Cryonics is a strange business to shop for. You're not comparing prices on a mattress you'll sleep on for ten years, you're comparing institutions you're asking to keep a promise for a hundred, maybe two hundred, years, using a technology that doesn't fully exist yet. There's no consumer reports for this. No star ratings. Just five main organizations, spread across four continents, each making a different set of bets about legal structure, funding, technology, and trust.
This is a full breakdown of those five: Tomorrow.bio, Alcor, Cryonics Institute, Southern Cryonics, and Yinfeng Life Extension. We've organized it the way you'd actually want to interrogate a decision like this, starting with who these organizations legally are, moving through what they charge and what they do, and ending with the question that matters most: what happens to your body, and your money, over the very long run.
Prefer to see it at a glance? Check out our full provider comparison table.
Who's Actually in the Room
Before the details, the cast:
Tomorrow.bio was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. It operates as a hybrid structure: a for-profit German GmbH handles operations, alongside two non-profit Swiss foundations. Its long-term storage facility is located in Rafz, Switzerland.
Alcor was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. It operates as a non-profit 501(c)(3). Its long-term storage facility is located at the same site as its headquarters, in Scottsdale.
Cryonics Institute was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Clinton Township, Michigan, USA. It operates as a member-owned nonprofit cooperative. Its long-term storage facility is located at the same site as its headquarters, in Clinton Township.
Southern Cryonics was founded in 2012, with its storage facility completed in 2023. It is headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and operates as a non-profit company. Its long-term storage facility is located in Holbrook, NSW.
Yinfeng Life Extension was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Jinan, Shandong, China. It operates as a division of Yinfeng Biological Group, a for-profit biotech conglomerate, with an affiliated government-approved charitable foundation. Its long-term storage facility is located at the same site as its headquarters, in Jinan.
Now let's get into what actually separates them.
Organization & Legal Structure: Who's Really Holding the Bag
This is the section most people skip and shouldn't, because it answers the single most important question in cryonics: if something goes wrong with the organization, what happens to the patients already in storage?
Tomorrow.bio has arguably the most deliberately engineered answer to this. It runs a three-entity structure: a German for-profit GmbH handles day-to-day operations, while two separate non-profit Swiss foundations sit outside of it entirely: the EBF for storage and research, and the Patient Care Foundation for patient funds. The idea is that if the operating company ever ran into trouble, the patients and the money set aside for them wouldn't be dragged down with it.
Alcor takes the more traditional non-profit route: a 501(c)(3) with a self-perpetuating board and no member vote, backed by a dedicated Patient Care Trust that's existed since 1997, with a supporting organization added in 2016–2018 specifically to keep that trust insulated from the parent organization's fortunes.
Cryonics Institute is the one true democracy on this list, a member-owned nonprofit cooperative where the twelve-person board is actually elected by the membership, rather than self-appointed. It's governance by the people who have the most at stake, quite literally.
Southern Cryonics is a straightforward Australian non-profit company, currently governed by a board led by its founder and chairman, without the layered trust structures the older US and European organizations have built.
Yinfeng is structurally the odd one out: it isn't a non-profit at all in the way the others are. It's a division of a for-profit biotech group, with an affiliated charitable foundation providing partial funding, and it's run internally with no member vote and no named board. Governance sits with the corporate parent.
Worth noting: across all five, doctors and dedicated scientists in leadership are rare. Alcor, Cryonics Institute, and Yinfeng each report zero confirmed doctors in leadership; only Tomorrow.bio and Cryonics Institute report a scientist in a leadership seat, and only Tomorrow.bio and Southern Cryonics report a doctor.
By the Numbers: Scale, Age, and Growth
Numbers tell a story words can't. Alcor and Cryonics Institute are the clear elders: Alcor performed its first human cryopreservation in 1976, Cryonics Institute in 1977, and between them they now care for roughly 263 and 280 human patients respectively, the two largest patient populations in the world. Tomorrow.bio, despite only starting human cases in 2023, already holds around 30 patients. Yinfeng sits around 20, and Southern Cryonics, the newest facility, having only opened in 2023, currently holds 7.
Membership tells a different story than patient count, though, and this is where things get interesting. Cryonics Institute leads with roughly 2,040 members, Alcor follows at around 1,535, and Tomorrow.bio, despite being founded decades later, has already crossed 1,000 members. Southern Cryonics sits around 80, Yinfeng around 300.
Growth rate is arguably the more telling number of all. Tomorrow.bio is reportedly adding members at roughly 44% per year, dwarfing Yinfeng's ~16%, Cryonics Institute's ~7.3%, and Alcor's ~3.6%. Read into that what you will: a young, fast-growing challenger versus mature organizations with decades of accumulated membership already banked.
Pet preservation numbers flip the leaderboard again: Cryonics Institute has preserved roughly 300 animals, Alcor around 100, and Tomorrow.bio around 10, Southern Cryonics reports none, and Yinfeng discloses no total.
Pricing: What You're Actually Paying, and For What
Cryonics pricing is deceptively complicated, because the sticker price is rarely the whole story: recurring dues, enrollment fees, and non-member surcharges all shift the real cost.
Cryonics Institute offers whole-body preservation runs $28,000 as a lifetime plan or $35,000 on a yearly plan (excluding standby/stabilization/transport), with recurring dues of just $120/year and a one-time initiation fee of $200 (yearly plan) or $1,250 (lifetime). It's roughly an order of magnitude cheaper than the others for the core procedure.
Alcor and Tomorrow.bio sit at the premium end and roughly match each other: Alcor's whole-body preservation is $220,000, Tomorrow.bio's is €200,000 (about $220,000). Both offer neuropreservation as a lower-cost alternative, $80,000 at Alcor, €75,000 (about $115,000) at Tomorrow.bio. Neither Cryonics Institute, Southern Cryonics, nor Yinfeng offer a neuro option at all.
Southern Cryonics prices whole-body at AU$200,000, excluding the separate standby/stabilization/transport service (roughly AU$60,000–80,000, handled by an external partner called CryoPath). Yinfeng is the most expensive of the five by a wide margin, at roughly $375,000 for whole-body, though direct comparison is difficult, since pricing appears to vary by bundled services from the wider Yinfeng Group.
Recurring dues also vary enormously in structure. Alcor charges an age-based rate (age × $15/year), meaning the older you join, the more you pay annually, a subtle incentive to sign up young. Tomorrow.bio offers a flatter, more flexible menu: €50/month, a €25/month hardship rate, €500/year, or a €15,000 lifetime buyout. Southern Cryonics charges a flat AU$350/year, structuring new joiners as "subscribers" who become full voting members after five years.
Non-member and last-minute pricing is where the real financial risk shows up for anyone who hasn't planned ahead. Tomorrow.bio charges non-members roughly 15–53% above member rates. Alcor's last-minute, non-member cases can run $50,000+ above standard through third-party arrangements. Cryonics Institute has a flat $20,000 last-minute sign-up fee, and Southern Cryonics charges non-subscribers a steep AU$230,000 flat rate.
Services: Whole-Body, Neuro, DNA, and Pets
All five organizations offer whole-body cryopreservation, the one universal agreement in this comparison. Beyond that, the paths diverge sharply.
Neuropreservation (brain-only) is offered by exactly two of the five: Tomorrow.bio and Alcor. Cryonics Institute, Southern Cryonics, and Yinfeng don't offer it as an option at all.
Cryonics Institute is alone in offering a standalone DNA/tissue-only preservation track, priced at just $98 per sample, a low-commitment entry point for people not ready for full membership. Yinfeng, interestingly, runs this in reverse: DNA/tissue preservation is the default track for anyone not specifically selected for whole-body preservation under its research program.
Pet cryopreservation is offered by four of the five (everyone except Southern Cryonics), each with its own pricing logic. Tomorrow.bio charges a flat €100 fee plus a weight/size-based calculator. Alcor prices by weight/size with no flat fee. Cryonics Institute has a clear published price list: $5,800 for cats and dogs up to 15 lbs, plus $150 per additional pound, and birds from $1,000. Yinfeng runs pet preservation under a research program with no public price list.
Tomorrow.bio also stands alone in offering aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (sometimes called vitrifixation) under high-ischemic conditions, a technique aimed at cases where the standard time window has already been missed.
Contractual guarantee of cryopreservation once enrolled and funded is offered by four of the five, Tomorrow.bio, Alcor, Cryonics Institute, and Southern Cryonics. Yinfeng is the exception: its enrollment is subject to an annual research-plan selection process, meaning acceptance into cryopreservation isn't guaranteed simply by joining.
Standby, Stabilization & Transport
This is arguably the highest-stakes category in the entire comparison, because it covers the window immediately after legal death, the part of the process most likely to determine preservation quality.
Tomorrow.bio and Alcor are the only two with genuine in-house standby teams. Tomorrow.bio runs its own fleet, four fully outfitted ambulances based in Berlin, plus additional units in France, Switzerland, and Florida, supplemented by partner ambulances in California and New York, staffed by six-person teams that always include at least one doctor, with dedicated roles for surgery, perfusion, logistics, and remote support. Alcor operates its own D.A.R.T. (Deployment and Recovery Team) of nurses, paramedics, and former military personnel out of Scottsdale, contracting outside surgeons and perfusionists for more complex cases, and maintaining partnerships with organizations like Suspended Animation for extended coverage.
Cryonics Institute, Southern Cryonics, and Yinfeng all rely on external parties rather than in-house teams. Cryonics Institute uses licensed funeral directors rather than dedicated medical staff. Southern Cryonics contracts entirely with CryoPath, an external Australian organization, for the whole standby-stabilization-transport process. Yinfeng requires advance relocation to a partner hospital, there's no dispatched-team model at all; the practical requirement is that a member move near Jinan before death, not after.
24/7 standby readiness, correspondingly, is only claimed by Tomorrow.bio and Alcor. The other three are case-by-case or contingent on relocation.
Field cryoprotection, beginning the preservation process on-site rather than waiting until arrival at a fixed facility, is standard practice at Tomorrow.bio, offered by Alcor for distant or delayed cases, and was only newly introduced at Cryonics Institute in 2025. Southern Cryonics handles this through CryoPath pre-transport, and Yinfeng doesn't offer it at all, its ECMO-based dual-access perfusion approach requires the hospital-based setup its relocation model is built around.
The Technical Procedure
Every provider ultimately gets a patient to liquid nitrogen at -196°C (Cryonics Institute's spec is slightly more conservative, at as low as -192°C), but how they get there, and what they store the patient in, differs meaningfully.
Tomorrow.bio's perfusion is performed in-ambulance by its own medical and surgical staff, using heart-lung-machine-type equipment to gradually replace blood with cryoprotectant on-site. Alcor circulates cryoprotectant at near-0°C over several hours through major vessels. Cryonics Institute uses bilateral carotid perfusion with jugular drainage. Yinfeng uses a minimally invasive, ECMO-based dual-access approach through the jugular and femoral vessels. Southern Cryonics doesn't run its own perfusion protocol at all, this is managed entirely by CryoPath and external clinicians.
Storage vessel design is one of the more overlooked technical differences. Alcor uses purpose-built "Bigfoot" dewars for whole-body patients (full immersion) alongside a separate "Neurodewar" using intermediate-temperature storage around -140°C, a roughly 14-patient pilot unit dating to 2008. Cryonics Institute uses fiberglass "cryostats" (deliberately not called dewars) with a soft-vacuum design backed up by perlite insulation, full immersion only. Tomorrow.bio uses a cryogenic storage dewar housing four internal storage pods, currently full immersion, with whole-body intermediate temperature storage in active development. Yinfeng and Southern Cryonics both use standard stainless-steel dewar setups with separate cooldown boxes, full immersion only.
Each organization also uses its own proprietary or licensed cryoprotectant solution: Alcor's M22 (in use since 2005), Cryonics Institute's in-house CI-VM-1 at roughly 70% concentration, Tomorrow.bio's proprietary Tomorrow VM-1 (still under active R&D), Yinfeng's self-developed "YF-series," and Southern Cryonics, again relying on outside expertise, using either the Cryonics Institute's or Tomorrow.bio's solution depending on the case.
Research & Innovation
Research focus differs sharply by organization, and reflects each one's institutional priorities. Tomorrow.bio's stated research focus is the brain specifically. Alcor's is the kidney, a useful proxy organ for testing vitrification and rewarming techniques before applying lessons elsewhere. Cryonics Institute and Yinfeng's research focus is less clearly defined publicly.
Alcor has the deepest institutional research history, describing itself as the historic leader in vitrification research, with the first dedicated in-house research and engineering department in the industry. Tomorrow.bio, despite being the youngest organization, has built its own in-house R&D function too, without yet establishing it as a formally separate department. Cryonics Institute and Southern Cryonics rely more heavily on external and contracted technical expertise rather than in-house teams. Yinfeng, backed by its parent biotech group, has the most institutionally resourced research capability of the five, though its focus spans broader cryobiomedicine rather than cryonics specifically.
On quality metrics, Tomorrow.bio publishes an unusually granular set of data per case: the full distribution (not just the average) of the time between pronouncement and cooling, warm and cold ischemic times, terminal cryoprotectant concentration at venous return, the share of cases fully perfused versus partially perfused versus straight-frozen, the share of members lost entirely despite active membership, autopsy rates, unattended-death rates, and cooling curves. It also runs in-house CT scanning that's been standard on every patient since 2011 (with the process itself standardized industry-wide only as of 2025), including color-coded vitrification scoring. Alcor publishes detailed case reports thorough enough for outside researchers to independently analyze ischemia times, though without CT scanning as part of the process. Cryonics Institute, Southern Cryonics, and Yinfeng have no comparably public quality-metrics program.
Published, multi-year R&D roadmaps exist publicly for exactly two organizations: Tomorrow.bio and Alcor. Cryonics Institute and Southern Cryonics have none; Yinfeng publishes a general milestone timeline rather than a forward-looking roadmap.
Transparency and Patient-Care Funding
This might be the single most important section for anyone thinking in centuries rather than years, because it answers the question: is there money set aside specifically for my care, kept separate from the organization's day-to-day operating funds?
Tomorrow.bio and Alcor are the only two with a legally distinct trust or foundation dedicated purely to patient care: Tomorrow.bio's Patient Care Foundation in Switzerland, and Alcor's Patient Care Trust, running since 1997 with a supporting organization added later. Cryonics Institute, Southern Cryonics, and Yinfeng have no comparable separate legal structure; funds are not legally ring-fenced from the organization itself.
The amount allocated per patient varies enormously: Alcor allocates $135,000 for whole-body and $25,000 for neuro patients; Tomorrow.bio allocates €120,000 and €15,000 respectively; Cryonics Institute allocates $20,000; Southern Cryonics an estimated AU$100,000 (unofficially); Yinfeng discloses nothing.
Investment strategy for these funds also differs by risk appetite. Tomorrow.bio invests conservatively in bonds and fixed deposits, targeting returns 1–2% above inflation. Alcor holds a mix of cash, CDs, government securities, and US equities, drawing down roughly 2% per year. Cryonics Institute leans more heavily into equities and index funds, a strategy that produced a negative return in 2022. Southern Cryonics currently holds funds in bank deposits, with plans to shift toward index funds. Yinfeng discloses nothing here either.
On audited financial statements: Tomorrow.bio (through its EBF entity) and Alcor both publish annual independently audited statements. Tomorrow.bio has done so since roughly 2022, and Alcor pairs a full audit every three years with annual reviews. Cryonics Institute has published audited statements from FY2022 onward, though none were found for 2020–2021. Southern Cryonics doesn't yet, as of the most recent available information. Yinfeng's financials aren't identified as public at all.
Case report publication is near-universal, but the consistency varies: Tomorrow.bio publishes numbered case reports (CR-XX) every year, accompanied by a livestream. Alcor publishes case reports too, though less systematically numbered. Cryonics Institute references case reports on its site. Southern Cryonics publishes narrative, per-patient news updates. Yinfeng publishes none.
Facility Safety and the Long Game
Long-term survival of the institution, not just the technology, is arguably the whole ballgame in cryonics, and this section is where geography quietly becomes destiny.
Tomorrow.bio's Swiss facility is built underground, in concrete, with no visitor access, chosen specifically because Switzerland ranks 3rd of 163 countries on the Global Peace Index (2026), a deliberate bet on long-term political and social stability. Alcor's Arizona facility is above-ground but hardened, with what's described as a bullet- and bomb-resistant "Patient Care Bay." The US currently ranks 134th of 163 on the same index, a fact Alcor offsets with facility hardening rather than jurisdictional stability. Cryonics Institute's Michigan facility is above-ground, in an owned building, with no comparable hardening claims found. Southern Cryonics' Australian facility was sited specifically for low fire, flood, and earthquake risk, with Australia ranking 20th of 163. Yinfeng's Chinese facility sits inside an industrial biotech park with infrared and remote alarm systems and power failover, though no seismic or blast defenses were identified; China ranks 118th of 163.
Storage duration guarantees are described as indefinite by four of the five: Tomorrow.bio, Alcor, Cryonics Institute ("perpetual"), and Southern Cryonics ("for centuries if necessary"). Yinfeng is the clear outlier here: its reported storage term is 20 years, mirroring cord-blood storage contract conventions rather than a genuinely indefinite cryonics commitment, a meaningful difference worth sitting with if multi-generational storage is the entire point of signing up in the first place.
Continuity planning if the organization itself ceases operations is where the earlier legal-structure differences pay off (or don't). Tomorrow.bio's patients are designed to be unaffected, since funds sit with a legally separate non-profit foundation. Alcor's Patient Care Trust is likewise designed to continue independently of Alcor itself. Cryonics Institute, Southern Cryonics, and Yinfeng have no distinct continuity mechanism identified. For these three, an organizational failure would be a far more direct threat to patients already in storage.
Additional Services and the Member Experience
Beyond the core offering, each provider has built out a slightly different set of extras. Tomorrow.bio offers a Lifespan Extension program for members and a dedicated mobile app that integrates with Google Fit and Apple Health for check-in-style monitoring. Alcor offers archival storage at a separate Kansas facility and a charter jet option for time-sensitive transport, but has no member-facing app. Cryonics Institute offers DNA/tissue preservation and a Portfolio Funding Rider for flexible payment structuring, plus its own "Cryonics Institute Check-In" app, a simple timer-based system without call-center integration. Southern Cryonics offers no comparable bundled extras. Yinfeng, leveraging its parent biotech group, offers the widest range of adjacent services: stem-cell storage, genetic testing, whole-genome sequencing, and even cancer treatment access via the wider group.
Refund and cancellation policies are worth reading closely before signing anything. Tomorrow.bio's monthly plan can be cancelled anytime, though it's not refundable. Alcor and Cryonics Institute are both explicitly non-refundable. Southern Cryonics allows cancellation with 60 days' written notice, but doesn't refund yearly subscription fees already paid. Yinfeng's donation-based model doesn't really have a refund concept in the traditional sense.
So, Which One Is Actually Right For You?
There's no single winner here, only the organization whose trade-offs match what you actually care about.
Every one of these organizations is asking you to trust it with something no institution can fully guarantee. The differences in legal structure, funding separation, and research transparency covered here are, in a very real sense, the closest thing this industry has to due diligence, worth reading slowly, and worth verifying directly with each provider before making a decision this significant.
Disclaimer: We've made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information in this comparison, but cryonics providers periodically update their pricing, structures, and capabilities, and some details here may become outdated over time. If you notice anything that's incorrect or out of date, please reach out to us, we'll review it and get it corrected as quickly as possible.
