Sunfish vs. Shady Grove Fertility
Based on research as of September 17, 2026.
Shady Grove Fertility's Shared Risk program only protects patients who clear three separate gates (no insurance use, medical clearance, and an age cutoff around 40), while Sunfish's IVF Success Program applies no age, diagnosis, or insurance exclusions and the Gold Program refunds up to $15,000 if you are unsuccessful.1
Patients researching IVF refund programs usually ask how much money is protected. The better question is whether they can even qualify for the program in the first place. Sunfish built its IVF Success Program around that second question, with no exclusions on age, diagnosis, or insurance status.
Compare that to Shady Grove Fertility's Shared Risk 100% Refund Program, one of the oldest and most recognized models in fertility care: it's designed only for patients without insurance, requires medical clearance to qualify, and caps eligibility by age. Three separate gates, insurance status, medical approval, and age, stand between a patient and the headline refund number. Sunfish was built to remove those gates entirely. Here's how the two compare on the criteria that actually decide who gets in.
At a glance: Sunfish vs. Shady Grove Fertility Shared Risk
That table is the whole argument in miniature. Sunfish's row is short because there's nothing to screen for.
Sunfish applies zero exclusions to its IVF Success Program: no patient is turned away on age, diagnosis, or insurance status. Many IVF refund and shared risk programs screen on age and ovarian reserve before admitting anyone, and the patients they turn away are the ones who most need care. The standard package price is the same regardless of a patient's medical profile. What differs is the refund a patient can receive if they choose the Gold Program. A required physical evaluation with an eligible clinic still applies, since Sunfish builds the program around a patient's treatment plan rather than her demographics.
Sunfish's IVF and egg freezing Success Programs are packages a patient buys outright at a partner fertility clinic, for a price quoted before treatment begins.
Instead of a flat multi-cycle package priced for a group, Sunfish charges one standard price and forecasts a patient's cost of reaching a live birth through IVF with a predictive model that reads age, AMH, BMI, and prior cycle history from a partner clinic evaluation.
Every member gets a Planning Partner: one named person who coordinates clinic and pharmacy logistics, handles billing, and gives evidence-based guidance at each decision point. Members also get exclusive evidence-based resources including videos, articles, and easy-to-follow guides, and exclusive benefits including discounts on embryo and egg storage and transport, prenatal vitamins, mental health support, vaginal microbiome testing kits and many more.
Why Shared Risk's three gates matter
Shady Grove Fertility's Shared Risk program is a useful case study because its rules are public and specific. Patients must not have insurance coverage for IVF, or must choose to waive the coverage they have, since the program cannot be combined with other treatment discounts. Patients must also qualify after medical clearance before they are accepted. And for a patient using her own eggs, eligibility is capped by age. SGF announced in 2018 that it had extended that cap by two years, to just under 41 (40 years and 11 months).
A patient can fail any one of these three gates and never see the program at all, regardless of how much she'd benefit from the refund structure itself.
The math behind Shared Risk isn't as simple as "pay once, refund guaranteed"
Shared Risk asks enrollees to pay a flat amount up front, in exchange for up to six IVF cycles and any resulting frozen embryo transfers. A patient who becomes pregnant on her first cycle still pays that same flat amount, priced for someone who may need several attempts. In other words, the fixed price is protection that every enrollee funds collectively, including the patient who succeeds early and never uses the other five cycles she paid into, the exact trade-off Shady Grove's president and IVF director has described.
Sunfish's IVF Success Program includes all single embryo transfers of a patient's eligible embryos at one fixed price for up to a year, in place of the separate fee a fertility clinic charges for each frozen embryo transfer.
Eligibility is the real comparison, not the percentage
A 100% refund is only as good as a patient's ability to qualify for it. Shady Grove's program is genuinely valuable for the patients it accepts, but insurance status, medical clearance, and an age ceiling narrow that group before pricing ever enters the conversation. Sunfish's model starts from the opposite direction: it forecasts around the patient in front of it instead of screening the patients it is willing to accept.
For anyone comparing the two, the better question isn't which program refunds the biggest number. It's which program a patient actually qualifies to enroll in. Patients new to the process can start with Sunfish's IVF 101 guide before comparing programs in detail.
Ready to see what your IVF Success Program forecast looks like? Get started with Sunfish and get a personalized cost forecast before you commit to a program.
FAQ
Does Shady Grove Fertility's Shared Risk program work for patients over 40?
For patients using their own eggs, no. Eligibility is capped at just under 41 (40 years, 11 months). Patients using donor eggs are evaluated under different criteria.
Can I use my insurance and still enroll in Shared Risk?
No. The program is built for patients without IVF insurance coverage or who choose to waive the coverage they have, and it cannot be combined with other treatment discounts.
How is Sunfish's refund different from a shared risk program?
Sunfish builds each patient an individualized cost forecast rather than a group average, and the Gold Program refunds up to $15,000, or offers a discount to continue treatment, if you are unsuccessful.1
Does Sunfish screen patients by age or diagnosis before enrollment?
No. Sunfish applies no exclusions based on age, diagnosis, or insurance status when building an IVF Success Program. More questions are answered on the Sunfish FAQ page.
1As part of the Sunfish IVF Success Program, Sunfish provides a Custom Financial Plan using Sunfish's proprietary software that calculates the expected financial costs for each family to achieve a Live Birth based on a range of factors. If you fail to achieve a Live Birth within your custom financial plan budget and there are unexpected financial costs that were not accurately predicted by the Financial Planning Tool, our software Warranty may entitle you to receive a partial refund of your treatment package costs. Additional costs may be incurred outside of the Treatment Package Costs. See our Sunfish IVF Success Program Agreement for conditions and details.
