthy website that explains your process, your screening, and the support you provide is your front door — often the first impression a family forms of you. Being genuinely findable online, and easy to begin a conversation with, is part of the work of building an agency.
7. Set up your systems and operations
This is where new agencies most often underestimate the effort. A single journey involves intake, screening, matching, contracts, medical coordination, scheduling, messaging, document management, and regular updates to several parties over many months. Run that on spreadsheets and email and the cracks appear quickly: a document in one place, a conversation in another, an appointment in a third.
Purpose-built surrogacy agency software — or a surrogacy CRM — keeps surrogates, intended parents, and donors, along with their matches, stages, messages, and documents, in one place. For a small team, that is the difference between feeling on top of every journey and constantly catching up.
Start as you mean to continue
The agencies that scale smoothly tend to be the ones that put real systems in place before they are drowning — not after. It is far easier to bring your first few journeys into one organized place than to untangle a year of scattered spreadsheets later.
8. Launch, deliver, and grow
Begin with a small number of journeys and pour your energy into delivering an exceptional, well-organized experience. In surrogacy, reputation is everything — your first families and surrogates become your referrals. Grow deliberately, and let the quality of each journey, not the volume, drive your momentum.
The operational backbone for your agency
SurroHub brings surrogates, parents, donors, matching, messaging, scheduling, and marketing into one branded platform — so a new agency can run like an established one.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a license to start a surrogacy agency?
Requirements vary widely by location. Some jurisdictions regulate agencies directly and others do not, but every agency must operate within the assisted-reproduction laws where it works. Speak with a reproductive-law attorney before you launch.
How much does it cost to start a surrogacy agency?
There is no single figure. It depends on your model, location, staffing, insurance, legal setup, and marketing. Plan for legal and professional fees, business formation and insurance, a website, and the systems you use to run cases.
What professionals does a surrogacy agency work with?
Fertility clinics and reproductive endocrinologists, reproductive-law attorneys, mental health professionals, escrow companies, and insurance specialists.
Can one person run a surrogacy agency?
Many start small or solo. Because a journey spans intake, matching, contracts, scheduling, and communication over many months, strong systems are what make that possible.
What software do surrogacy agencies use?
Many begin with spreadsheets, then move to dedicated surrogacy agency software or a surrogacy CRM that keeps people, matching, messaging, scheduling, and documents in one place.