Caucasus
Surrogacy in Georgia: the complete guide to law, process, cost and contract
Each position below names its source and the date it was last checked. Where a rule depends on your circumstances, it says so instead of guessing.
Positions checked Oct 17, 2026
Legal basis
Inside an assisted-reproduction law
Intended parents from abroad
Permitted
Families the route names
A married couple, A couple living together
Published cost
US$55,000 to 85,000
Who may commission
A surrogacy contract is open to a couple consisting of a man and a woman who have been married, or have lived together, for at least one year; single people and same-sex couples cannot be parties to it. Citizenship is not one of the conditions: Georgian law does not distinguish between Georgian citizens and foreigners, which is why Georgia has been used by international intended parents. The rules sit inside the health-care and patient-rights legislation and a set of Ministry of Health orders rather than in a dedicated surrogacy act, so the description here follows a practitioner who reads those instruments, and the parts that could not be verified are named underneath.
Payment
The statute is silent rather than permissive: it neither expressly permits nor prohibits paying the woman who carries, and compensated arrangements have operated in Georgia for years on that silence. No published ceiling, no list of reimbursable items and no regulatory figure for Georgia was found in the material read, so nothing here is a Georgian price, and a figure quoted to you by a clinic or an agency is not a price Georgian law has set.
Parentage
Registration is administrative rather than judicial. The intended parents are recorded as the child's parents, and the woman who carried the pregnancy and any donor are not entered as parents; the practitioner account read here describes the rule as a prohibition on naming them, not as a discretion the registry weighs. There is no equivalent of a United States pre-birth order, because no court order is the step that establishes parentage. What a Georgian birth entry is worth once the family reaches another country is a separate question this record does not answer.
What changed, and when
Dates come from the same sources as the positions below. An entry that says a bill was not adopted is there because the record would be misleading without it.
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The prime minister announced draft laws that would have confined surrogacy and IVF to Georgian citizens and put both on an altruistic footing. Reporting at the time described the framework then in force as vague.
Georgia Aims To Ban Booming Surrogacy Business For Foreigners , checked Oct 17, 2026
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The date the drafts were projected to take effect. They were not adopted, and no further parliamentary action was recorded after the announcement, so the pre-2023 rules are the ones that still apply.
Georgia Aims To Ban Booming Surrogacy Business For Foreigners , checked Oct 17, 2026
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Three academics published fieldwork with women who had carried in Georgia's surrogacy sector, putting an arrangement at roughly 55,000 to 85,000 US dollars and the payment to the woman at around 20,000, in instalments.
I didn't come here to get rich: new research on the lives of Ukrainian women in Georgia's surrogacy boom , checked Oct 17, 2026
Which families this route is open to
These rows come from the same record as the legal position above, and each one names the source that states it. A family type appears only where that type is written into the provision.
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A married couple, Intended parents living abroad
Permitted
Surrogacy law in Georgia (practitioner page) , checked Oct 17, 2026
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A couple living together
Permitted The same rule reaches a man and a woman who have lived together for at least one year.
Surrogacy law in Georgia (practitioner page) , checked Oct 17, 2026
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A single person, Two men as intended parents, Two women as intended parents
Not permitted
Surrogacy law in Georgia (practitioner page) , checked Oct 17, 2026
The process, stage by stage
A surrogacy programme is a run of separate stages, not one decision. The order shifts with the destination and with whether you need donated eggs or sperm. The full walkthrough, with the questions each stage raises:
- 1
Set out your own situation
Your medical, legal and financial facts come first, because they decide which destinations are open to you at all.
- 2
Choose a destination before a clinic
The place is chosen on legal grounds, before any money moves. The legal-considerations guide lists what to confirm.
- 3
Screening, both ways
Your fertility work-up and the carrier’s medical and psychological screening. FIGO’s position is that psychological screening and ongoing support should be mandatory.
- 4
Matching
How a programme pairs you with a carrier is where marketed and delivered service differ most. Ask in writing what happens if a match is not reached.
- 5
The agreement, and the money behind it
Before treatment, the arrangement is set down in writing and should carry the funds, not just point at them. Escrow is usually funded before the first transfer.
- 6
Treatment and transfer
Medication and monitoring, then the embryo transfer. From here the timeline is no longer yours: clinic schedule and the carrier’s cycle decide.
- 7
Pregnancy
Prenatal care is the obstetrician’s. What you pay for, and who decides, are contract questions that should already be settled.
- 8
Birth and parentage
The parentage path decides what happens in the delivery room and after. Only a lawyer in that jurisdiction can say which path applies to you.
- 9
Bringing the child home
Registration, passport or consular documents, and whatever your home country requires. Cross-border parents are not rare: a third of US surrogate transfers involved them.
Cost figures published for this destination
Each number below is one a named source published, in that source's own currency, for the year stated. It is a published figure with a citation rather than a quote, and the source that printed it is linked from the row.
| What the line covers | Figure | Published by | Year the figures describe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whole program | US$55,000 to 85,000 | I didn't come here to get rich: new research on the lives of Ukrainian women in Georgia's surrogacy boom , checked Oct 17, 2026 | 2026 figures |
| Paid to the carrier | US$20,000 | I didn't come here to get rich: new research on the lives of Ukrainian women in Georgia's surrogacy boom , checked Oct 17, 2026 | 2026 figures |
The contract is the legal core
Before any treatment begins, the arrangement should be written down and should carry the money, not merely point at it. What every contract must cover, and the clauses worth insisting on:
Read the legal-considerations guideChoosing an agency
The agency is the one party whose incentives are not yours by default. We do not name agencies on this site: what follows is how to ask, and how to judge whether an agency is sound, before you sign.
Read the agency-evaluation guideQuestions people ask
- Is surrogacy legal everywhere?
- No. It ranges from explicitly permitted to prohibited, and within federal countries it varies by state or province. The legal basis for each destination is set out at the top of this page, with its source and the date it was checked.
- Can intended parents from another country use this route?
- It depends on the destination. The "intended parents from abroad" cell in the summary strip above says whether the sources behind this record admit foreign commissioning parents, and the admissions section below names the family types each rule opens to.
- When is parentage settled?
- That is the single biggest planning difference between systems. Some name an intended parent at birth; others treat the woman who gives birth as the legal mother until a court moves parentage afterwards. Which one applies to you only a lawyer in that jurisdiction can say.
- What does the price usually include?
- A programme price is built from several lines, and scope matters more than the headline total. The figures a source has published for this destination are in the cost table above, and the full breakdown of what a quote usually leaves out is in the cost guide.
- Do I have to travel there myself?
- Usually, yes, at least for some steps. Signing before treatment, attending a court or registrar, collecting documents and staying after the birth are separate requirements that often come from clinic practice and the court rather than the statute. How many trips you can make often narrows the field before cost does.
- Is there an average surrogacy cost?
- No single figure applies. The total depends on the destination, on what the programme includes, and on what a quote leaves out, so an average would hide the differences that decide whether a plan is feasible. The per-line figures on this page and the cost guide show why.
- How does the child come home?
- Birth registration, a passport or consular documents, and whatever your home country requires to recognise the arrangement. The steps differ by where the child is born and where you live, and the documents guide walks through them.
What each position rests on
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Surrogacy in Georgia is governed by article 143 of the Law of Georgia on Health Care together with the Law on Patient Rights and Ministry of Health orders; a contract requires a man and a woman married or cohabiting for at least one year, and single people and same-sex couples cannot be parties; the law does not distinguish Georgian citizens from foreigners; it neither expressly permits nor prohibits paying the carrier; the intended parents are registered as the child's parents and the surrogate and any donor can never be named.
Surrogacy law in Georgia (practitioner page) · LCL Law, a Georgian law firm , checked Oct 17, 2026
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A government bill introduced in 2023 to ban surrogacy for foreigners has not been adopted. The drafts would have confined surrogacy and IVF to Georgian citizens on an altruistic basis, were announced by the prime minister on 12 June 2023, and were projected to take effect on 1 January 2024; commentators described the existing framework as vague. No further action was recorded after the announcement.
Georgia Aims To Ban Booming Surrogacy Business For Foreigners · RFE/RL , checked Oct 17, 2026
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Research published in 2026 by three academics who worked with women in Georgia's surrogacy sector reports that in the year before it was written, surrogacy in Georgia cost approximately 55,000 to 85,000 US dollars, and that the women who carried were typically paid around 20,000 US dollars in instalments.
I didn't come here to get rich: new research on the lives of Ukrainian women in Georgia's surrogacy boom · The Conversation, written by Oleinikova, Badashvili and Vlasenko , checked Oct 17, 2026
What still needs local advice
These are the questions a source in Georgia did not settle. They are the ones worth paying a locally qualified lawyer for.
- The consolidated official text of Health Care Law article 143 and of the Ministry of Health orders was never opened here, so the article numbers, and the exact wording of the rule that keeps the carrier and the donor off the birth entry, rest on one law firm's account.
- Whether the 2023 bill was formally withdrawn or merely lapsed is unconfirmed, which means a future attempt to close the route to foreigners would not be foreshadowed by anything in the published record.
- Whether a Georgian birth entry naming the intended parents is accepted by the country the family lives in, and which document the child travels on, are separate questions, and nothing in this record speaks to either.
Comparing more than one place?
The comparison only means something when each destination is read against the same set of questions: eligibility, parentage, payment rules and what happens if the plan changes.
Your own situation
Have a consultant work through it with you
Tell us about your situation. A consultant on the editorial team replies within 1 to 2 working days, and nothing you send goes to a clinic or agency.