How to actually compare travel insurance
Two policies for the same fortnight in Croatia. One is €31, the other €47. A comparison site puts them side by side with a star rating and a green tick, and invites you to read that as a €16 decision.
It isn’t. They are not the same product, and in the cases that matter they may not even be the same category of product.
Price comparison works when the objects compared are interchangeable. These are bundles of a dozen unrelated covers, each with its own limit, its own excess and its own list of things that void it. Sorting that by price sorts it by almost nothing.
Here is what to compare instead.
The only number that can bankrupt you
Medical expenses and repatriation. Everything else is an inconvenience; this is the section standing between you and a life-altering bill.
Treatment is rarely the expensive part in Europe. If you are an EU or EEA citizen carrying an EHIC, state hospital treatment is charged on the same terms as a local — often free, otherwise a modest co-payment. Getting you home is what costs money.
A medically escorted repatriation from Spain or Greece to northern Europe — air ambulance, or a stretcher and a doctor across three seats on a scheduled flight — has produced reported bills from around €15,000 into six figures in the worst published cases of recent years. That is the risk you are insuring.
So read past the headline. Many policies quote a large medical limit, then apply a much smaller sub-limit to repatriation, to a medical escort, or to a companion changing their flight. The sub-limits are where the policy is actually written.
For Europe, any headline limit from roughly €1m upwards is functionally the same number, because you will not spend it. Two policies at €1m and “unlimited” are not meaningfully different. Two at €1m, one capping repatriation at €25,000, absolutely are.
The excess is where the policy quietly lives
The excess is the first slice of any claim, taken before you see a cent.
Read three things: the amount, whether it applies per person or per policy, and whether it applies per section or per incident. A family of four with food poisoning, on a €150 per-person excess, is €600 down before the insurer contributes anything.
Now think about the claims people actually make. A GP appointment and antibiotics in Portugal. Replacement prescription glasses. A night in an airport hotel. These are €80 to €300 events, and a €150 excess makes every one of them worthless.
You pay the premium, suffer the loss, and never claim — which is what the pricing assumes. A zero-excess policy costing €12 more is often the better buy, and the comparison table will show it as the more expensive one.
Pre-existing conditions, and the declaration you are tempted to skip
Non-disclosure of a pre-existing medical condition is among the most common reasons a travel insurance claim is refused, and it is by far the most avoidable.
The mechanic is unforgiving. You answer a medical screening questionnaire when you buy. If you claim, the insurer can ask for your records. Refuse consent and the claim fails; grant it and an undeclared condition is visible in seconds.
What counts is wider than people expect: anything you have seen a doctor about, taken prescribed medication for, or had tests or a referral for, typically within the last two to five years. Asthma, high blood pressure, depression, a knee investigation, a changed statin dose. Controlled and unremarkable conditions are still conditions, and depending on the wording an undeclared one can affect more than just claims arising from it.
Declare, then look at the actual number before you flinch at it. A well-controlled, long-standing condition often adds very little, and sometimes nothing. People skip the declaration to avoid a loading they never priced. If a mainstream insurer does load it heavily, specialist medical-condition insurers are frequently cheaper for that profile.
Cancellation cover, and what counts as a covered reason
Cancellation pays out only for a covered reason, and the list is short, specific and written down. Typically: your own illness or injury, or that of a travelling companion or close relative; a death in the family; jury service; being summoned as a witness; redundancy; your home made uninhabitable by fire or flood.
The exact list varies by policy. Read it once, properly, before you buy.
“We changed our minds” is not on any of them. Neither is “the group shrank to three”, “the forecast turned” or “work got busy”.
One timing point that costs real money: cancellation cover starts the day you buy, not the day you travel. Buy when you book the first non-refundable thing, not the week before departure.
“Cancel for any reason” upgrades
These do what they say, but refund a percentage, not the whole loss. As of mid-2026 the typical range is 50% to 75% of your non-refundable costs, a few products at 80%.
They also carry conditions: insure 100% of your prepaid non-refundable cost, and buy within a short window of the first deposit, often 14 to 21 days. The upgrade is common in the US market and patchier in Europe. Read the percentage before the price.
Baggage cover is the worst-value part of the policy
It is also what comparison tables lead with, because it produces the biggest number. Four things gut it. A per-item limit, often a small fraction of the total. A single-article limit capping any one thing regardless. A valuables sub-limit covering all your electronics, jewellery and cameras together. And settlement at depreciated value — a four-year-old laptop is worth what one is worth, not what you paid.
Add the excess and the demand for receipts and a police report within a short deadline, and a €2,000 baggage limit routinely settles a stolen-bag claim in the low hundreds.
Meanwhile, luggage lost or damaged by an airline is the airline’s liability first, and your insurer will expect you to claim there before it pays. Your home contents policy may already extend to possessions taken abroad. Check before paying twice.
Choosing between €2,000 of baggage cover and a policy with €1,000, a lower excess and a higher repatriation limit? Take the second, without hesitating.
Winter sports, activities, and the scooter problem
Winter sports are almost always an add-on. Look for off-piste terms (commonly excluded unless you are with a guide), piste closure and equipment cover.
The bigger trap is two-wheeled. Many standard policies cover you riding a scooter or moped up to 125cc, but only on two conditions: that you hold the licence entitling you to ride that machine at home, and that you were wearing a helmet.
In most European countries a car licence does not entitle you to ride a 125. So the holidaymaker who hires one in Kos or Ischia is riding uninsured, and the hire firm’s own cover is generally void for the same reason. This is a leading source of large uninsured medical bills in Greece, Italy and Spain, and the mechanism is always the licence, never the accident.
Annual multi-trip or single-trip
The crossover is around three trips a year. Below that, single-trip policies win; above it, an annual policy is cheaper and one less thing to remember.
But the trip-length cap is what actually decides it. Annual policies cap each individual trip, most commonly at 31 days, ranging roughly 21 to 45 across tiers as of mid-2026. If four of your five trips are long weekends and the fifth is five weeks, the annual policy is the wrong product for that fifth trip — that is what long-stay cover and the specialist single-trip insurers exist for.
The alcohol clause
Every policy has one, and it is not a blood-alcohol threshold. The test is causal: did being under the influence cause or contribute to the loss?
Robbed walking home from dinner after two glasses of wine — normally paid. Fell off a harbour wall at three in the morning — normally not. The insurer reads the hospital notes, which record it.
Your credit card may already do some of this
Card-provided cover is real, not a marketing line. It is also conditional in ways people discover late. The trip usually has to be paid for on that card, sometimes in full. Medical limits are frequently lower than a standalone policy’s, age caps are common and often surprisingly low, and trip-length caps apply.
Read the benefit guide — the actual document — not the page on the bank’s website.
The exception: long trips and one-way tickets
Everything above assumes a standard trip: a return ticket, a fixed end date, under a month.
If you are going for three months, or travelling one-way, none of it applies. Standard policies cap a single trip at 21 to 45 days, almost always require a return ticket, and generally require the trip to begin in your country of residence.
You need a different class of product — long-stay or nomad cover — which prices monthly, renews while you are already abroad, and needs no end date. It costs more per month, and it is the only thing that works.
Buying a standard annual policy for a four-month trip and hoping is how people find out on day 32 that they have been uninsured for a fortnight.
How we make money on this
Almost everything above points you at the cheapest adequate policy rather than the comprehensive one, and that is the version that earns us least. We’d publish it either way.