Comparing private health insurance quotes begins one step before the comparison itself, with getting several quotes that price the same thing. There are three ways to collect them: a comparison site, a broker, or each insurer in turn. Each puts a different amount side by side for you, and each leaves a different amount for you to check. Behind all three sits one decision: which insurer, on which settings, is worth its premium for the people you want covered. Gathering several insurers' prices on one set of details is work an FCA-authorised broker can take on in a single conversation. To ask for an introduction, the form on this page is all you need, and it costs you nothing.
What follows is about the gathering stage: the routes to multiple quotes, what each route can line up, and how to word your request so the answers can be read together. Reading two matched quotes against each other, line by line, is a separate job, and how to compare private health insurance policies does it.
Three ways to get private medical cover quotes from more than one insurer
A comparison site. You complete one form and get back a page of prices from whichever insurers that site works with. The appeal is speed, and seeing several numbers together without a conversation. Sites differ in how many insurers they show, how far they let you set the policy yourself, and whether they pass you to a broker or an insurer to finish the purchase. Read whose form it is before you press submit, because that firm's privacy terms decide where your details travel next.
A broker. You give your details once, usually in a conversation, and a broker generally asks the insurers on its panel to price a specification agreed with you. The panel is the limit of its reach: an insurer the firm has no arrangement with simply does not appear, so ask which ones are missing. What a conversation adds over a form is the chance to settle the underwriting route and the hospitals before anything is priced. How a broker differs from a tied agent is on health insurance broker or agent.
Each insurer, one at a time. The large insurers generally take business directly, through their own websites or sales lines. You work through each journey yourself and assemble the comparison at the end. It is the slowest route, but you see each insurer's own options in full. The catch is that every journey has its own defaults, so identical answers typed into three forms can still produce three quotes on three different builds.
Plenty of buyers mix the routes: a comparison site for a first look at the field, then a broker or a direct quote for the shortlist. That works, provided every quote on the final list was built from the same request.
What each route can put side by side, and what it leaves to you
What the table shows is the shape of each route, not any named service; the firm in front of you may differ, so read each cell as a question to put to it.
| Comparison site | Broker | Each insurer direct | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insurers in one set of results | Those the site works with; count them, or ask | Those on its panel; ask for the list in writing | One per journey |
| Who decides the settings each insurer prices | The site's form, as far as its questions go; anything it does not ask about may be left to each insurer's default | Agreed with you first, then put to each insurer | You, separately in every journey |
| Underwriting route | Whatever the form asks for or assumes | Can be discussed before anything is priced | Chosen in each journey, sometimes by default |
| Differences in wording | Hard to see from a price list | Can be asked about, and the answers put in writing | In each insurer's documents, for you to read |
| What comes back | A list of prices with whatever summary the site displays | A small set of quotes, each with the build it priced | Separate quotes in separate formats |
| Who gets in touch afterwards | Set by the site's own terms | The broker | Each insurer you approached |
Everything after this table comes back to its second row. A list of prices is only as comparable as the inputs behind it, and a route that lets each insurer fill gaps in its own way will give you numbers that differ for reasons nobody wrote down. None of the three is wrong; each simply moves the work of lining things up to a different person.
Whichever route you take, ask for the build behind each figure as well as the figure. If you would rather have one firm gather several insurers' prices on settings agreed with you beforehand, that is the request this page's form carries, and nothing is charged for making it.
Before you ask anyone: write the request once, and send it everywhere
Quotes arrive comparable when the request that went out was identical. Six things to settle on paper first, in the order they tend to come up.
- Who is covered, and from what date. Each person's date of birth, your postcode and one start date, used in every request. Age is one of the inputs a premium is worked out from, so a request dated differently can quietly describe an older applicant.
- The underwriting route. Decide which route you want priced and ask for it by name at every source; if you already hold a policy and are moving it, ask for switch terms too. What each route means for a past condition is worked through on private health insurance with a pre-existing condition.
- The hospitals. Name the two or three hospitals you would want to use, instead of choosing a list by its label, and ask whether each one is on the list behind the quote. Private health insurance hospital lists explained has the method.
- The excess, the out-patient level and the extras. Put a figure on the excess and on the out-patient cap, and mark each optional extra, such as dental, optical, therapy or mental health cover, as in or out. Anything you leave unsaid, each source settles for you. Each of those settings is explained on types of private health insurance policy.
- What you want sent back. From every source, the same items: the premium monthly and yearly, the underwriting basis used, the hospital list by name, the excess and out-patient figures, any setting that could not be matched, and how long the price stands. Ask for it in writing; an email is enough.
- A short window. Collect the quotes within a few days of each other, and note the reference and the route for each. Insurers revise their rates, a quote has a shelf life, and the same insurer can reach you through two routes.
That last point catches people. If one insurer's policy comes back at two prices by two routes, look for a setting that differs before drawing any conclusion about the route; whether any route prices lower is taken up in the short answers below.
Two settings where the wording, not the price, decides what a quote is worth
Two insurer clauses bear directly on whether a set of quotes can be compared at all.
The hospital list carries a cost of its own
Vitality's August 2024 membership guide (Personal Healthcare plan terms and conditions, page 25, read on 10 October 2026, in a copy published on a broker's website rather than Vitality's own) makes a member treated at a hospital outside those eligible on their plan pay 40% of the treatment costs, with consultant's fees left out of that share. The full wording sits on Vitality health insurance: reviews and reputation.
For someone holding several quotes, the lesson is in what the clause attaches the cost to. Under that wording, the list printed on a quote is not a label but a term with money behind it, so two quotes at a similar price, one with your chosen hospital on its list and one without, could leave you paying very different sums for the same operation. That is one insurer's wording; what another insurer charges in the same case is set by its own policy. A narrower list usually brings the premium down, which is exactly why a cheaper quote needs its hospitals checked by name.
The underwriting route changes the contract
AXA Health's Personal Health membership handbook of October 2024 (page 14, read 4 September 2026, in a copy from an intermediary's document library rather than AXA's own site) names four underwriting routes; the passage itself is reproduced where we ask whether insurers cover pre-existing conditions. Two quotes on different routes are pricing different contracts. Each route has its own way of deciding which of your past conditions the cover leaves out, so a cheaper quote on another route may simply exclude more of your history.
Which named hospitals sit on each quoted list, what each insurer charges for treatment off it, and which route each quote assumes, are questions a broker can put to several insurers in one go. The form here is the way to ask one; it takes a minute, and the introduction is free.
When the quotes land: a first sort
Before any careful reading, two quick checks save comparing things that were never alike. First, that every figure is for private medical insurance at all: a travel policy or a health cash plan can turn up among results for health cover, and health cash plans versus private health insurance separates the commoner of those two from the real thing. Second, that each quote names the people, the start date and the underwriting route you asked for; one that does not goes back to be priced again on your request, because adjusting for the difference in your head does not work when nobody can tell you what the gap is worth.
What remains is a set of quotes built from one request, which is the starting point for a proper comparison. Taking one quote as the reference and matching the others to it line by line, then looking for the places where matched policies still pay out differently, is the subject of how to compare private health insurance policies.
Quotes by phone, by email, for a business, and from outside the UK
By phone. Insurers and brokers both take quote requests by phone, and a call can be the quickest way to settle the underwriting route. We list no numbers. Take one from the firm's own website, once you have checked its entry on the FCA register.
By email, or with as little personal information as possible. The ages and the postcode cannot be left out, since the price is calculated from them. How much else a form can do without, how to get the answer in writing, and what ticking the consent box agrees to are all on our guide to getting a quote online.
For a company, or a small group of employees. A scheme is a different exercise from personal cover, priced on the workforce and the options the employer picks, so quotes for business are gathered differently too. Private health insurance for small businesses and group schemes are the pages for it.
For travel. A travel insurance quote is for a trip and is aimed mainly at emergencies while you are away; a private medical quote is for planned treatment at home. They are not two prices for one thing; the page on cover while travelling takes up where the two meet.
From elsewhere. Searches naming Queensland, Ontario or Maine, or a health insurance exchange, concern other countries' systems. Everything here is written in English and about UK cover, so readers searching in Marathi or Malayalam will not find a translated version. And anyone after famous quotations about health insurance has found the other kind of quote.
Getting and comparing quotes: quick answers
What is a health insurance quote, and when can two be compared?
One insurer's price for covering particular people, on particular settings, from a particular date, usually open for a limited time. Two can be compared when all three match. Change the people, the settings or the date and you have a different quote, which is why a figure means little without the specification printed beside it.
Can I compare health insurance quotes on Compare the Market?
Which insurers a named comparison service shows, and how it handles private medical insurance, are for that service to tell you. If you use one, apply the same test as for any route: count the insurers in the results, and find out what settings each price assumes.
How many quotes should I get?
There is no right number. What matters is that the quotes include every insurer you would seriously consider, and that each was priced from the same request; three quotes built alike tell you more than eight built differently.
Is an instant quote good enough to compare?
For a first look at the field, yes. For a decision, no: a quick figure from a handful of inputs may not reflect the underwriting route or the hospitals, which are two of the settings most likely to separate one policy from another.
Will one policy cost the same through a comparison site, a broker and the insurer?
Do not assume it will, or that any one route is the cheaper. The only fair test is the identical build quoted two ways, checked first for any setting that changed between them.
Does asking for several quotes commit me to anything?
Not to buying. A quote is a priced offer, and applying is a separate step you choose to take. What a request does commit you to is contact from whoever receives your details, which is why the consent wording beside any submit button is worth reading.
Are quotes in Northern Ireland any different?
Not in how you gather them. The Exeter's residence condition, in its June 2026 product summary for Health+ (MKTG770, page 1, read 21 October 2026), names England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland alike; it is one insurer's wording, so check the residence terms behind every other quote too. What to check locally is whether the hospitals you would use are on each quoted list.
Your next step is to turn the six points in the request section into a few written lines: who, from when, which route, which hospitals, which figures. Those lines are what to send through the form on this page: they give the FCA-authorised broker at the other end a single request to put to the insurers on its panel.