International health insurance comparison: what the published facts show

Most comparison pages open with premiums. For anyone moving to Europe on a long-stay visa, price is the last filter rather than the first. The certificate your consulate reads has to meet a published rule, and a policy that fails that rule is not cheap at any price.

We are not going to re-argue that method here. It is set out in how to compare international health insurers for a visa, and the criteria version is in what makes health insurance best for a visa file. This page is the data underneath those arguments: what we publish about our own plans, and what other insurers publish about theirs.

These are our published 2026 rates for the EU region, which covers every European destination we work in. They are real prices from the insurer's rate card, not teasers.

Prices are per person, billed annually, starting at adult age 18, and they rise with age. Children aged 0 to 17 pay one flat rate per plan. Essential Health is the outlier in the list: it covers accident and emergency care in state hospitals only, so it is the cheapest line here and generally not enough on its own for a visa file.

What each tier actually buys, benefit by benefit, is set out at what the price buys, and your exact figure by age is at pricing.

Everything below comes from each insurer's own website, read on 11 August 2026. We have not ranked them, scored them, or repeated anything a review site said about them. Plan structures change, so treat each line as a dated snapshot and check the current page before you decide.

Cigna Global. Its Global Health Options page lists four plan options: Close Care, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Across those options the published overall annual limits range from $500,000 up to a plan paid in full, and the deductible choices run from $0 to $10,000. The benefit table on that page states it applies to annual policies commencing or renewing on or after 15 February 2026. No premium figures appear on the page; pricing is by quote.

Allianz Care. Its Care international health plans come in three core levels. Care Base publishes a maximum plan limit of US$1,350,000, Care Enhanced US$2,700,000 and Care Signature US$5,000,000. Out-patient and dental cover are optional plans added to a core plan, and the area of cover is chosen separately from Worldwide, Worldwide excluding USA, Africa or Europe. The page also describes a moratorium underwriting option with no medical questionnaire. No premiums are published on the page.

William Russell. Four plans are published: Bronze and SilverLite each with a US$1.5m annual benefit limit, Silver at US$2.5m and Gold at US$5m. The page states that Gold adds routine dental treatment and pregnancy and childbirth cover, and that some benefits carry waiting periods. It also states the insurer behind its health insurance is a company in the Allianz group. This was the only one of the four pages we read that showed any premium figures, and those are given as examples for specific example households in named countries, not as a rate anyone should expect to pay.

IMG Global. Its Global Medical plans are published with a Silver option at a $5,000,000 medical maximum with medical evacuation to $50,000, a Gold option at $5,000,000 with evacuation up to the lifetime maximum, and a Platinum option at $8,000,000. Prices sit behind a quote step rather than on the page.

One caution before you line these numbers up against each other. An overall limit is a ceiling, and insurers count different things toward it, apply different sub-limits underneath it, and exclude different things entirely. Two identical ceilings can behave very differently at claim time.

Six names that come up often in this category are missing above: Bupa Global, Aetna International, April International, GeoBlue, Now Health International and AXA. Their sites blocked our automated read on 11 August 2026, so we have no published detail from them that we can attribute honestly.

We are not going to describe plans, limits or prices we could not read. If one of those insurers is on your shortlist, work from their own current plan documents rather than from a comparison page that may be reprinting an old summary.

Comparison tables reward the plan with the biggest number. Claims are decided by exclusions, and those are worth reading before any limit.

Ours, stated plainly: pre-existing conditions are excluded, including conditions you did not know you had. Treatment is covered worldwide but excludes the United States. Evacuation and repatriation is an optional benefit at an additional premium rather than something bundled into the price above. New applicants are accepted up to age 70, and up to age 80 on Essential Health. Policies run in 12-month terms and renew at the anniversary, and the price is set by your age at that point.

Whatever you shortlist, the certificate is the document that has to satisfy your consulate. A specialist can read yours against your destination's published rule before you commit.

The from-prices above are the entry point at age 18. The pricing calculator shows your household's exact figure by age and tier, and the comparison page shows what each tier buys.

If you already hold a policy, or you are weighing one of the insurers above, run it through our policy check against your destination's rule, or request a quote and a person will talk it through by phone.