The preservation fee is fixed. What it costs you to fund it is not, and the main variable is your age when you start.
Insurance prices a bet about when you will die. The younger and healthier you are when the policy is written, the cheaper the premium you lock in for its whole duration.
Two instruments do this work. They are easy to confuse and they solve different problems.
Term life insurance
Term life insurance pays a death benefit to your beneficiary if you die inside a fixed period.
Cover starts the day the policy is in force. If you died a week after signing, the beneficiary receives the full amount, the same as if you had held it for thirty years.
Terms commonly run to age 65 and can often be extended to 85, though the premium rises steeply and an insurer may decline the extension if you have developed a chronic condition.
There is no savings component. You cannot withdraw from a term policy; its only value is the death benefit.
The premium depends on the payout amount, your age, your sex and your health, the last assessed through a medical questionnaire. Some pre-existing conditions are not covered. Once set, the monthly rate is fixed for the contract.
The amount you need is the preservation fee: 200,000 euros for whole-body or 75,000 for brain-only, both at the member price. Every figure is itemised on the public cost page.
Age is the variable you control
A healthy 25-year-old can expect roughly 20 to 30 euros a month for a term policy covering whole-body preservation.
At 45 the same cover is around 65 euros a month, more than double. Any health condition raises it further, and past a certain point insurers decline.
Membership costs 50 euros a month at either age. It does not rise with you.
So the compounding cost of delay sits entirely in the insurance premium, which is the argument set out in the cost of waiting.
You can use our partner policy or bring your own. If you bring your own, name Tomorrow Biostasis GmbH as beneficiary so the payout reaches the preservation rather than the estate.
Once that is done the funding covers the whole chain: standby, transport, the procedure, and storage at -196°C, for the length of the term.
The gap at the end of the term
Term cover expires. That is the one thing to plan for rather than discover late.
If the policy lapses while you are alive, the preservation is unfunded, and replacing the cover means requalifying at an older age with whatever health you have by then.
This is the specific problem whole life exists to solve.
Whole life insurance
Whole life insurance is permanent. It pays out whenever you die, with no expiry, and premiums stay level.
Part of each premium builds a cash value, typically accumulating at 1 to 3 percent a year. The longer you hold it, the larger that value. The returns are modest, so it is a poor primary savings vehicle; ordinary diversified investments belong alongside it.
The sequencing matters more than the choice. A whole-life policy large enough to cover 200,000 euros costs several times the equivalent term premium, so most people buy a smaller one.
Buy only that smaller policy, die tomorrow with no term in place, and the payout falls short of the preservation fee.
Hold both and each covers the other's weakness: term carries the early decades cheaply, whole life carries the years after the term ends.
The practical setup is in setting up a funding method, the alternatives in general funding methods, and the longer strategy in wealth management for cryopreservation.
TL;DR: Term insurance is cheaper but expires. Whole-life insurance costs more but can remain active for life. A suitable funding plan must cover both present and later-life risk.
Further reading