Last updated: July 4th, 2026
Skip to section
Travelling to Europe or Bali? Many Australians are, to escape the brittle winter weather. I am not – for once – because I have a ton of work to do, but I hope you have a great time. Though let me ask you a serious question – have you chosen the best travel insurance for your needs?
I ask because I know that a holiday isn’t relaxing – unless you know you’re covered for any unexpected emergencies or inconveniences.
And if you catch a stomach bug, like my wife Irene did a couple of years ago (in Mexico City, of all places), you may be stuck with a hospital bill that makes you want to vomit. Again.
Back then, our American Express Platinum card covered the $11,400 medical bill. Comprehensive travel insurance is included as one of the perks, and back then, we relied on it to trot around the globe.
Now that we’re back in Australia and don’t travel as much, the $1750 annual fee wasn’t worth it, so I decided not to renew my Amex membership – and compare a few travel insurance providers instead.
With that in mind, I present you with a comparison of the best travel insurance providers in Australia.
The Travel Insurance In Australia For 2026 Is:
- AllClear Insurance – best overall travel insurance
- Zoom Insurance – second best overall travel insurance
- Fast Cover – best for cruising
- Butter Insurance – best for Bali travel
- Covermore – best for Europe and the USA
- World2Cover – good insurance provider
- Insure&Go – good insurance provider
- Tick Travel – good insurance provider
- Allianz – decent mainstream option
Before I unpack each insurance provider in detail, here are my controversial discoveries that these insurance providers don’t want you to know:
1. Most Policies Are Almost Identical.
Don’t waste time splitting hairs between things that don’t matter.
2. Australian Government won’t pay your bills.
If you get caught offguard in a tricky situation overseas, don’t expect the Aussie taxpayer to step in and save you. This is why being insured is vital
3. Travel Insurance Is Mandatory In Some Countries.
Countries like the UAE and Singapore won’t let you in unless you have proof of insurance. Neither will all 26 countries in the Shengen area of Europe.
Important!
Wondering why my conclusions differ from the ones you see on Canstar and Finder? Because I’m a business owner, writing about my own experiences – not a $100m corporate juggernaut selling corporate partnerships.
How I Tested The Travel Insurance Providers.
The biggest problem with choosing travel insurance is that they all appear the same. Nearly all provide the same combinations of single-trip or multiple-trip cover, with optional bolt-ons for specialty trips. Such as:
- Ski trips (on and off piste)
- Golf trips (with lost golf club replacement)
- Cruise trips
Moreover, each provider allows you to dial in the amount of cover you want, depending on your budget. For example, AllClear gives you three levels, with the main difference being the top amount of cover you get for things like luggage loss.
To make like-for-like cost comparison between different providers meaningful, I requested quotes from providers for three types of trip, common in Australia:
- I Need A Break: Sydney to Perth flight, 1-week stay at a winery.
- Bogan Express: Sydney to Bali, 2-week stay at a villa.
- Annual Family Pilgrimage: Sydney to Rome, 4-week hotel stay.
I then added up the costs to arrive at an average figure for each travel insurance provider.
I also assessed two main other areas: ease of claims and ease of signup.
1. AllClear Insurance.
Best travel insurance if you have a pre-existing medical condition.
What’s my biggest fear when travelling? It’s racking up a massive medical bill overseas – only to discover that I’m not covered because of an exemption, cleverly hidden deep in the fineprint.
My wife actually has some chronic conditions that have the potential to mess with our travels, which is why I rank AllClear as the best travel insurance option for us.
Important!
This becomes even more important when you get older. AllClear does appear to be mostly aimed at seniors, but they’ll cover anyone above the age of 18.
The downside? It’s more expensive than most other options. I requested a quote for a 1-month long trip from Sydney to NYC, and the total cost came at $493. This is $80 more than Zoom Insurance and $46 more than FastCover.
Signup is easy and seamless. It took me about 7 minutes to submit my documents and ontain my quote.
The claims process is the best of all providers in this review – but not perfect. AllClear outsources it to a 3rd party provider, and it gets under some people’s skin.
I personally haven’t had to make a claim, so I can’t speak to it from first-hand experience, but my impression from reading reviews is that AllClear mostly struggles with cases where the claim’s supporting documentation is in another language. Sometimes, the company simply stops responding.
Getting paid takes between 2-4 weeks. I would have preferred this to be quicker. Amex paid for my wife’s hospital bill in Mexico in under 2 weeks.
What I do like is that you get a personal claims assistant, who you can call back on their own phone line. This means you don’t have to call the main switchboard and get routed to a different person every time.
This one is easy to overlook, but it makes all the difference when making a claim.
Don’t know about you, but I don’t want my insurer to sounds like they’re doing me a favour when discussing a payout. I want to feel being cared for.
| Assessment Criteria | Score |
|---|---|
| Cost Of Cover | 5 |
| Ease Of Claim | 4 |
| Ease Of Signup | 5 |
2. Zoom Insurance.
Best overall travel insurance.
Zoom Insurance is underwritten by Lloyd’s of London. Yep, that company is not exactly a bunch of amateurs. This is a 230-year-old business that insures everything, from supertankers passing the Strait of Hormuz to old ladies flying to the annual crochet conference in Cyprus.
Applying for insurance is just as easy as it is with AllClear.
The interface is a bit more dated than AllClear’s, so expect it to take sllightly longer – about 7-10 minutes – to get your quote.
You get great, responsive customer service. If something goes wrong, you can submit your claim either by calling them or online. But unlike AllClear, Zoom doesn’t have 24 hour customer service – it’s definitely a weakness.
You get several tiers of coverage (comprehensive, standard, medical only international, domestic only and frequent traveller). Comprehensive is the pick of the bunch, but is (predictably) on the more pricey side.
Important!
The price is very competitive. My test quote came in at $410 – one of the cheapest in this review.
The downside? The claiming process can be hit-and-miss. I’ve read a lot of reviews by people who mentioned 3-5 day gaps in communication from customer service.
I also don’t love the fact that they don’t cover costs resulting from issues caused by accommodation providers. So, if your hotel screws up your booking, you’re on your own.
Finally, unlike AllClear, Zoom doesn’t cover lost luggage. If your belongings get stolen at the airport or lost by the airline, you will have to pay for it out of your own pocket.
| Assessment Criteria | Score |
|---|---|
| Cost Of Cover | 4 |
| Ease Of Claim | 4 |
| Ease Of Signup | 5 |
3. Fast Cover.
Best for customising your policy.
Fast Cover’s party trick is unlimited cover for both medical emergencies and trip cancellations. Lost luggage cover is quite generous, at $15,000, as is the $50,000 cover for trip-disruption expenses.
Choice of coverage options is even more flexible than Zoom’s. You get specialist ski travel and cruise options, as well as an option to buy your travel insurance from overseas.
If that wasn’t enough customisation, you can buy add-on packs that cover you for specific activities:
- Motorcycle pack
- Adventure pack
- Bicycle pack
| Assessment Criteria | Score |
|---|---|
| Cost Of Cover | 3 |
| Ease Of Claim | 4 |
| Ease Of Signup | 4 |
4. Butter Insurance.
Best if you want cheap and cheerful travel insurance.
Good news – if you’re prone to medical accidents, Butter Insurance provides unlimited emergency medical and hospital coverage.
Bad news – luggage and personal effects coverage is capped at only $10,000. Which, if you travel with a high-end laptop and a few expensive pieces of clothing, you’ll exceed quickly.
Think of it as bare-bones essentials travel insurance. They were cheaper than Zoom and AllClear ($290 average quote). However, their insurance doesn’t include many types of cover that I’d consider essential – such as monkey bites in Thailand and broken bones in Bali.
| Assessment Criteria | Score |
|---|---|
| Cost Of Cover | 3 |
| Ease Of Claim | 4 |
| Ease Of Signup | 4 |
5. Covermore.
Decent alternative to Butter Insurance.
Covermore had a few rough years, with customer feedback falling steeply. In fact, there are currently 69 reviews of it on Google, with an average rating of 1.8 stars. Compared with the others, that’s abysmal.
This puts it into the same category as World2Cover.
Their quote was very competitive ($370) compared with Allclear and Zoom, but I’d hesitate recommending them until they sort out the claims process.
Nonetheless, it’s quite popular – and appears to be bundled with some of CBA’s travel products.
| Assessment Criteria | Score |
|---|---|
| Cost Of Cover | 3 |
| Ease Of Claim | 3 |
| Ease Of Signup | 4 |
6. World2Cover.
Decent alternative to Fast Cover.
Compared with other travel insurance providers, World2Cover offers a $10,000,000 legal liability cover – the highest of any other provider.
Like Fast Cover, World2Cover offers unlimited coverage for medical, cancellation and emergency expenses.
What worries me most is that the feedback they receive online is appalling.
I get that online reviews always tend to skew negative (happy customers are less likely to leave reviews, as they have better things to do), but World2Cover’s reputation is in a class of its own.
My point of view on it is as follows. A lot of the negativity is due to World2Cover’s particularly bureaucratic claims process – not (what can seem like) greedy intent to deny people their cover.
Unfortunately, it means a lot of people have their claims mistakenly denied, and have to go back-and-forth with the company to resolve the issue.
| Assessment Criteria | Score |
|---|---|
| Cost Of Cover | 3 |
| Ease Of Claim | 3 |
| Ease Of Signup | 3 |
7. Insure&Go.
Best specialist travel insurance.
Insure&Go is one of the cheapest travel insurance providers in this review.
My wife has used them twice when we visited Bali, and found their prices unbelievably cheap. I verified this by getting a quote for a 1-month holiday in Europe, and it came in at $380. Out-bloody-standing. This makes it 20% cheaper than World2Cover and 15% cheaper than Zoom Insurance.
What I don’t love is that they don’t cover you for pre-existing conditions.
This makes Insure&Go great for younger folks – if you’re older than 40 years of age, I recommend you go with AllClear instead.
| Assessment Criteria | Score |
|---|---|
| Cost Of Cover | 2 |
| Ease Of Claim | 2 |
| Ease Of Signup | 5 |
Limits Of Travel Insurance You Need To Know About.
OK, this is something I discovered the hard way. If your airline screws up (e.g., a delayed flight causes you to miss a connection, or a cancelled flight means you miss a Taylor Swift concert), your travel insurer won’t help.
But ultimately, in Australia, airlines are responsible for any issues that arise as a result of their operations. It is their responsibility to offer you a replacement flight and, if applicable, accommodation.
This seems reasonable, except that noone appears to be liable for the losses you incur (e.g., whose responsiblity is it to reimburse you for that missed concert ticket?) Yours, it seems.
Enjoy your travels!
Steven
Leave a Reply