The best at-home sperm tests, rated and compared.

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) add motility, and ExSeed volume, and give figures in 15 to 20 minutes; Labcorp's rapid test sorts concentration and volume into bands in under an hour. None measures morphology. Mail-in lab kits (Fellow, Legacy, Malebox, Mate Health, Ro) are a semen analysis in an accredited lab, with morphology on every kit except Legacy's Basic tier and sometimes DNA fragmentation, for about one and a half to five times the price and a wait of up to two days after the sample arrives.

Our ratings, and which test is best for what

We rate each test against others of the same type, because a mail-in lab and a phone device do different jobs: a lab analysis measures more, a home device answers in minutes. Every test gets a score from 1 to 5 on the same three things, and its rating is the average. Price isn't in the score; it's in the table and in the best value picks.

Top picks

How we choose partners: ratings decide partners, never the other way round. We only take an affiliate deal with a test that rates at the top of its type on the criteria below, which are the same for every test; ExSeed and Mate Health both do. A deal never changes a score. If a partner's rating falls, it falls here too, and we would end the deal rather than change the rating.

• What it measures. Mail-in labs: 5 for a full analysis with morphology plus DNA fragmentation or vitality on the most complete tier, 4 for a full analysis with morphology. Home devices: 5 for concentration, motility and volume (so a total motile count), 4 for concentration and motility, 3 for concentration and volume, 1 for a yes or no on concentration.
• Quality checks. Mail-in labs: 5 for a CLIA lab with a further named accreditation or approval (CAP, COLA, New York State), 4 for CLIA alone, 3 where the lab is described as accredited but the body isn't named. Home devices: 5 for FDA clearance or CE-IVD marking as a home test.
• How you get the answer. Mail-in labs: 5 for results within 24 hours of the lab receiving the sample, 4 within 48 hours or 1 to 2 business days. Home devices: 5 for actual figures in under an hour, 3 for bands, 2 for a yes or no.

Scores use the facts in the table above, from each maker's site (checked 7 October 2026). Ties are listed alphabetically. Mail-in labs and home devices are scored on separate scales, so a 5.0 device is not "better" than a 4.3 lab; it's the strongest of its type.

Best for

• The most detailed lab analysis (US): Mate Health. Up to 22 parameters on the Advanced kit, including DNA fragmentation, vitality and microscopy images or video, in a CAP-accredited lab, with results within 24 hours of the lab receiving the sample.
• Fast results at home (UK and EU): ExSeed. The only home device here that measures volume as well as concentration and motility, so it gives a total motile count, about 15 minutes after the sample has rested for 20. CE-IVD marked, and delivered to the UK and EU.
• A lab analysis in the UK: Malebox. The only UK mail-in lab test in the table, with morphology and vitality, and results within 24 hours of the lab receiving the sample.
• Best value full lab analysis (US): Fellow. Morphology included for $199, with shipping both ways.
• Fast results at home (US): YO. FDA-cleared, with concentration and motility figures in under 20 minutes. Bird&Be and Proov give the same figures.
• The cheapest quick check: SpermCheck. A yes or no on concentration for $49, in under 10 minutes. It can't tell you about motility.
• Testing and storing a sample: Ro. The kit includes the first year of storage.

ExSeed's link and code MOTILY are affiliate: Motily earns a commission if you buy through either, at no extra cost to you. We have agreed an affiliate deal with Mate Health; until its affiliate link is live, the Mate Health link earns us nothing.

The table

Grouped by type: mail-in lab tests first (closest to a clinic semen analysis), then phone-camera devices, then count-only tests and readers. Alphabetical within each group.

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 large within-subject variation in sperm count, motility and semen volume, greatest for sperm count, 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, Mate Health, 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; Mate Health uses a CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited andrology lab and also cools the return box. 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 the company behind it, Mojo Fertility Limited, is in liquidation at Companies House, with a winding-up resolution filed on 29 April 2026 and a voluntary liquidator appointed in May 2026. A UK reseller says it ceased trading in summer 2025. It is out. 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

Correction, 29 September 2026. This page said Fellow's full semen analysis was not yet available in New York, citing a July 2025 press release. Fellow announced in June 2026 that it is available to New York providers under a conditional state approval, with full approval still pending, and the row and the source now say that. Proov's row said $89.00 on sale from $99.99; its product page now lists a single price of $99.00, and the row says that. Malebox's options were also re-checked and updated, and Mojo's status is now taken from Companies House rather than a reseller's note.

Update, 4 October 2026. Added Mate Health, a US mail-in lab test, checked against its own site. The rows are now grouped by test type and alphabetical within each group, as the line above the table says; no other row changed.

Update, 8 October 2026. Added ratings and best-for picks. Every test is scored on the same three criteria, set out in the ratings section, using the facts in the table; Mate Health's and Legacy's figures were re-checked on their own sites the same day. We have agreed an affiliate deal with Mate Health; its link isn't live yet, and the rating doesn't depend on it.

Update, 5 October 2026. Motily joined ExSeed's affiliate programme, so the ExSeed link in the table now earns us a commission and is labeled as an affiliate link. ExSeed's row, its place under the grouping rule and its wording are unchanged; its prices and parameters were re-checked against its shop the same day.

Update, 6 October 2026. Added ExSeed's discount code MOTILY (10% off, not valid on subscriptions) beside its link. The code is an affiliate code, labeled as such. ExSeed's row, its place and its wording are unchanged.

Correction, 8 October 2026. Every kit was re-checked against its maker's site on 7 October 2026. Malebox does state an accredited partner lab. Labcorp's rapid test gives bands, not figures. Legacy's Basic kit has no morphology, so mail-in kits run from about one and a half times a home kit's price. The 2006 repeat-sample study measured count, motility and volume, not every standard parameter as we said.