About Real Talk Surrogacy: Who We Are and How We Evaluate Agencies

Who runs this

What Real Talk Surrogacy is

Most surrogacy information online is written by agencies, for agencies. It's built to move you toward whichever agency paid for the lead.

We work differently. We publish plain-language guides, we read the reviews so you don't have to, and we show base pay and contingent pay separately on every page that mentions money. If you decide surrogacy is right for you, our free quiz shows which of our four partner agencies fit your state and situation.

What we are

An independent surrogacy education and agency-review site

What we are not

A surrogacy agency, a law firm, or a medical provider

How we earn

A referral fee paid by partner agencies for surrogates we refer — never paid by surrogates

Cost to surrogates

$0. The quiz is free, results are free, applying is free.

Partner agencies

4 vetted agencies: Family Makers Surrogacy, Family Tree Surrogacy Center, Simple Surrogacy, and NewGen Families

How we get paid

Here is the whole arrangement, because it shapes how much you should trust us.

• Agencies do not pay to be included, ranked, or scored. There are no featured spots and no advertising.
• We earn a referral fee from partner agencies for surrogates we refer. Taking the quiz costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
• The fee does not depend on which of the four agencies you choose, so we have no reason to steer you toward one over another.
• Surrogates and intended parents never pay us anything.

That said, a referral fee is still a financial relationship. We're not "unaffiliated" with our partners — they're our partners. What we can promise is that the fee never touches a score, a ranking, or a review, and that we'll tell you when none of the four fits your state or situation.

How we evaluate agencies

Every agency on this site went through the same four steps. The numbers behind them live on our agency review data page, where you can check our math.

1. Step 1

   Collect public reviews

   We gathered 152 public reviews of four agencies from Google, Facebook, agency websites, OVU.com, Surrogacy Advisor, Expecting.ai, and Surrogacy Network between January and May 2026. We keep a source link for every one.

2. Step 2

   Read and score every review

   A person read each review. 121 of them carried a star rating, which we averaged per agency. 61 were also run through a sentiment tool as a second opinion. We flag small samples instead of hiding them.

3. Step 3

   Rate 8 dimensions

   Using the reviews, each agency's published rate sheet, and the details the agency gave us in its onboarding form, we scored each agency from 0 to 20 on the eight dimensions below. The full score matrix is published — nothing is hidden inside the quiz.

4. Step 4

   Re-check at least yearly

   Scores and pay figures get re-checked when an agency changes its rates or policies, and at least once a year regardless. Nothing is locked in.

The 8 dimensions we score

Compensation

Base pay, total package, payment timing, what happens if the pregnancy doesn't continue

Communication

Response time, check-in frequency, after-hours access to a real person

Community

Surrogate groups, peer connections, meetups, post-journey contact

LGBTQ+ support

Share of LGBTQ+ intended-parent families, explicit inclusion policies

Helper/empath fit

How the agency talks about surrogacy, mission-driven culture, surrogate-first language

Flexibility

Match-preference enforcement, intended-parent diversity, how complications are handled

First-timer support

Onboarding, hand-holding level, how first-time surrogates describe being treated

Experienced-surrogate support

Returning surrogates, sibling journeys, experienced pay

What we check before an agency can be a partner

Before any agency is added, we ask it to show us:

• Who holds the money — we look for escrow held by an independent third party, not the agency
• Professional memberships such as SEEDS or ASRM, and what they actually require
• A written compensation structure with base and contingent pay listed separately
• How it handles independent legal counsel for surrogates
• Public reviews that read like a genuinely good surrogate experience, including how it responds to a bad one

What each agency showed us is written up on its profile page. If you want to run these checks yourself on any agency, our agency red-flags guide walks through them.

What "RealTalk-Approved" means — and what it doesn't

Why we only work with four agencies

There are far more than four surrogacy agencies in the US. We work with four. That's deliberate.

We only add an agency after it clears every check above. We'd rather send you to four agencies we've looked at closely than fifteen where we're guessing. If none of the four serve your state or fit your situation, we'll tell you — and point you to the resources to evaluate agencies on your own.

Our editorial standards

• Claims are cited. Statistics link to where they came from. Dollar figures come from one dataset with a "checked" date, and base pay is always shown apart from contingent pay. If we can't source a claim, we soften it or say so.
• Dates are shown. Every page carries a last-updated date. Compensation tables carry the date we last checked the agency's published rates.
• Reviewer slots stay empty until they're real. We're adding named legal and medical reviewers. Until a reviewer signs off on a page, the "Reviewed by" line stays blank rather than faked.
• Corrections. Spot an error? Email hello@realtalksurrogacy.com. We fix it, note the change on the page, and update the date.
• No invented people. Quotes from surrogates appear only with written consent. We don't use AI-generated faces presented as real surrogates or staff.
• No legal or medical advice. A reproductive-law attorney and your clinic decide what applies to you. We'll say when a question belongs to them.

Why not just go straight to an agency?

Contact

Questions about how we work, feedback about an agency experience, or anything else — reach the founder directly at lane@realtalksurrogacy.com. For general questions, hello@realtalksurrogacy.com works too. We read everything.

If you're an agency interested in being reviewed for our partner list, the process starts the same way: email us your agency name and we'll reply with the checks above.