At-home sperm tests, compared honestly.

The short version: home sperm tests come in three tiers. Count-only strips (SpermCheck) answer one question, is concentration above 20 million per mL, in ten minutes. Phone or reader devices (YO, Bird&Be, ExSeed, Labcorp's rapid test) add motility or volume and give real figures in 15 to 20 minutes, but none measures morphology. Mail-in lab kits (Legacy, Fellow, Ro, Malebox) are a full semen analysis in an accredited lab, with morphology and sometimes DNA fragmentation, for two to five times the price and a two-day wait after the sample arrives.

The table

Dollars are USD and pounds are GBP as listed by each maker; sale prices change weekly. "FDA-cleared" is the maker's statement unless a 510(k) is linked.

What a count-only test can and cannot tell you

A concentration test answers one question: how many sperm are in a milliliter of semen. SpermCheck shows two lines if the count is at least 20 million per mL and one line if it is below. The WHO 6th edition lower reference limit for concentration is 16 million per mL, so a positive means you are comfortably above it, and a negative means you may be below it, or between 16 and 20 million and still within reference. That is a useful first screen, and finding out for $49 in ten minutes beats guessing.

What it cannot tell you is whether those sperm are moving or normally shaped. The WHO manual sets separate lower limits for total motility (42%), progressive motility (30%) and normal morphology (4%) because each tells you something different: a sperm that cannot swim forward does not reach the egg however many there are. The clearest evidence that these are independent is a 2001 New England Journal of Medicine study of 765 infertile and 696 fertile couples, which found that concentration, motility and morphology each separately distinguished fertile from subfertile men, with morphology the strongest single discriminator. A count-only result can therefore reassure when it should not (normal count, poor motility) or alarm when it need not (a count just under 20 million with excellent motility).

The phone-camera devices close part of that gap. YO, Bird&Be and ExSeed report motility and a motile-sperm concentration, arguably the most useful single home figure because it combines "how many" with "how many are swimming". None measures morphology, and only ExSeed measures volume. Labcorp's rapid test reports concentration and volume but not motility.

One more limit applies to every test on this page, lab or home: a single sample is noisy. A 2006 study of repeated samples from the same men, both infertile patients and normal donors, found substantial within-subject variation on every standard parameter, which is why clinics commonly ask for a second sample a few weeks after the first before drawing a conclusion. Abstinence time (two to seven days is standard), illness, a fever or a heavy week can each move a result. A test is a data point, not a verdict.

Lab analysis versus a home test

A clinic semen analysis, done to the WHO manual, reports volume, concentration, total count, total and progressive motility, morphology, vitality and pH, usually with a technician examining the sample within an hour of collection. The mail-in kits get close: Legacy, Fellow, Ro and Malebox ship a preservation medium that keeps the sample stable overnight and analyze it in a certified lab. Fellow states its method is peer-reviewed and validated against in-person analysis; Legacy uses CLIA-certified, New York CLEP-approved labs; Ro uses a CLIA lab at the New England Cryogenic Center. You give up a technician seeing a fresh sample, and sometimes pH and vitality; you gain collecting at home and a report within two days of the lab receiving it.

Home devices trade scope for speed and repeatability: three tests for the price of one lab kit, which matters given the variability above. Their limit is morphology, and for the count-only strips, motility too. If a home device gives a low result, or you have been trying for a year (six months if your partner is 35 or over), the next step is a lab analysis through your GP, a clinic or a mail-in service, not another home test. Only a clinician can read the numbers alongside your history, a hormone panel and your partner's side.

A word on labels. FDA clearance means the FDA accepted that a device performs as claimed for its stated use; for YO, the original 510(k) was for a qualitative motile-sperm-concentration result at a 6 million per mL cut-off. CE-IVD marking is the European equivalent. Mail-in kits are not cleared as devices; their labs are certified instead (CLIA in the US; in the UK, the analyst's registration or the lab's UKAS accreditation). None of these labels says how useful the test is for you, only that the numbers are what they claim to be.

Using a home test as a before-and-after around a 74-day change

Sperm take about 74 days to develop and one to two weeks to mature in the epididymis, so a change you make today shows up in a sample roughly three months from now. A before-and-after test is the honest way to find out whether a change did anything, and it is the loop Motily is built around. Here is how to do it well, whichever test you use.

1. Baseline first. Test before you change anything, or within the first three weeks. A lab report from the last three months counts too.
2. Pick the test you will repeat. Compare like with like: the same device or lab, the same abstinence period (two to seven days), a similar time of day. Switching from a home device to a lab kit between tests makes the comparison unreadable.
3. Change the things with evidence. Smoking, heavy drinking, heat, sleep, weight and diet have the strongest support; the science page ranks them with sources.
4. Retest in the window. Day 74 to day 88 after your start is the first fortnight in which the sample was made entirely under the new routine.
5. Read two points as a comparison, not a trend. A modest swing on one figure can be ordinary sample-to-sample variation. A clear shift on several parameters, or a move across a WHO reference limit, is worth a conversation with a clinician.

In Motily, the baseline is any semen analysis dated in the first 21 days of your 74-day journey (or up to 90 days before it), a reminder lands on day 74, the retest window runs to day 88, and the app then shows each parameter side by side with the change. Gains are green; dips are shown plainly, never in red. Motily does not test anything: you enter the numbers from whichever test you used, and it compares them against the WHO 6th edition limits. It is a lifestyle tool, not a medical device, and says so on the same screen.

What we left out, and why

Mojo (UK, mail-in AI analysis) still has a website, but a UK reseller reports it ceased trading in summer 2025 and its shop pages showed no price or checkout when we looked, so it is out until we can verify it. Hims does not sell a sperm test that we could find. Quest's at-home kit is a YO device sold by a retailer, so it is covered by the YO row. Bird&Be's lab kits (Comprehensive $249, Advanced $440) exist on its site but we could not confirm their parameters and lab, so only its home device is in the table. Anything we could not confirm from the maker's own site or a reputable review is out.

Questions people ask

Sources