Testing and freezing your sperm at home is private, convenient, and less costly than visiting a clinic, but is it safe?  

From our transport method to our storage facilities, Legacy ensures your sperm is handled with care, just as you would expect from an in-person clinic. All laboratories and cryogenic storage sites have been rigorously screened for quality and high standards by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In addition, the semen analysis that accompanies every sperm freezing package meets the scientific standards defined by the World Health Organization.    

Find out how at-home sperm freezing works, where your sperm is stored when you choose Legacy, and what you should consider before you freeze your sperm. 

Key takeaways

• Legacy’s laboratories and cryogenic storage sites have been rigorously screened for quality and high standards by the FDA and CDC.
• At-home sperm freezing allows you to collect and send your sperm from the comfort and privacy of home without sacrificing the viability of your sperm.
• Legacy is the only at-home sperm freezing kit to offer a post-thaw analysis and multi-site storage.
• Sperm freezing is a great option for anyone who wants peace of mind about their fertility, those who wish to have children at an advanced age, those about to undergo cancer treatments, transitioning individuals, or people with high-risk careers.

What is at-home sperm freezing?

In the past, freezing your sperm required a trip to a fertility clinic or sperm bank, where you would fill out a ton of paperwork and deposit your sperm in a private collection room. After this, to ensure your sperm was stored properly, you’d likely walk your cup of semen over to the staff, hoping you didn’t bump into anyone on the way.

For some, simply scheduling the appointment is daunting enough, let alone masturbating inside someone’s office. But at-home sperm freezing with Legacy allows you to do everything within the comfort and privacy of your home. You’ll order your kit online, collect your sample in a secure storage vessel, and send it back with special transport media to keep it safe in transit. Using our app, you’ll schedule same-day pick-up for your sample to be mailed overnight to our CLIA-certified lab where it will undergo the freezing process.

Once the lab receives your sample, technicians will assess your semen volume before “washing” it to separate the sperm from the seminal fluid and transport media. Technicians will then measure important semen parameters like sperm count, motility (sperm movement), and morphology (sperm shape) to ensure the sperm you’re freezing are healthy and viable. 

Legacy’s at-home sperm freezing kit is also the only one of its kind to offer a post-thaw analysis, in which part of your sample is frozen and thawed to make sure your sperm can withstand the cryopreservation process. A recent study found that, on average, around 80% of sperm will survive the thaw, but this slight drop in numbers does not significantly affect pregnancy rates.

How is sperm stored?

Legacy’s cryostorage process is much more complex than freezing your sperm in your home freezer. In addition to conducting a semen analysis and post-thaw analysis, Legacy’s labs also ensure your sperm is frozen at the correct temperature to safely pause biological activity: -196ºC. This is achieved by storing your sperm in large liquid nitrogen tanks. At higher temperatures without transport media, your sperm will die in a matter of hours or days.

Legacy’s labs and cryogenic storage facilities

By clearing our labs with the FDA and CDC, we can ensure Legacy’s users that they are receiving a clinic-grade semen analysis without having to visit a clinic. Testing is performed by experienced scientists and all results are reviewed by our medical staff. Most at-home sperm testing kits will only check for a single metric, like sperm count, but Legacy will provide an in-depth analysis of all key fertility factors and personalized, evidence-based recommendations on how to improve your sperm health. You’ll also have the option to add on a sperm DNA analysis using Halosperm® sperm chromatin dispersion (SCD), a well-established method of identifying sperm DNA fragmentation or damage to the genetic material within your sperm.

Legacy’s at-home sperm freezing kit is the only one to offer “multi-site storage,” meaning your sperm will be separated into two batches and shipped separately to multiple cryogenic storage facilities to mitigate any risk (however small) of accidents along the way. 

We’ll also be sure to protect your privacy by anonymizing and encrypting your data wherever possible. Legacy is HIPAA-, GDPR-, and CCPA-compliant.

Reasons to freeze your sperm

There are many reasons to freeze your sperm, whether you hope to have a child in the near future or many years from now. Sperm banking simply provides you with more options and more flexibility so you can start a family on your own terms, no matter what the future holds. Some common reasons for freezing your sperm include:

• Age: Sperm quality declines after age 35, and since people are waiting longer to have children these days, sperm freezing allows you to preserve your fertility while you’re young and healthy so it can be ready to use in the distant future.
• Medical issues: Medical treatments like chemotherapy or radiation for cancer can cause infertility, so sperm freezing is often recommended before starting these treatments to preserve your chances of conceiving a child.
• Gender transition: Trans women who are considering undergoing medical gender confirmation surgery or hormonal treatments should consider sperm freezing if they wish to have a biological child in the future.
• Military or high-risk careers: People who serve in the military or have a high-risk career, like construction or emergency response, may wish to freeze their sperm in case they get injured in a way that hinders their fertility.
• Vasectomy: A vasectomy is a medical procedure that cuts the supply of sperm to your semen so you cannot have children. Those considering getting a vasectomy may want to freeze their sperm to keep their options open in the future without having to go through a vasectomy reversal surgery. 

You don’t have to be sure you want children to freeze your sperm. But doing so will give you peace of mind that your fertility is protected for the future. Even if you don’t encounter a medical issue that compromises your fertility, it’s important to remember that even lifestyle factors like smoking, alcohol use, recreational drug use, and poor nutrition can affect your sperm quality. Freezing your sperm while you’re young and healthy gives you a back-up plan that can save you thousands of dollars in costly testing and fertility treatments down the line.

What to consider before you freeze your sperm

Before you freeze your sperm, it’s important you ensure the sperm you are freezing is healthy and viable. While Legacy’s at-home sperm freezing kit includes a semen analysis and post-thaw analysis, not all providers do. 

It’s also important you consider STI testing before freezing your sperm as some STIs can have an impact on sperm health or be spread to your partner or child. STI testing also ensures your sample will be viable and cleared to use at fertility clinics in the future for intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles. Legacy’s at-home sperm freezing kits also include STI testing.

And if your sperm analysis indicates that your sperm is not healthy, your personalized recommendations will give you an idea of what changes you can make to improve the quality of your sperm before testing again. It takes about 74 days on average for the process of spermatogenesis to go from stem cell to a mature sperm cell. Making positive tweaks to your nutrition, sleep, and other lifestyle habits could improve your sperm quality within a few months.

Learn more about how to boost your sperm quality in our sperm improvement guide.