Private health insurance cost calculators

You searched for a health insurance calculator because you want a number: what a private policy would cost you. We do not publish one, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. The inputs that set a premium — your age, your postcode, your medical history, and the hospital list, excess and outpatient limit you choose — are assessed per person by an insurer, and we hold no premium data at all, so any figure we put here would be invented. If you want the real number, fill in the form on this page and an FCA-authorised broker will price your circumstances across several insurers; it is free and takes a few minutes. You can also go to an insurer directly. What this page gives you instead is what a calculator would have been doing behind the scenes, and the one kind of calculation we can show honestly.

What this page answers

Three things. What the private healthcare calculators you will find elsewhere actually do with the details you type in, and what to check before trusting the figure. Which inputs move the price, roughly in the order they matter, and the questions that get a quote rather than an estimate. And, from policy documents we hold, what one of those inputs — the excess, with the outpatient limit beside it — does to what a policy pays, in the insurers' own words with the page number. The last section gives what a handful of operations cost if you pay a hospital yourself: a different number from a premium, and labelled as such.

What a health insurance calculator actually does

The tools go by several names — private health insurance calculator, medical cover calculator, health insurance quote calculator — and most do one of two things. The first kind asks for a few details, usually your age and postcode and sometimes whether you smoke and roughly what level of cover you want, and returns an indicative figure. The second kind asks the same questions and then asks for your phone number: the calculator is a quote form, and the number, if there is one, arrives later from a broker or an insurer.

Neither is dishonest in itself, and both have limits. An indicative figure is built from assumptions — a typical applicant in your age band, a particular excess, hospital list and outpatient limit, and no medical history to declare — and the tool may or may not say which. A figure quoted "from" a given amount is usually the cheapest combination of them, not a typical one. A tool built by one insurer prices only that insurer's policies. And no calculator underwrites you: the figure can move once an insurer looks at your medical history, which is the one input these tools almost never ask for in full. If the page does not say which assumptions it made and which insurers it draws on, treat the figure as a starting range, not something you could hold an insurer to.

What moves the price, in the order it matters

Insurers do not publish their rating tables, so nobody outside an insurer can say precisely how much each input weighs. What is not in doubt is which inputs they use, and that they fall into two groups: the ones about you, which you cannot change, and the ones about the policy, which you can.

The first group, roughly in order of effect:

• Age. The biggest single factor. Premiums rise with age because claims do, and a policy is repriced at each renewal as you get older.
• Postcode. Private hospital charges and claims costs vary by region, and insurers price for where you would be treated.
• Medical history, and how it is underwritten. With full medical underwriting you declare your history at the start and any exclusions are set then. With a moratorium you declare nothing up front, and conditions you have had symptoms of or treatment for in a set period before joining — typically five years — are excluded until you have been clear of them for a set period, typically two years. The basis changes both the price and what you can claim for.

The second group is where a calculator earns its keep, if it asks:

• Hospital list. A plan priced against a restricted list of hospitals is priced against lower bills than one with access to every hospital the insurer recognises. The self-pay prices further down show how far the same operation varies from one hospital to the next.
• Excess. The amount you pay towards a claim before the policy pays. A higher excess means you carry more of each claim, and the premium is lower for it.
• Outpatient limit. Whether consultations, scans and tests outside a hospital admission are covered in full, capped at a yearly amount, or not covered at all. The clauses in the next section show this can change more than the cap.
• Add-ons and the rest. Dental, optical, therapies and mental health cover where they are optional extras; whether you smoke; and any no-claims discount the insurer runs.

The questions that get a real quote rather than an estimate

1. Which underwriting basis is this quote on, full medical underwriting or moratorium, and what does each exclude for me?
2. Which hospital list is it priced on, and which hospitals near me are on it?
3. What excess options are there, and what does the premium do at each level?
4. What is the outpatient limit, what counts against it, and what happens to the rest of my cover if I choose a reduced one?
5. What is included as standard, and what is an optional extra I would pay for separately?
6. Is anything excluded for me specifically, and for how long?

A broker can put that list to several insurers in one conversation and come back with the figures side by side, which is the thing a calculator cannot do; the form on this page puts you in touch with one at no charge and with no obligation. Or take the same list to an insurer yourself.

How one input changes what a policy pays

We cannot show you a premium. What we can show is what the policy documents say happens to a claim once one of these inputs is set, because that is written down with a page number. Take the excess first.

"Excess options £100 Benefits covered under this policy will be subject to an excess payable for each member every policy year. £200 £500 £1,000 £3,000 £5,000"

— Aviva, Healthier Solutions terms and conditions (April 2025 issue), page 11, read 4 September 2026. The copy we read is hosted in a broker's document library rather than on Aviva's own site.

Six levels, from £100 to £5,000, each applied per member and per policy year. The clause does not say what each level does to the premium, so we are not going to guess; that is exactly the figure a quote gives you. What the excess does fix is what happens to a claim, and Bupa's policy guide works the arithmetic through for its own policy:

"Helen has some physiotherapy which costs £250. We pay Helen's physiotherapist £150 and we'll let Helen know that she needs to pay the physiotherapist £100 (which is the policy excess). If Helen needs other treatment during the policy year, she doesn't need to pay another excess."

— Bupa, Bupa By You policy guide (BINS 14718, 2024), page 10, read 4 September 2026.

That is the one calculation on this page, and it is the insurer's rather than ours: a £250 bill, a £100 excess, the policy pays £150 and the member pays £100 — once, for the policy year, and not again on the next claim. Against a higher excess the sums move the other way: a bill smaller than the excess is paid entirely by the member, and the policy pays nothing on it. The trade for carrying that is a lower premium, and how much lower is the number only a quote can give: the excess tells you what you carry on a claim; the premium is what you pay for not carrying the rest.

The outpatient limit is the input calculators tend to bury, and the clause we hold shows it doing something an excess does not.

"If you have chosen a reduced out-patient limit of £500 or £1,000 you are not covered as an in-patient, day-patient, or out-patient for treatment for: complications of pregnancy and childbirth, or surgical procedures on the teeth performed in a hospital"

— Aviva, Healthier Solutions terms and conditions (April 2025 issue), page 8, read 4 September 2026.

An excess changes who pays first. A reduced outpatient limit, on this wording, also removes two categories of cover altogether, and not only as an outpatient: in-patient and day-patient cover for complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and for surgical procedures on the teeth in hospital, goes with it. That is the kind of consequence a one-screen calculator has no room to show. WPA's product summary shows the other common shape, a fixed cap that is standard rather than chosen:

"Out-patient Treatment Consultations with a Specialist – £250 (increase with the Extra Out-patient Consultations Optional Extra)"

— WPA, Complete Health Insurance Product Information Document (November 2025), page 1, read 4 September 2026.

So the same question — how much outpatient cover do I have? — has a different answer on each document: a chosen limit that also trims other cover on one, a £250 standard cap with a paid extension on the other. These are extracts, not the full policies, and either insurer may have changed its wording at renewal; the page on excess sets four insurers' excess wording side by side. If a calculator does not ask about the excess and the outpatient limit, it is not calculating the thing you came for.

What this costs without insurance

There is still no price for the insurance here. What we do hold is what the treatment itself costs if you pay a hospital directly, with no insurer involved: self-pay cash prices, published by the hospitals on their own pricing pages and captured on 4 September 2026. They are not a premium, and not what you would pay towards the same operation under a policy. They are here because they show how much the same operation varies from one hospital to another, which is the mechanism behind the hospital-list lever above.

Knee replacement, priced at 38 hospitals, shows the spread within a group as well as between them: two Nuffield Health hospitals, Highgate and The Holly, both list £17,000; Spire Bristol Hospital lists £16,218 and Spire Alexandra Hospital £15,951. Four hospitals, four prices, for what is billed as the same operation, before any insurer is involved. A policy priced on a list that leaves out the dearer hospitals is priced against lower bills. That is what a restricted hospital list buys, and the access it costs you.

If you are weighing a policy against paying for something like this yourself, ask for the quote and the hospital list together: a broker can set one beside the other for your postcode, and there is no charge for asking.

Common questions

Is there a calculator that tells me whether private health insurance is worth it?

Not an honest one, because "worth it" is a sum with two halves and a calculator holds only one. The premium is one half; the other is what you would otherwise pay for treatment yourself, or how long you would wait for it, and neither is among its inputs. The self-pay prices above are the nearest we can get you to the second half; a quote gives you the first; the weighing is yours.

How much would private health insurance cost in the UK?

There is no national figure, because insurers do not publish a rate card: each policy is priced for one person's age, postcode and medical history, and for the hospital list, excess and outpatient limit they choose. We hold no premium data, so this page gives none. The section on what moves the price is what the number is made of; a quote is the number itself.

How much is basic private health insurance, and how much is comprehensive?

"Basic" normally means in-patient and day-patient cover with little or no outpatient cover, a higher excess and a restricted hospital list, each of which brings the premium down by taking something away; the Aviva clause above shows what can go with a reduced outpatient limit. Comprehensive cover is the same levers turned the other way, and costs more from the same insurer because it is underwritten to pay out on more. We cannot put a figure on either end or on the gap between them.

How much is private health insurance for a single person?

A single policy is priced on that one person's age, postcode and history and on the cover they choose, so there is no single-person rate. Since the gender-pricing rules changed in December 2012, UK insurers have not been allowed to price by sex, so the cost for a single man and a single woman of the same age, postcode and history is the same question. We hold no premium figures for either.

How much is health insurance for a child?

Children can be added to a parent's policy or, with some insurers, covered on their own, and either way they are priced as a member in their own right. That matters for the excess: Aviva's clause above sets it per member, per policy year, so a family policy can carry one excess for each person on it. We hold no premium figures for children's cover.

Why do health insurance prices keep rising, and will they come down?

Two things push a premium up at renewal: you are a year older, and the cost of private treatment rises with medical inflation and demand. Neither tends to reverse, so we would not expect a market-wide fall, but we hold no data on how much premiums are moving in 2026, and no single figure exists for it because renewals are priced individually. A renewal notice is the moment to put the same questions to more than one insurer.

Is there a calculator for broker or agent commission?

Not one we can point you to, and we hold no figures for commission rates. In the UK an intermediary is normally paid commission by the insurer out of the premium rather than a fee by you, which is why a quote through one costs you nothing. This site is not FCA-authorised and sells nothing itself; it introduces readers to one FCA-authorised broker and may be paid if that introduction leads to a sale.

How much does a private consultation cost?

We do not hold consultation fees; the self-pay prices on this page are for operations, and a hospital's own price list is the place to find what it charges for an outpatient appointment. For insurance the relevant question is how many of those appointments a policy will pay for, and the WPA clause above is one fixed answer: £250 a policy year for specialist consultations as standard, with a paid extension.

Can I get private health insurance at no cost?

The usual route is an employer scheme, where the company pays the premium. It is not quite free: in the UK the cover is a benefit in kind, so you pay income tax on its value, and the cover level, excess and hospital list are the employer's choice rather than yours. If you leave, the cover normally ends with the job.

Does this page cover Australia, Canada or the US?

No. Searches for the cost of private cover in New South Wales, Queensland, Ontario or Quebec, for a US cost calculator, or for "extended health" cover — a Canadian phrase for employer top-up benefits — are about different systems with different products, and nothing here applies to them. International private medical insurance for someone living abroad is a different product again, priced on the country of residence.

If what you wanted from a calculator was the number, the next step is the one this page cannot take for you: fill in the form, and a broker will come back with real figures for your own age, postcode and history from more than one insurer. That is the number. This page was the working.