How to Find a Known Sperm Donor in the US

2026-08-21 · J. Ewert

Most people in the US find a known sperm donor in one of four places: someone already in their life, a matching platform, a private Facebook group, or a directed donor program at a sperm bank. Finding a willing person is the easy part. Screening him and settling parentage under your own state’s law is the part that decides how this ends.

This guide covers the US route from first search to first insemination, with the federal rules that apply, the state law question that varies most, and prices from published fee schedules checked in August 2026. One thing to say plainly at the start: sperm-donation.com is a matching platform. People create profiles, search, and message each other, and that is the whole product. We do not handle, store, test, or ship anything biological, we are not a clinic or a sperm bank, we do not verify anyone’s identity or health, and we do not give legal or medical advice. The checks, and the decisions, stay with you.

What counts as a known sperm donor in the US?

A known sperm donor is a man whose identity you know before conception and who provides sperm for someone who is not his sexually intimate partner. He might be a friend, a relative of a partner, or a stranger you met through a platform or a group. What makes him “known” is the identity, not the closeness of the relationship.

Clinics and sperm banks increasingly use a different word for the same person. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine issued a committee opinion in 2022 recommending that everyone in the field adopt “directed (identified)” in place of “known” and “nonidentified” in place of “anonymous,” on the grounds that consumer DNA testing and social media have made true anonymity unachievable. If a clinic coordinator says “directed donor” and you said “known donor,” you are talking about the same arrangement.

The contrast is with a catalog donor from a cryobank, who is screened, quarantined, and sold as a product with a profile. That comparison, including what each side gives up, is covered in sperm bank or known donor.

Where do people actually find a known sperm donor?

Four routes account for almost all of it. People ask someone they already know, join a matching platform, join a private Facebook group, or ask a man they have found by one of those routes to bank samples through a sperm bank’s directed donor program.

Someone already in your life. A friend, a colleague, a partner’s brother. The advantage is that you know how the person behaves over years rather than over messages. The complication is that everyone involved has a standing relationship to lose, which is why ASRM’s 2024 ethics opinion on family members as gamete donors treats counseling and independent legal counsel as prerequisites rather than extras.

Matching platforms. Profiles, filters, and messaging inside one system, usually behind a subscription. The trade is structure and a searchable population against a monthly fee and whatever density exists near you. Prices and terms differ sharply between sites, and one of the largest is examined in our review of CoParents.com.

Private Facebook groups. Free, fast, and very large in the US, with no checks on anyone and no record of a conversation once a profile disappears. The mechanics and the failure modes are set out in Facebook groups compared with matching platforms.

A sperm bank’s directed donor program. This is what you do with a man you have already found, if you want him screened, frozen, and released under the same laboratory process a catalog donor goes through. Fairfax Cryobank runs directed donor banking at seven locations including Austin, Houston, Miami, Pasadena, and Philadelphia. Seattle Sperm Bank runs a comparable program with published fees.

Most people who end up with a known donor use two of these in sequence: a platform or a group to find candidates, then a bank or a clinic to handle the biology.

What does the FDA require when the donor is someone you know?

Federal rules on donor screening and testing bind establishments, meaning sperm banks, tissue banks, and clinics. Under 21 CFR 1271.90(a)(2), an establishment does not have to make a donor eligibility determination or perform screening and testing for reproductive tissue “donated by a sexually intimate partner of the recipient.” A known donor who is not your sexually intimate partner falls outside that exception, so any establishment handling his samples must screen and test him.

Two consequences follow that people are often surprised by. The first is that an “ineligible” result does not end the process. Fairfax Cryobank’s directed donor page states that if the donor is deemed ineligible under FDA regulations, this “does not prohibit the use of the DD samples,” and that samples may be used if the intended parent, recipient, and physician consent. The rule is about disclosure and labeling rather than prohibition, which is why 21 CFR 1271.90(c) requires samples to carry labels such as “NOT EVALUATED FOR INFECTIOUS SUBSTANCES” or “WARNING: Advise recipient of communicable disease risks” where the relevant testing was not completed.

The second consequence is the quarantine. Seattle Sperm Bank states that the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Association of Tissue Banks, and ASRM all recommend a six month quarantine of donor semen followed by repeat blood testing, because that window covers the period between HIV infection and the appearance of detectable antibodies. A recipient can waive it, and a donor whose recipient waives it is reclassified by that bank as a “known donor” rather than a “directed donor,” with a signed waiver assuming the risk. Some clinics decline to work with samples that were never quarantined.

None of this applies to two private individuals doing an at home insemination with no establishment involved. There is no federal screening requirement in that situation, and no record that anyone was ever tested. What people do about that gap is the subject of what donor screening covers.

Does the law treat a known donor as the father?

It depends entirely on your state, and the answer can turn on a procedural detail rather than on anyone’s intentions. The most cited illustration is Kansas. Under K.S.A. 23-2208(f), “The donor of semen provided to a licensed physician for use in artificial insemination of a woman other than the donor’s wife is treated in law as if he were not the birth father of a child thereby conceived, unless agreed to in writing by the donor and the woman.” A Kansas court applied that statute in 2014 to William Marotta, who had answered a Craigslist advertisement, signed an agreement waiving parental rights, and provided samples that the couple used at home without a physician. The state pursued him for child support, and the court held the statutory protection did not reach him because no licensed physician was involved.

Two things follow. Some states condition the donor’s protection on physician involvement, which means an at home insemination can put the donor inside the definition of a father even when everyone signed something. And a written agreement carries weight in some states and none in others, which is why a document downloaded from the internet is not a plan.

The model law most states look to is the Uniform Parentage Act of 2017, whose section 702 reads: “A donor is not a parent of a child conceived by means of assisted reproduction.” It is a model act, so it only binds where a legislature has adopted it, and adoption is partial across the country.

The Movement Advancement Project tracks the adjacent question of whether intended parents are recognized. Its Assisted Reproduction map, data as of August 2026, puts 20 states plus the District of Columbia in the category where a state “recognizes an intended parent as a legal parent, regardless of marital status, if they consent to the conception of a child born using assisted reproduction,” with 30 states and 5 territories recognizing an intended parent only if they are married. MAP reports that 41 percent of LGBTQ adults live in the first group and 59 percent in the second. That map is about intended parents rather than donors, and the two questions are distinct, though they tend to move together because both come from the same modernized parentage statutes.

We are a matching platform, and this is a paragraph about what statutes and courts say rather than advice about your situation. The people who answer that are family law attorneys licensed in your state, and every sperm bank running a directed donor program says the same thing. Seattle Sperm Bank’s own page recommends that recipients using directed or known donors consult a lawyer to create a written donor recipient contract.

What does a known sperm donor cost in the US?

There is no single figure, because the cost depends on whether an establishment is involved. A fully private arrangement can cost almost nothing beyond testing and an attorney. A directed donor program at a sperm bank has a published price list.

Seattle Sperm Bank’s directed donor and personal storage fee schedule, dated 2026, sets required screening at $3,750, made up of these items:

Required screening includes one year of free storage at that bank. The six month blood test and physical are listed as optional because they belong to the quarantine route rather than the waived route, and a recipient who intends to observe the quarantine should read them as required in practice, adding $1,250.

Vials are priced separately. Seattle Sperm Bank listed IUI and ICI vials at $1,395 each in 2026, with standard two day domestic shipping at $180 and overnight at $280. For comparison, California Cryobank’s published catalog pricing for its own donors ran from $897 to $2,397 per vial in 2026. Those catalog figures are what you avoid by using a known donor, and the directed donor fees are what you pay instead.

The private route has no published price because nobody collects one. The realistic components are laboratory testing for infectious disease, which most people arrange through a clinic or a physician, an attorney to draft a donor agreement, and the cost of insemination supplies if the insemination happens at home. Anyone quoting a single national number for this is estimating.

How do you screen a donor you found yourself?

Ask for dated results from a named laboratory rather than a screenshot or a verbal assurance, and decide in advance whether you will observe a quarantine. Those two decisions cover most of the risk that is inside your control.

The tests people commonly ask for track what banks test for: HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, HTLV, and CMV status, with genetic carrier screening as a separate question. What each test does and where the gaps are is covered in what people test for. Note that Seattle Sperm Bank flags that genetic testing may be legally required for insemination in some states, naming New York, which is a good reason to check your own state’s rules before assuming that a test is optional.

Quarantine is the decision most people underestimate. A negative test on the day of donation does not exclude a recent infection, which is the entire reason banks freeze samples for six months and retest the donor before release. A fresh sample from a person you met three weeks ago has no equivalent safeguard. Some people accept that risk, and the honest way to describe it is as a risk that was accepted rather than as a step that was skipped.

We do not test anyone, verify anyone, or hold results. Anything medical belongs with a physician who can look at your situation.

What the first conversations should cover

Health and testing, how many families he has already helped, what contact he expects with a child, and what he expects from you. Those four topics, in several conversations rather than one, are what an experienced first meeting looks like, and they are covered in detail in meeting a donor for the first time.

Two of them deserve emphasis in the US specifically. The number of existing families matters more with a known donor than with a bank donor, because no registry counts private arrangements and the donor’s own memory is the only source. What that means for a child’s eventual sibling group is discussed in donor siblings and numbers.

Contact expectations matter because they are the thing most likely to change. A man who says “no contact” at 29 may feel differently at 45, and a child who learns the story early will have their own view by adolescence. Families who tell early and plainly report better outcomes, which is set out in telling a child they are donor conceived. Write down what everyone currently expects, understand that the document’s legal weight varies by state, and treat the conversation as the thing that carries the arrangement.

How long does the process take?

Finding a candidate takes weeks to months and depends almost entirely on how many active people are near you. The medical part has a firmer timeline, and a bank’s own schedule shows the shape of it.

Seattle Sperm Bank states that a known donor’s samples, meaning the waived quarantine route, are releasable after the required screening and a two week collection period, which “generally takes around one month.” A directed donor’s samples are releasable only after a blood draw taken 180 days after his last sample, so roughly seven months from the first appointment. The bank also warns that if storage visits extend beyond three months, the donor must repeat all initial infectious disease testing, which is a reason to group collection visits closely.

A fully private arrangement can move as fast as a cycle, since the only fixed timing is the fertile window itself. Finding that window is the part people most often get wrong, and it is covered in ovulation timing, while the mechanics of the insemination are in how home insemination works.

What goes wrong most often

The four recurring problems are a donor who avoids testing, an unexamined parentage question, contact expectations nobody wrote down, and men who offer so called natural insemination.

A donor who deflects on testing is giving you information. The request is ordinary, banks make it routine, and a candidate who treats it as an insult has told you how the next conversation about a child will go. Skipping the parentage question is the expensive one, because it surfaces years later in a child support claim, a custody dispute, or a second parent’s inability to be recognized. The Marotta case is cited so often because everyone involved believed they had settled it in writing. Vague contact expectations produce a slow failure instead of a fast one, since “we’ll figure it out” usually means two people who each assumed their own answer.

Some men on open platforms and in groups offer to conceive through intercourse, described as natural insemination. This is a pattern people report encountering, and it belongs here as a risk to recognize rather than as a method alongside the others. It removes every safeguard that testing and quarantine exist to provide, and it changes the factual picture around consent and parentage in ways no agreement addresses. Anyone framing it as more effective is making a claim with nothing behind it.

Where a matching platform fits, and where it does not

A platform is a place to find people and to have the early conversations in one system. It gives structure to a search that otherwise runs across scattered group posts, and it keeps a record of what was said.

What it does not do is anything medical, legal, or biological. We do not screen health, verify identity, run background checks, hold samples, arrange shipping, or draft agreements. The parts that decide how this turns out, the testing, the attorney, and the clinic if you use one, are arranged by you with professionals who carry the responsibility for them.

Frequently asked questions

The short version

Finding a known sperm donor in the US is a two part problem, and the searching part is the easier one. Platforms, Facebook groups, and personal networks all produce candidates, and which one works depends mostly on how many active people are near you.

The part that decides the outcome is what happens after you find someone. Ask for dated laboratory results from a named lab and decide consciously about the six month quarantine rather than letting it slide. Find out how your own state treats a donor, because a written agreement is decisive in some states and irrelevant in others, and in a few the protection depends on a physician performing the insemination. Talk about contact expectations until both of you can repeat the other’s answer, and write down what you agreed even where the document’s legal weight is uncertain.

If you want the laboratory process without the catalog, a directed donor program at a sperm bank gives you screening, quarantine, and freezing for a published price of roughly $3,750 to $5,000 before vials and shipping. If you go fully private, those safeguards are yours to arrange or to knowingly forgo.

We are a place where people find each other. The guides cover what stays the same wherever you live, including how home insemination works, what donor screening covers, and sperm bank or known donor. You can create a profile at your own pace, read about who we are, or get in touch if anything here needs correcting.

Sources: 21 CFR 1271.90, eCFR · K.S.A. 23-2208, Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes · Movement Advancement Project, Parental Recognition Laws · Seattle Sperm Bank, Directed Donor and Personal Storage Fees 2026 · ASRM, updated terminology for gamete and embryo donors, 2022. All checked August 2026.