Best family travel insurance UK: our top picks for families with babies and toddlers (2026)

Last updated: July 2026.

Travel insurance is one of those admin things that I dread having to deal with, and it’s even worse now we’re travelling with small children and the stakes feel that bit higher. An A&E visit in a different country, a cancelled flight with an exhausted toddler, or lost luggage with half your baby kit inside are all of it is stressful enough without worrying whether you’re going to end up stuck or out of pocket.

We travel a lot as a family and so this is a topic we think about carefully.

I spent a few years working in insurance but even after that I struggle to quickly see what is a good insurance product versus one that looks good on paper but lets you down when you need to claim. And this happens more than you’d think, Financial Conduct Authority data for 2024 showed that around 80% of standalone single-trip travel insurance claims were accepted, meaning roughly one in five weren’t. That statistic alone is a reason to choose carefully.

Which family travel insurance providers are worth considering?

Wanda by Avios

This is what we currently use, and the reason we chose it is the Avios Protect feature. If you’re booking flights and hotels with Avios points, as we do regularly, including for business class travel, standard travel insurance doesn’t protect those reward bookings but Wanda does. If your trip is cancelled or cut short and the claim is approved, your Avios are reinstated directly into your British Airways Club account (up to 500,000 Avios with their Premier or Wanda Plus cover).

Their Wanda Plus annual multi-trip policy is Defaqto 5-star rated and at the time of writing this includes flight delay payouts of £25 per person for delays of 2+ hours, gadget cover up to £2,000, cancellation flexibility (including for a change of mind), and a 10GB global eSIM. Family cover extends to 2 adults and up to 6 children under 18. It’s a newer provider, but it’s backed by Avios Group and arranged through FCA-regulated Open Insurance Services UK.

Aviva

Aviva is one of the UK’s most established insurers – they took over Direct Line Group, where I worked for several years, which gives me some personal confidence in how they operate. Their travel insurance provides up to £10m emergency medical cover and includes both single-trip and annual multi-trip options, with a 24/7 emergency helpline and customisable add-ons for winter sports and cruise cover. In the Which? 2026 policy comparison, Aviva scored 78% which is comfortably above the 62% average across all policies reviewed.

What about the Which? best buys?

Which? surveyed 47 UK travel insurance companies and assessed 120 areas of cover each in their 2026 review. Their top-rated options include:

• Saga Plus (82% policy score) has the highest cancellation cover of any policy reviewed, up to £20,000. No maximum age limit, which is handy if you travel with grandparents.
• Nationwide FlexPlus (79%), which is included as part of the Nationwide packaged current account. Worth checking if you’re already a customer as it can represent excellent value.
• Covered2Go Platinum (74%) was notable for not applying any excess when you claim, which makes a difference on smaller claims.

Which? doesn’t award a Best Buy badge to providers shown to reject higher-than-average numbers of claims or with a poor track record at the Financial Ombudsman, so these ratings go beyond just the policy wording.

Do you have cover through your credit card?

If you have the Platinum American Express – the card we use to collect Avios – you and your immediate family are covered by Amex Platinum travel insurance from the moment you book with your card. It’s one of the most comprehensive travel insurance benefits attached to any UK credit card, and a lot of people don’t realise they have it. Having said that, the repatriation is lower than we like, so we buy a separate policy.

A few things to note: the policy covers you, your partner, and your dependent children and the age limit for medical cover is 70. Pre-existing conditions aren’t covered unless they appear on the accepted conditions list. In January 2025, Amex moved from AXA to Europ Assistance as their insurance provider and there have been some reports of teething problems with claims processing, so it’s worth reading current reviews before relying on this as your sole cover.

It can work well as a backup layer, but for family travel with a baby or toddler I’d still recommend a dedicated standalone policy as your primary cover.

What does family travel insurance actually cover?

Most family travel policies include a core set of protections (but of course check thoroughly before purchasing a policy):

• Emergency medical expenses: this is an important one, as costs can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds if something serious happens abroad, especially in the US or further afield. We personally look for a minimum of £20m cover which sounds like a lot, but emergency repatriation alone can be very expensive. Jack’s mum broke her hip skiing and had to be flown home lying flat on a private plane: the kind of bill that would be financially devastating without solid cover in place. Luckily that was in Europe, but if she’d have been skiing in Canada I imagine the bill would have been eye-watering. Which? recommends a minimum of £5m, but for peace of mind we’d always go higher.
• Trip cancellation: this covers your prepaid, non-refundable costs if you have to cancel before you go.
• Curtailment: covers costs if you have to cut a trip short.
• Travel delay: payouts if your flight is significantly delayed.
• Baggage and personal belongings: worth checking the per-item limits, especially for expensive items like pushchairs and car seats.
• Personal liability: covers you if you accidentally injure someone or damage property abroad.

For families specifically, also check:

• How many children are covered: most family policies cover up to 2 adults and a set number of dependents.
• Whether a pushchair or car seat is specifically covered: these are expensive to replace and often have low sub-limits.
• Whether FCDO advice cancellation is included: so you can cancel if the Foreign Office advises against travel to your destination.

Annual vs single-trip cover

If you travel more than twice a year, an annual multi-trip policy is almost always better value and this is what we buy. You don’t need to remember to take out new cover each time, and for a family doing two or three European trips plus a long-haul, it generally works out cheaper. The key thing to check is the maximum trip length per journey – it’s typically 31, 45 or 60 days. For most European family holidays that’s fine, but if you’re planning a longer trip it’s worth upgrading. In our experience it’s sometimes worth buying annual cover for Europe and then a single-trip policy for the US, if you’re only visiting the States once.

Buy it the day you book

This is the most important piece of advice and the one most people ignore. Buy your travel insurance on the same day you book your holiday, not the week before you leave. The main reason is cancellation cover: if you’re taken ill in the months between booking and travel, you’re only protected if the policy was already in place. Buying at the last minute means missing out on months of cover during a period where things could still go wrong.

When to use GHIC cards

We always travel with our GHIC (Global Health Insurance Card) for EU trips, but it doesn’t replace insurance. A GHIC card only gives you access to state-provided healthcare in the EU, it doesn’t cover private treatment, medical repatriation, trip cancellation, or lost baggage. We cover how to get your GHIC in more detail.

Things to watch out for

• Pre-existing conditions – always declare them as failing to disclose can invalidate the whole policy.
• Pushchair and car seat cover – check the per-item limit. Many policies cap individual items at £200–400, which won’t go far if you need to replace a decent pushchair. Your household contents insurance may be handy here if you have cover away from the home.
• Gadget cover – if you’re travelling with tablets and laptops, check whether electronics are included or need to be added on.
• Activities cover – most standard policies don’t cover skiing or water sports without a specific add-on. If you’re planning a ski trip, make sure winter sports cover is included. Jack’s mum’s evacuation is a good reminder of why this matters.
• Booking on a debit card – you lose Section 75 protection if you don’t pay on a credit card. Pay the deposit on a credit card if you can.

Our current setup

We use Wanda Plus as our primary cover because it protects our Avios bookings which is a priority for us given how we travel. For years where our trips are booked entirely in cash, Aviva is our go-to comparison point because we know the underwriting is solid, and we’ve used Admiral in the past too.

If you’re an Amex Platinum holder, check whether your card cover is sufficient before buying standalone – you may already have more protection than you realise, though I’d still recommend a dedicated policy on top for family travel.

Whatever you choose: buy it the same day you book, read the policy wording around pre-existing conditions and individual item limits, and save the emergency number in your phone before you fly.

And if you’re wondering what else to buy or pack, our baby holiday packing list covers it.

Don’t forget car hire excess cover

If you hire a car on holiday, this is the bit that catches most families out. When you pick up a rental, the agreement almost always includes a Collision Damage Waiver, but it comes with an excess. That’s the chunk you’re liable for if the car is damaged or stolen, and it can run to £1,000 to £3,000 or more. The desk will offer to wipe it out for a daily fee, and it’s rarely cheap.

A standalone car hire excess policy does the same job for a fraction of the price. You pay the rental company first if anything happens, then claim the excess straight back. We buy an annual policy because we hire a few times a year, and it works out far cheaper than saying yes at the counter every time.

The catch nobody mentions: your hire car’s value cap

Here’s the part we learned the hard way. Most standard excess policies only cover cars up to a certain value, and it’s the price the car cost when new, not what it’s worth second-hand now. The usual ceiling is £65,000, and some cheaper policies cap as low as £50,000.

We tend to hire automatic SUVs. Nothing flashy, but a mid-size or larger SUV often retails at more than £60,000 brand new, which puts us right on the edge of that £65,000 limit. Go a step up in size and you tip over it, and suddenly a lot of the cheaper policies won’t cover you at all.

That’s why we use insurance4carhire by Swinton. Their cover runs up to £120,000 of vehicle value, so we never have to second-guess whether the SUV we’ve booked slips over the line. It’s not the cheapest option out there, but for the way we travel it takes the worry away, and that’s worth more to us than saving a few pounds.

This actually caught us out on our Scotland Highlands road trip, when we took my parents with us. We needed something big enough for five of us, so we booked an automatic SUV, nothing fancy, and ended up with a BMW X5. It’s a solid, sensible family car, but the X5 has a starting value of £72,000 brand new, which is well over that £65,000 mark most policies cap at. It was fine on that trip as we had a policy with higher limits, but we’d have been caught out with some of the cheaper policies out there and didn’t book anything fancy.

So, if you hire larger cars like we do, the value cap is the first thing to check. If your hire car sits under £65,000 to £75,000, Reduce My Excess and Cover4Rentals are worth a closer look, both are well-regarded providers with Which? Best Buy recognition and strong Trustpilot ratings. Reduce My Excess has given my readers an exclusive 10% off with the code RME10A8Y2612. Confirm the current limit on each policy wording before you buy, as they do change.

Before you buy, check these four things in the policy wording:

• Vehicle value limit. Look for the retail price when new, not the current value. If you hire larger SUVs, £65,000 can be tighter than it sounds.
• Age of the car. Most policies want the vehicle under 10 years old, though a few stretch to 20.
• Off-road and 4×4 use. A 4×4 is usually fine on normal roads, but drive it off a public highway and cover can fall away. Worth knowing if you’re heading anywhere with rough tracks.
• Car versus van. Vans and people carriers with lots of seats often need a separate policy, so check your SUV is treated as a car.

What we look for in a policy

• A vehicle value cap that comfortably covers the cars you actually hire.
• A high enough excess reimbursement limit, ideally £5,000 or more, so you’re covered even on a chunky excess.
• Cover for the bits rental firms love to charge for: tyres, wheels, windscreen and glass, roof and undercarriage.
• Misfuelling and lost key cover, which sound minor until you fill an SUV with the wrong fuel abroad.
• Additional or family drivers included, so more than one of you can drive without paying extra.
• Annual multi-trip cover if you hire more than once or twice a year, which nearly always beats buying single trip policies each time.

Policies worth comparing

Provider	Vehicle value cap (retail when new)	Good for
insurance4carhire by Swinton (what we use)	Up to £120,000, under 10 years, off-road excluded	Larger or higher value SUVs where £65,000 is too tight
Cover4Rentals	Up to £75,000, under 10 years, up to 7 seats, 4x4s covered for on-road use	Larger family SUVs that still sit under £75,000
Reduce My Excess	Up to £65,000, under 10 years, 4x4s for road use	Standard SUVs and cars, family cover for other drivers. 10% off with code RME10A8Y2612
Simply Excess	Under £65,000, under 10 years	Budget cover for smaller cars, well under the value cap
Insure for Car Hire	Confirm value cap in the policy wording before booking	Annual multi-trip cover for frequent renters

Whichever you choose, buy it before you get to the desk, then politely decline the waiver the rental company tries to sell you. You’re already covered, and you’ll have saved yourself a small fortune.

Allie, Jack & R x

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Family travel insurance UK: frequently asked questions