Is travel insurance worth it?

Search “is travel insurance worth it” and nearly every result lands on the same answer: it depends on your trip, your destination, and your health. True, and useless — that’s not a decision, it’s a shrug with extra words.

Here’s an actual framework. Answer these four questions, in this order, and “worth it or not” stops being a guess:

1. Is it legally required for this trip?
2. Do you already have coverage that actually applies?
3. What’s the realistic worst case where you’re going?
4. How much would you lose if the trip fell through?

The order matters — question 1 can end the discussion immediately, and question 2 is the one people skip and then pay twice for the same protection.

This is general information about how travel insurance commonly works, not insurance or medical advice. It can’t tell you whether you are covered for your trip — only your policy wording and your insurer can confirm that.

The short answer

• Legally required (Schengen short-stay visa, some other destinations): buy a standalone policy that explicitly meets the requirement — most credit-card cover won’t satisfy a consulate.
• Not required, but you have no other coverage and the destination is outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland: insurance is doing real work — buy it.
• Not required, you have an EHIC/GHIC, and you’re staying inside the EU/EEA/Switzerland: the card covers state-provided medical care; insurance still fills the repatriation, private-treatment, and non-medical gaps — worth it unless you’ve deliberately decided those gaps are an acceptable risk.
• Not required, everything is refundable, trip cost is low, destination is low-risk: this is the one case where skipping is a defensible, informed choice rather than an oversight.

Question 1: Is it legally required for this trip?

This one can make the other three questions moot. A Schengen short-stay (Type C) visa legally requires travel medical insurance of at least €30,000, covering emergency treatment, hospitalisation, and repatriation, valid across the whole Schengen Area — set by EU Visa Code Regulation 810/2009, Article 15. If you need a Schengen visa, the “worth it” question is already answered: yes, because it’s not optional.

The trap here isn’t the coverage amount — it’s assuming a benefit you already have (a credit card’s travel cover, an employer policy) automatically satisfies the requirement. Many don’t: they lack an explicit repatriation clause, aren’t valid across all Schengen states, or the certificate simply isn’t in a form the consulate accepts. Check the actual policy document, not the marketing page. We cover the three specific criteria consulates check in which policies actually qualify for a Schengen visa.

If your destination doesn’t require proof of insurance, move to question 2 — this is now a genuine cost-benefit decision, not a compliance one.

Question 2: Do you already have coverage that actually applies?

This is the question most “is it worth it” articles skip, and it’s the one that either saves you money or leaves you with a dangerous false sense of security.

EHIC and UK GHIC. If you’re an EU citizen or a UK resident, you likely have (or can get, free) a European Health Insurance Card or its UK equivalent. Both give you access to state-provided healthcare in EU/EEA countries at the same cost as a local resident — often free, sometimes a small co-pay, depending on the country (Your Europe / European Commission). The UK GHIC specifically covers the EU and Switzerland, but not Iceland, Liechtenstein, or Norway (NHSBSA) — check the current list before assuming a Nordic or Alpine detour is covered.

What neither card does, ever, regardless of country: cover repatriation, cover private treatment, or cover anything non-medical — no cancellation, no baggage, no trip interruption. Both official sources are explicit that the card is “not a substitute for travel insurance.” So the honest framing isn’t “EHIC/GHIC vs. insurance” — it’s “EHIC/GHIC handles the state-system medical bill inside its coverage area; insurance handles everything the card structurally can’t.”

Credit card and bank account travel cover. Common in the UK and parts of the EU, usually bundled with a premium account or triggered by paying for the trip on that card. Before buying a separate policy, actually read the certificate: what’s the medical limit, does it include repatriation, does it cover your destination and your planned activities, and — if you’re applying for a Schengen visa — does it meet Article 15 in a form the consulate will accept (often it doesn’t, see question 1).

The check, concretely: pull up your card’s policy document or your EHIC/GHIC coverage page before you buy anything. If it already covers your destination, your activities, and repatriation, a second policy may be unnecessary duplication. If it has gaps — and for most non-EU trips or anything requiring repatriation cover, it will — that’s exactly what you’re buying insurance to close.

Question 3: What’s the realistic worst case where you’re going?

Insurance value scales with how bad your options are if something goes wrong without it.

• Inside the EU/EEA/Switzerland, with an EHIC/GHIC: you have a state-system backstop for medical treatment. The exposed risk is narrower — repatriation, private care, and non-medical losses — which is real but bounded.
• Outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland, or without an EHIC/GHIC: there is no backstop. A hospital stay is billed at full private rates, and a medical evacuation — an air ambulance or a medically escorted flight home — commonly runs from the low tens of thousands of euros upward depending on distance and condition. This is the scenario travel insurance was built for, and it’s the strongest single argument for buying it when it applies to you.
• Remote destinations (limited local hospitals, mountain or expedition terrain, small islands): evacuation logistics alone can be expensive even before treatment cost, regardless of which continent you’re on.

If your trip is entirely inside your EHIC/GHIC’s coverage area and low-risk, this question pulls toward “smaller gap, smaller stakes.” If it’s outside that area, or somewhere evacuation would be logistically hard, this question pulls hard toward “buy it.”

Question 4: How much would you lose if the trip fell through?

This is the cancellation-cover half of the decision, and it’s a separate question from the medical one — you can need one without the other.

Add up your actual non-refundable exposure: prepaid flights, non-refundable hotel or tour deposits, anything you’d lose outright if illness, a family emergency, or a missed connection forced you to cancel or cut the trip short. Compare that number to the premium, which is commonly somewhere in the range of 4–10% of total trip cost for comprehensive cover, though it varies by provider, age, and destination — check your own quote rather than assuming a figure.

If most of your trip is refundable or easily reschedulable, this half of the case weakens — you’re not protecting much. If you’ve prepaid a meaningful amount you can’t get back, the premium is usually small relative to what a single cancelled trip would cost you.

Putting the four together

Your situation	Legally required?	Existing cover closes the gap?	Worst-case medical exposure	Likely answer
Schengen visa trip	Yes	Rarely (check the certificate)	—	Buy a qualifying standalone policy
Non-EU/EEA trip, no EHIC/GHIC applies	No	No	High (no backstop)	Buy it
EU/EEA trip, have EHIC/GHIC, low-cost & refundable	No	Partially (medical only)	Low–moderate	Defensible to skip, or buy light cover for repatriation only
EU/EEA trip, have EHIC/GHIC, large non-refundable cost	No	Partially (medical only)	Low–moderate	Worth it for the cancellation cover, even if medical risk is smaller
Frequent traveller, 3+ trips/year	Depends per trip	Depends per trip	Depends per trip	Price an annual multi-trip policy against your pattern

When skipping is genuinely fine

Skipping isn’t automatically reckless — it’s fine when it’s a deliberate call, not an assumption:

• Every booking is refundable or reschedulable, so there’s nothing to lose to cancellation.
• You’re staying inside your EHIC/GHIC’s coverage area for the whole trip, and you’ve accepted the repatriation and private-care gap as a known, bounded risk.
• The destination doesn’t legally require proof of insurance.
• You’ve actually checked an existing policy (card, bank account, employer) and confirmed it covers what you need — not assumed it does.

What makes skipping a bad idea is doing it by default — never checking whether any of the above actually holds for this trip.

Turn this into your own answer

The four questions above are the framework; the actual numbers — your destination’s legal minimum, whether it’s inside or outside EHIC/GHIC territory, and how travel insurance typically treats your planned activities — are trip-specific. Our travel insurance checker turns your destination and circumstances into the legal minimum that applies (including the €30,000 Schengen figure) and a checklist of how activities and conditions are usually treated, so you’re answering questions 1 and 3 with your actual trip instead of a generic rule of thumb. If you want the claim-denial side of this — what standard policies exclude even when you do buy one — see what travel insurance doesn’t cover. And if you’ve decided to buy but are choosing between a cheap and a comprehensive policy, cheapest travel insurance vs best value covers that comparison specifically.

It stays neutral — this framework doesn’t point you at a specific insurer, because the right answer depends on your trip and your existing cover, not on who pays a commission. See our methodology for how we keep it that way.

What this guide deliberately doesn’t do

We don’t quote a single premium figure or claim-payout average as universal fact — travel insurance pricing varies by provider, age, trip length, and destination, and cross-market averages (mostly published by US insurers) don’t transfer cleanly to EU travelers with EHIC/GHIC access. We also don’t tell you which insurer to buy from. What we do claim: answering the four questions above, in order, turns “is it worth it” from a shrug into an actual decision for your specific trip.