Four conditions decide whether a destination works: whether the rule names a family like yours, who is a legal parent at birth, what the money covers, and whether you have to attend in person. The records here set those four out for eight legal systems.
Surrogacy law varies between countries, and inside federal countries between states and provinces. It also turns on marital status, on whether a child is genetically yours, and on nationality and residence, and those are separate tests. Nothing here is legal advice about your situation: a country that permits surrogacy has not established that you may use that route, or that the country you live in will accept the birth result.
Each one removes candidates faster than reading about it does, and each comes down to a single question you can put to a provider or to a lawyer.
01
Does the rule name a family like yours?
That surrogacy is permitted there and that you are eligible are two different things. Where a provision says who may commission, it usually turns on marital status, a genetic link to the child, or the make-up of the family. A country described as surrogacy-friendly has answered another question.
Something a person can point at in the text of a rule is a rule. Something that comes from how many families like yours a provider has placed is practice.
02
Who is the legal parent at birth?
In some systems an intended parent is named at birth. In others the woman who gives birth is the legal mother whatever the agreement said, and parentage only moves afterwards through a court. That one difference decides whether your planning ends at the delivery room or starts there.
Ask for the sequence: who is a parent on the day of birth, what application exists afterwards, who hears it, and how long a determination actually takes.
03
How far does the money go?
A destination outside your budget is not worth researching, but what decides feasibility is scope rather than the total: which stages a program includes, what may lawfully be paid to the carrier, what bills outside the quote, and what returns to you if the program stops.
Two quotes forty per cent apart can contain the same medicine. Compare item lists before comparing headline figures.
04
Can you be where you are needed?
Signing before treatment, attending a court, collecting documents and staying after the birth are four separate requirements, and they usually come from clinic practice, the registrar and the court rather than from the statute. How much you can travel often settles the field before the budget does.
Get the attendance schedule in writing from whoever handles each step, and say up front how many travel windows you have.
Details that arrive later
What a country name does not tell you
The table above prints what each destination permits. These notes cover what shows up after that: who a rule names as a parent, what has to happen after the birth, who has to be in the room, and what the money is allowed to look like. Each note links to the page holding the detail, and a note that rests on a legal provision names it and the date we read it.
Some rules name a family type instead of describing one
Where a rule names a couple, a single parent can fall outside it however the destination is described in a brochure. One United States state in the survey we checked writes the restriction the other way and adds two more tests: its route is confined to married, heterosexual intended parents who are genetic to the child.
Being a couple does not automatically make you two legal parents
Some systems name one intended parent at birth and leave the other a separate route, which may be a court application, a second registration, or nothing at all. The two questions have different answers, so ask them separately: who is a parent on the day of birth, and what does the second parent have to do after it.
A spouse and a partner are two different words in these rules
Where a rule recognises a spouse and not a partner, it changes who has to apply after the birth and whether a second parent can be named at all. Marital status is a fact a provision can test, so it gets tested whether or not anybody mentioned it to you.
A nationality outside the usual list makes recognition the first question, not the last
The destination decides what happens at birth. The country whose passport the child will claim, or the country you will return to, decides whether that birth result is accepted there. Those are two legal systems and two lawyers.
Living somewhere and holding its passport test different things
A rule about residents and a rule about citizens are not the same rule. Where you live tends to decide who treats you and where the birth gets registered; what passport you hold tends to decide what the child can claim. One sentence covering both is where a shortlist starts going wrong.
A donor changes the medical route, and sometimes the legal one
Whose egg, whose sperm and who carries the pregnancy are three separate decisions, and in some places a required genetic link is written into the provision itself. Decide that shape before you shortlist, because a route can close on exactly that question.
Where parentage moves after the birth, the wait is part of the plan
In the United Kingdom the surrogate remains the legal mother at birth unless a parental order is obtained, and the arrangement itself is not enforceable. None of that rules the country out; it does mean a court application sits after the delivery, and the dates around it belong in your planning from the first conversation.
What pulls two figures apart is usually outside the headline: who bills beyond the program itself, whose account holds the money while you wait, and what comes back if it stops midway. The published figures collected here are split line by line so those three can be read across two destinations.
The attendance schedule comes from three different offices
How many trips, whose signature has to be witnessed, and how long the family must stay after the birth are three separate schedules, set by the clinic, the registrar and the court. They also change between programmes, so ask each office for its own list in writing.
Who is accountable for the treatment, what the licence actually covers, what the clinic says happens after a failed cycle, and who the contract binds. All four have answers, and the answers are documents rather than paragraphs of copy.
Ask for the provision, not the number of families placed
How many families in your situation a provider has placed tells you something about that provider. It cannot tell you what a provision says, and it cannot promise anything about your case. Get the citation for who may commission, then have a lawyer in that jurisdiction confirm it reaches you.
Without an item list, every destination looks affordable and every quote looks complete. Canada shows what scope can do on its own: paying a surrogate is prohibited there, while reimbursement of her regulated expenses is permitted and documented, so the shape of the money comes out of the law rather than out of the market.
Test a figure you already hold against what it includes
Write the number down, list what it states it covers, then list what it does not. The gap between those two lists is the budget you will actually need, and it is the part a comparison of two headline figures never shows.
How long you can stay is a constraint on your side of the table
Some routes need two attended visits; some need the family in the country for weeks after the birth. Work out what you can actually commit before you read a destination as expensive or slow, and say it at the first conversation rather than discovering it at the fourth.
Learn the three shapes before you learn the countries
Legal systems decide their surrogacy positions in different ways: by statute, by court decision, or region by region. Once those shapes make sense to you, a country name starts telling you what to expect instead of what to hope.
Two destinations at the same price are not the same choice
At an identical cost, one destination may name you at birth and another may not; one may need a single visit and another three; one may hold the money in escrow while another leaves it with a clinic. Set those beside the figures before you let the totals decide.
With a destination named, run the checklist against it
Take the destination you have in mind through every question that has an owner, and write beside each one who answered it and when, in the document you download from the checklist. A question nobody will answer in writing is itself a finding, and usually a clearer one than whatever the provider says out loud.
Medical scheduling is usually the thing people chase first and the thing that moves fastest. A written view from a lawyer in the destination, and a second one in your own country, take longer to obtain, and they change what you should even be scheduling.
Copying and downloading keep this list on your side: it is assembled in this browser into a text file you can send to a lawyer or paste into a note. Nothing is uploaded to us when you use them.
Who each destination admits
Read across a row for one destination, down a column for one kind of family. A cell reading "not settled" describes how far this site's sources go, not the destination itself.
Which family types each destination admits, limited to what the sources listed here establish
The conditions behind a marked cell, with the record they come from
a Georgia · A couple living together The same rule reaches a man and a woman who have lived together for at least one year.
b Kazakhstan · A married couple Marriage is not enough by itself: the rule names Kazakh citizenship as well.
c Ukraine · Intended parents living abroad A bill registered in August 2026 would remove foreign intended parents from this route. It has not been adopted.
d United Kingdom · A married couple, A couple living together, A single person, Two men as intended parents, Two women as intended parents At least one applicant has to be genetically related to the child.
e Greece · Intended parents living abroad Both the intending parents and the woman carrying must hold permanent residence in Greece.
The ten things a comparison has to cover
Most families end up with a table of countries and one price column, and that column hides what actually decides feasibility: whether you can be named at birth, how many trips are required, and who holds the money while you wait. These are the ten fields every destination page here is written against.
A field is filled where a source supports it and left open where one does not, with the unanswered question printed under the record.
Statute, case law, an assisted-reproduction act, or a state-by-state patchwork?
02
Who may commission
Which intended parents the rule names, and whether a genetic link is required.
03
Nationality and residence
Whether the rule reaches citizens, residents, or anyone who travels there.
04
Legal parentage at birth
Who the law treats as the mother and the father before any order exists.
05
Procedure after the birth
The application, the court or registry that hears it, and the realistic duration.
06
The child's nationality and documents
What nationality the child acquires, and what they leave the country on.
07
Payment rules
What may be paid, to whom, in what amounts, and who has to authorise it.
08
Licensing and oversight
Which body licenses the clinic, and what that license actually covers.
09
Attendance requirements
Who must be present, for how long, and at which stages.
10
Source and check date
Nothing in the column is left without a document behind it, dated.
Legal systems come in three shapes
The shape a system has decides how much its name can tell you. Every sentence below is quoted from a record and carries its own citation.
01
Parentage is transferred after the birth
United Kingdom, and any system with a court route after delivery
Planning cannot finish at the delivery. There is an application, a hearing, and a period in which the child is legally someone else's.
The surrogate is the legal mother unless a parental order is obtained, a written arrangement is not legally binding, and payment is limited to her reasonable expenses.
Paying more than reasonable expenses has to be authorised by the family court before a parental order can be made, and advertising for or as a surrogate is illegal under the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985.
Intended parents wait until the child is born and then apply to court, which the Law Commission describes as typically taking six months to a year. Its reform proposals would keep arrangements unenforceable, and the draft Bill is not law.
Canada, and any federal system that legislates on money but not on birth
A country can be lawful to enter and still not be where your parentage order comes from. Read the reimbursement rules and the provincial birth rules as two separate documents.
Expenditures a surrogate incurs in relation to her surrogacy may be reimbursed, under subsection 12(1) of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act and the regulations made under it.
The regulator lists what counts as reimbursable: travel, childcare, counselling, legal fees, medications, maternity clothing, prenatal classes, delivery, insurance, and lost work-related income before and after birth, with receipts required and records kept for six years.
No single national rule; the state or province sets it
United States, and any country where sub-national law governs
A country name tells you almost nothing. The state, province or region sets the rule, and recognition where you live is a further legal system on top of it.
Each state has its own laws about whether surrogacy is permitted and how it is regulated; there is no federal framework.
Gestational surrogacy is expressly permitted by statute in 21 states in the survey we read, while several states have no statutes or published case law either permitting or prohibiting it.
In Indiana and Nebraska gestational carrier contracts are unenforceable and against public policy, and Arizona residents are prohibited from entering into them.
This site issues no legal opinion and represents no clinic or agency. What it does hold is the documents: bring your shortlist and any quote you already have, and the unclear parts turn into specific questions to put to a lawyer.
The legal basis: statute, case law, an assisted-reproduction act, or no single national rule.
Who may commission, described as far as the sourced material goes.
Each position with the document it came from, its publisher, and the date it was read.
Payment rules stated as what the law permits, prohibits, or requires to be authorised.
Parentage at birth and parentage afterwards, as two separate answers.
The questions no source settled, including sources that would not open or sat behind a login.
Every conclusion readable against its own document, so you are checking a source rather than accepting a finding.
How to read a record
Read the legal basis first, then who is a parent at birth, then the figures. The cost lines are grouped at the foot of a record, and a field no source reaches is left as it stands.
Permitted is not the same as workable
Eligibility, parentage, which court handles it, and what the child leaves the country on are four separate questions, and any one of them can fail alone.
