How to choose an IVF clinic in India

Choosing where to have IVF is mostly a matter of checking a small number of things carefully, in the right order. The order matters because the first checks are pass or fail: a clinic that is not registered for the work you need is not a candidate, however reassuring its website looks. The later checks are about fit, cost and how a clinic communicates, and those are where your own judgement comes in.

This guide walks through those checks for clinics in India. It is written for patients, and it is meant to be just as usable by a doctor deciding where to refer someone. It does not tell you which treatment you need, and it does not rank clinics by success. This directory publishes no success rates for any clinic, for the reasons set out below. Everything it refers to can be looked up from the directory home.

Start with the registration

Since the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, a clinic offering assisted reproduction in India has to be registered. Section 15(1) of the Act is plain about it: “No person shall establish any clinic or bank for undertaking assisted reproductive technology or to render assisted reproductive technology procedures in any form unless such clinic or bank is duly registered under this Act.”

Registration is not something you have to take on trust. Section 16(7) requires that “The certificate of registration shall be displayed by the clinic or bank at a conspicuous place and such certificate shall contain the duration of validity of such registration.” Registration also runs for a fixed term. Section 16(6) says it “shall be valid for a period of five years from the date of registration granted by the appropriate authority”, and section 17 allows it to be renewed for a further period of five years.

So the first thing to look for, on a visit or by asking in writing, is that certificate and the date it runs to. Every clinic page in this directory shows the registration number recorded in the National ART & Surrogacy Registry extract, and names the registry as its source. That extract does not carry an expiry date for any listing, so the directory cannot tell you whether a registration is still current. The certificate on the clinic's wall can.

Check that the level matches the treatment

The ART Rules, 2022 divide clinics into two levels. A Level 1 clinic is one where “preliminary investigations are carried out including diagnosis of type, cause of infertility and only IUI is carried out as part of treatment.” A Level 2 clinic is one where “all/advanced investigations, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in ART are carried out.”

In practice that means IUI can be done at either level, while IVF, ICSI, egg collection, embryo freezing and embryo testing are Level 2 work; the treatments index explains each one. If you are being advised towards IVF, the clinic that does the laboratory work needs to be registered at Level 2. A Level 1 clinic can still be the right place for investigations and IUI, and some work with a partner Level 2 laboratory for anything beyond that. If so, ask which laboratory, where it is, and whether you will need to travel there for egg collection and embryo transfer.

Each clinic in this directory shows the level its registry entry records. Not every entry records one. In the extract, a large share of listings carry no level at all, and every listing in Tamil Nadu is in that position. A missing level is not evidence that a clinic is unregistered; it means you should ask the clinic which level its certificate states. The guide to the National ART Registry and clinic levels explains what each level covers and how to read a registry entry.

Find out who will actually treat you

The name on the building is not the person who will look after you. Ask who your treating doctor will be, how often you will see that doctor rather than a colleague, and who performs egg collection and embryo transfer. For IVF, ask who runs the embryology laboratory, and whether an embryologist is on site on every day of a cycle, weekends included, because a cycle does not pause for them.

Some clinic pages here list the doctors a clinic names on its own website, and the fertility doctors index lets you look a doctor up directly. A doctor's profile shows what has been published about them and where it came from. It is not an endorsement, and it says nothing about results.

Be careful with success claims

A success rate is the claim most clinics lead with and the one that is hardest to compare. The Act gives the National Registry the job of gathering the “outcome of the services” from every clinic, but clinic-level results are not published by the registry, and what a clinic publishes about itself has not been checked by anyone else. Clinics also count differently: per cycle started or per embryo transferred, by age group or across all ages, with frozen transfers or without them. Two claims that look alike usually are not.

That is why this directory publishes no success rates for any clinic. If a clinic quotes one to you, ask how it was counted, over what period, for which age group, and whether anyone outside the clinic audited it. A clinic that answers those questions plainly has told you more than the claim itself did. The page on how we rank explains what the directory does sort by, and what it refuses to.

Ask what the quote includes

This directory holds no prices, so it shows none and estimates none. What a quote includes moves the final bill far more than the headline does. Ask for an itemised quote in writing, and ask specifically whether it covers:

• the drugs used to stimulate the ovaries, which are often billed separately;
• scans and blood tests during the cycle;
• ICSI, if it may be used, and any laboratory extras such as extended culture or embryo testing;
• freezing any spare embryos, and the yearly cost of keeping them in storage;
• a frozen embryo transfer in a later cycle;
• what happens to the fee if a cycle is cancelled before egg collection.

The UK fertility regulator, the HFEA, warns that “You may be offered 'treatment add-ons' which are optional extras, often charged at an extra cost.” It is equally direct about the evidence: “The fact is, there is no conclusive evidence that any of the commonly offered add-ons increase the chance of a pregnancy.” Ask which items in your quote are add-ons, and why each one is being suggested for you in particular.

Know the law on donors and surrogacy

If your treatment may involve donor eggs, donor sperm or surrogacy, the clinic's arrangements are governed by law, and the clinic should be able to tell you exactly how it complies. Section 27(1) of the ART Act says “The screening of gamete donors, the collection, screening and storage of semen; and provision of oocyte donor, shall be done only by a bank registered as an independent entity under the provisions of this Act.” So ask which registered ART bank the clinic works with.

Surrogacy sits under a separate law, the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021, with a registration of its own. A clinic's ART level does not tell you whether it is registered as a surrogacy clinic, and this directory does not hold those registrations. The egg donation, sperm donation and surrogacy pages quote the relevant sections in full.

Weigh location and the practical load

An IVF cycle involves several visits in a short span, often at short notice: scans during stimulation, egg collection on a set day, and embryo transfer a few days later. The HFEA says “For most people, one cycle of IVF will take between four and six weeks.” Distance matters more than it seems when you are planning around work and family. A registered clinic in your own city is often worth more than a better-known one a long journey away, provided it passes the checks above.

The clinics index covers every state, and the larger cities have pages of their own, among them Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai. Pages such as IVF in Chennai narrow a city to the clinics that name one treatment on their own website.

Use the first consultation well

A first consultation is where you can ask everything above and see how a clinic answers. Take any previous test results in date order, and go together if there are two of you, because infertility is investigated on both sides. Write your questions down beforehand, since consultations run short. Attending commits you to nothing, and a second opinion is normal practice. The first consultation checklist sets out what to bring and what to ask.

A short checklist

• Is the clinic registered under the ART Act, and is the certificate on display with its validity?
• Is its level right for the treatment you may need, and if not, which Level 2 laboratory does it use?
• Who will be your treating doctor, and who runs the laboratory?
• If a success claim is quoted, how was it counted, and has anyone outside the clinic checked it?
• Is the quote itemised and in writing, with drugs, freezing, storage and add-ons named?
• For donor treatment, which registered ART bank does the clinic use?
• Can you manage the visits a cycle needs from where you live and work?

For doctors referring a patient

The same checks apply to a referral. The registry entry on each clinic page gives the registration number and the level as the extract records them; where the level is missing, the certificate is the authority. Registration numbers in the extract follow no single national format. Some carry a state code, a year and the level inside them; others carry only a district code and a serial. A number on its own is therefore not enough to confirm what a clinic is registered to do. If you find an entry here that is wrong, the corrections form reaches the people who maintain the directory.

Where this guide comes from

Statements about the law are quoted from the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Rules, 2022 and the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021. Statements about treatment are quoted from the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), whose patient pages are plainly written and openly sourced. Indian law differs from UK law, and where it matters the Indian text is quoted instead. Facts about clinics come from the National ART & Surrogacy Registry extract this directory holds and from each clinic's own website. Nothing in this guide is clinical advice, and nothing in it is sponsored.