Short answer: you can have a private semen analysis in central London at Veya Fertility for £290, which includes the laboratory analysis and a consultation with a Fertility Doctor to go through the result. No GP referral is needed, and you can usually be seen within a few days.
We are at 1-5 Christopher Place, Chalton Street, London NW1 1JF — two minutes from Euston, five from King’s Cross and St Pancras. If you are travelling in, it is one of the easier addresses in London to reach and leave quickly.
Through the NHS. Your GP can request a semen analysis, and it is free. In practice you will be given a form, a window to produce the sample, and a laboratory to deliver it to. Waiting times vary by area, and the result usually comes back to your GP rather than being explained to you directly. If you are not in a hurry, it is a perfectly reasonable route and it costs nothing.
Privately at a fertility clinic. Faster, and the result is interpreted for you by a fertility specialist rather than handed over as a set of numbers. This is what we do, and it is the right route if you are actively planning treatment, if you want the result quickly, or if a previous test came back abnormal and you want it looked at properly.
A postal or home test kit. Cheap and convenient, and genuinely useful as a first look if the alternative is not testing at all. But be clear about the limits: home kits usually measure concentration and sometimes motility, and cannot assess morphology, vitality, or the presence of antibodies. They also do not follow the World Health Organization laboratory methods that the reference values depend on — NICE NG257 notes that “the reference ranges are only valid for the semen analysis tests outlined by the World Health Organization”. Treat a reassuring home result as reassuring, not conclusive, and take an abnormal one to a laboratory.
This matters more than people expect. A badly prepared sample produces a misleading result, and a misleading result can send you down the wrong path for months.
You will be shown to a private room with a lock on the door. Produce the sample into the pot, note the time, and hand it in. That is the whole of it — no examination, no needles, and nobody in the room.
You can also produce the sample at home if you can get it to us within an hour and keep it close to body temperature on the way — an inside pocket, not a bag. Do not leave it in a cold car. If you are more than an hour away, produce it here.
The analysis is done the same day, by hand, under a microscope, by a trained andrologist.
You will get a figure for volume, sperm concentration, total sperm number, total motility, progressive motility, vitality, morphology and pH, each set against the current World Health Organization reference values.
The single most important thing to understand about that report is that the reference values are not pass marks. They are the fifth centile of results from around 3,500 men whose partners conceived naturally within a year — a description of where the lowest 5% of recently fertile men sat, not a line between fertile and infertile. Plenty of men below one of those figures conceive without help. The sixth edition of the WHO manual removed the old diagnostic labels entirely for that reason.
We go through all of it with you, and a Fertility Doctor reviews every result before you are told anything. If you want the detail on what each measurement means, our longer guide to a male fertility test sets out the full reference values and what happens if a result is abnormal.
Every price we charge is published on our prices page, including the treatments that follow if you need them. You can read all of it before you speak to anyone.
With us, usually within a few days. We are a single-site independent clinic, so you are not being routed through a group booking system.
The analysis is completed the same day, and you will have the result explained at your consultation once a Fertility Doctor has reviewed it.
No. You can book directly.
Yes, and for the consultation we would encourage it. For the sample itself you will be on your own in a private room, which most people prefer.
Often, if it is clearly normal. If anything comes back low, we will almost always want to repeat it after a few weeks, because semen quality varies genuinely from sample to sample in the same man. One low result is not a diagnosis.
Completely. We contact you only in the way you ask us to, and nothing is disclosed to anyone — including your GP — without your consent.
We will repeat it, examine you if that is warranted, and consider hormone blood tests. Most male factor problems have a route through them, and where natural conception is unlikely, ICSI needs only a very small number of viable sperm.
If you have been trying for a while and have not been tested, this is the test to start with. Book a free 15-minute consultation with a Fertility Specialist first if you would rather talk it through — no referral needed, and no obligation. Book a free consultation, or see our fertility assessments.
