The Womb Boom

How much would you pay to be a parent? For years, Americans who turned to surrogacy could expect to spend about $100,000 on what the industry calls the “surrogacy journey.” For deep-pocketed intended parents—the term for those who plan to raise a baby born through surrogacy—that was expensive but manageable. High-profile parents who used surrogates, such as Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and Chrissy Teigen, helped make the practice increasingly visible. Today, even they might blink. Since the pandemic, the cost of a single surrogacy birth has doubled, and sometimes much more. The starting price is now often $200,000, and at the top end it can easily reach $600,000.

The global surrogacy industry is booming. It was worth $22.4 billion in 2024, with America accounting for more than a fifth of that. In most markets, growth on that scale would bring prices down. In surrogacy, the opposite has happened. The reason is simple: more people want surrogates, and fewer women are available to be them. That imbalance has transformed an achievable path to parenthood into a luxury market—and made it irresistible...