Abstract Since the early days, IVF has often been combined with ovarian stimulation. Starting the in viteo fertilization procedure with multiple oocytes, may compensate for suboptimal laboratory performance. This trend has developed during 4 decades into the development of extremely complex and expensive ovarian stimulation regimens, along with the widespread belief that the ‘more oocytes the better’ for IVF success rates. Moreover, ovarian response to standard stimulation varies greatly, and over-response is clearly linked to added side effects and health risks for women. Multiple studies emphasize that current standard IVF represents a very wasteful procedure, since only 1 out of 20 to 50 oocytes generated does result in a live birth. The concept of ‘the more oocytes the better’ is largely based on the observation that few oocytes are associated with poor clinical outcomes. However, generating few oocytes following maximal stimulation in conventional IVF is mostly due to diminished ovarian reserve, an intrinsic problem of the ovary unrelated to the extent of stimulation and clearly associated with poor outcomes. Increasing evidence suggests that few oocytes retrieved following mild stimulation do coincide with good IVF success rates. This difference is often ignored. It would be most important to reach a more broad scope consensus on the optimal number of oocytes to be retrieved for IVF, taking cost, patient discomfort, and safety into consideration next to clinical success rates. Subsequently, individualized stimulation regimens should be developed to reach the optimal response in the majority of women undergoing IVF. individual patient characteristics should be identified which are linked to ovarian response, such as female age, body weight, ovarian reserve biomarkers (like Anti-Mullerian hormone, and antral follicle count) soon to be complemented with genomic ovarian markers. In the current transition from mass medicine (the same treatment for all) to patient-tailored approaches, individualized ovarian stimulation based on robust markers would represent a true step forward giving rise to safer, simpler, and more cost-effective IVF with comparable success rates.