Puffin Travel Insurance Review (2026): Cover Limits, the Excess, Exclusions and Real Prices

Puffin travel insurance is a cheap, well reviewed UK direct policy underwritten by an AXA Group company, with £10,000,000 of emergency medical and repatriation cover on every tier. Its weakness is the hard cancellation cap, the closed list of covered reasons and an excess charged per incident.

PuffinInsurance.com is a trading name of Puffin Group UK Ltd, Companies House number 09545476, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference 737328. The policies themselves are underwritten and administered by Inter Partner Assistance S.A., which is part of the AXA Group, and gadget claims are underwritten separately by ERGO TIS on behalf of Great Lakes Insurance UK Limited.

Read as a contract rather than as a product page, this is a lot of cover for the money. Every tier carries £10,000,000 of emergency medical and repatriation cover, £2,000,000 of personal liability, £1,000 of gadget cover as standard and a legal expenses section worth £15,000 or £20,000. Very few policies at this price include gadgets and legal costs without an upgrade.

The cost of that sits in three places. Cancellation stops at £1,500 on Silver and pays only for eight named events, none of which is damage to your own home. The excess is charged per insured person and per incident, up to two incidents. And a policy bought after that FCDO advice you were worried about, or for a symptom you have not yet had diagnosed, is not covered at all.

What Puffin does well

• ✓
  £10,000,000 of medical cover on the cheapest tier : Puffin does not make you climb the range to get the medical limit, unlike most UK policies that step it up tier by tier.
• ✓
  Gadget cover included as standard : £1,000 on every tier, with a £50 excess, and an optional extension to £2,000. Most policies at this price sell gadget cover as an add-on or not at all.
• ✓
  A real legal expenses section : £15,000 on Silver and £20,000 on Gold and Platinum. None of the pan-European plans we compare carries a legal section at all.
• ✓
  It sells to older travellers : single trip cover runs to age 84 and annual multi-trip to 80, with online or telephone medical screening rather than an automatic refusal.
• ✓
  A broad free sports list : scuba to 18 metres, trekking to 2,500 metres, surfing, cycling and dozens more are covered as standard, with paid Packs 1, 2 and 3 for anything riskier.
• ✓
  Your GHIC wipes out the medical excess : if a medical bill is reduced because you used a Global Health Insurance Card, Puffin does not deduct the excess, which is worth £99 on Silver before any cover is used.

Where Puffin falls short

• ✕
  Cancellation is a closed list of eight events : illness, quarantine or jury service, redundancy, withdrawn leave in certain professions, some FCDO advice, transport failure and passport theft. Damage to your home is not on it, and neither is changing your mind.
• ✕
  The cancellation cap is low on Silver : £1,500 is below the cost of a great many package bookings, and the tier that fixes it, Platinum at £5,000, is the top of the range.
• ✕
  Pandemic FCDO advice is carved out : the wording covers FCDO advice against travel, then adds "but not including where advice is issued due to a pandemic or regional quarantine".
• ✕
  The excess is per person and per incident : £99, £75 or £50 by tier, charged per insured person and per incident up to two incidents, so a couple with two separate incidents on Silver loses £396.
• ✕
  No search and rescue at all : the Table of Benefits has no search or mountain rescue section. Only a medically necessary repatriation, authorised in advance, is paid.
• ✕
  Older travellers lose the limb benefit : from age 65 the personal accident payment for loss of a limb or an eye is Nil on all three tiers, while death and permanent total disablement stay at £5,000.
• ✕
  Annual trips are capped hard : 32 consecutive days on Silver and Gold, 45 on Platinum, with no cover at all for the days beyond it.

Puffin travel insurance comes in three cover levels in its binding policy wording: Silver, Gold and Platinum. They separate on cancellation, on the excess and on how long a single trip can run under an annual policy. They do not separate on medical cover at all, so the tier you need is decided by what your holiday cost.

Because medical cover is identical across the range, the only question worth asking is how much your holiday cost. If your booking was under £1,500 and you are healthy, Silver is genuinely enough. Past that number you are buying a tier to raise a cancellation limit, and Gold at £3,000 is the step most package holidays actually need.

Platinum earns its price in two places rather than one. It doubles the annual per-trip cap from 32 days to 45, and it halves the excess from £99 to £50. If you take one long stay a year, check that day count before you look at the premium, because days beyond the cap are not covered at all.

Puffin travel insurance covers emergency medical treatment and repatriation up to £10,000,000, cancelling or cutting short a trip, missed departure and travel delay, baggage and personal money, personal accident, personal liability up to £2,000,000, legal expenses and £1,000 of gadget cover, with the limits set by the tier you buy.

Sources: Puffin Travel Insurance Policy Wording, August 2024, version D, and the puffininsurance.com product pages, both read on 30 August 2026. HelloSafe figures are live quotes and published plan limits captured the same day for a UK resident, shown in pounds.

The honest read of that table is that Puffin wins the two rows people look at and loses the two rows that decide real claims. A £10,000,000 medical ceiling is reassurance rather than protection, because emergency treatment and an air ambulance home from Europe or Asia almost never reach six figures. You can see the real numbers in our breakdown of how much a hospital bed costs abroad.

The row that matters more is direct settlement. Puffin's assistance service must be told as soon as possible about any hospital admission and before any repatriation is arranged, and it reserves the right to move you or fly you home. Refuse that decision and cover stops entirely under cancellation, medical, personal accident and cruise. Call before you are treated, not after.

Cancellation is the other one. Silver pays a maximum of £1,500 towards a cancelled holiday and only for the eight events the wording names, so the reasons are a fixed list rather than a general principle. If your booking cost more than your tier's ceiling, read our guide to trip cancellation insurance before you rely on it.

One thing worth carrying alongside any policy for a European trip is a UK Global Health Insurance Card, the replacement for the European Health Insurance Card. Puffin waives the Section 2 excess entirely when a medical bill has been reduced because you used it, so on Silver that card is worth £99 before a penny of cover is touched.

Beyond the standard single trip policy, Puffin travel insurance sells annual multi-trip cover and four paid upgrades: winter sports, cruise cover, an extended gadget limit and three tiers of activity packs for sports that are not covered as standard.

Two details in that range are easy to miss. Many activities on the free and paid lists are marked with an asterisk in the wording, and that asterisk means no personal liability cover for that activity: quad biking, jet skiing, go karting and clay pigeon shooting all fall into it. And the winter sports upgrade buys you a fixed number of ski days a year on an annual policy, printed on your schedule, not a season.

The annual policy is the one worth doing arithmetic on, because the 32 day cap on Silver and Gold is tighter than it looks for anyone taking a long winter stay. Our guide to annual multi-trip travel insurance sets out where the break-even against buying single trip policies actually sits.

Puffin travel insurance excludes anything arising from a medical condition you did not declare, any cancellation reason outside its list of eight, search and rescue, undiagnosed symptoms, and any event you already knew about when you booked the trip or bought the policy, whichever came later.

• ✕
  Undeclared pre-existing conditions : the wording is unusually blunt. Fail to declare one and Puffin may refuse or reduce any relevant claim, and it says so explicitly "even if a claim is not related to an undisclosed pre-existing medical condition".
• ✕
  Undiagnosed symptoms : any condition or symptom for which anyone on the policy is seeking medical advice but has not yet had a diagnosis, or has not yet sought advice at all, is excluded from the start.
• ✕
  Anything on a waiting list : a condition where you, a close relative or a travelling companion are waiting for, or know you need, surgery, treatment or investigation is excluded, as is anything with a terminal prognosis.
• ✕
  Normal pregnancy and childbirth : only pregnancy complications are covered. The wording states that normal childbirth is not an unforeseen event.
• ✕
  Pandemic driven FCDO advice : cancellation for official advice against travel is covered, but the clause specifically excludes advice issued because of a pandemic or a regional quarantine.
• ✕
  Falls from a balcony, building or vehicle : climbing on or jumping from a vehicle, building, bridge, scaffolding or balcony and falling is excluded regardless of the height, unless you were saving a life.
• ✕
  No helmet and no seatbelt : any claim where you were not wearing a helmet on a motorcycle, moped, scooter, Segway or bicycle, or not wearing an available seatbelt in a vehicle, is excluded outright.
• ✕
  Restricted areas and pools out of hours : using a swimming pool outside its published opening times, or entering a controlled or restricted area, removes cover for what follows.
• ✕
  Alcohol, drugs and solvents : not only abuse and dependence, but any claim arising from consumption that impaired your physical ability or judgement.
• ✕
  Air traffic control and booking system failures : a named exclusion that explicitly covers airport computer systems and any travel booking system, including failures caused by a cyber attack.
• ✕
  Air Passenger Duty and reward points : APD is never refunded, and costs paid with Avios or supermarket loyalty points are only covered if you can evidence a specific monetary value.
• ✕
  Manual work and crypto : manual, electrical or construction work and the use of power tools or machinery are excluded, and so is any loss on virtual currency including cryptocurrency.

Puffin travel insurance publishes no tariff at all. There is no price on its product pages, no lead rate and no example premium, so the only public figure available anywhere is MoneySuperMarket's illustrative example for a Puffin Silver policy at £20.43, and the trip that number is based on is not published.

That figure is at least internally consistent. The example is listed alongside £1,500 of cancellation cover, £10 million of medical and £1,000 of gadget cover, and those three numbers match the Silver tier of the binding wording exactly. What it does not tell you is the traveller's age, the destination or the trip length, which are the three things that move a travel insurance premium.

So the comparison below is deliberately weighted in Puffin's favour where a figure exists at all, and we would rather show it that way than manufacture a saving. Our column is a real quote captured from our own comparator on the same day, for a trip we state in full.

We will say the uncomfortable part plainly: on the one price Puffin has in public, it is cheaper than us. If you are healthy, going to Europe for a week on a booking that cost a few hundred pounds, Silver at around £20 is good value and its gadget and legal sections are better than ours. Our case is not that we undercut it. It is what the extra ten pounds buys.

The finding that surprised us is in the second and third rows. Running the same Spanish week at 40, at 60 and at 65 returned an identical £31.37 on WorldSecure Platinum every time, because these pan-European contracts do not price by age band. From 70 that plan stops quoting altogether and World Travel takes over at £51.70. Our page on travel insurance for seniors sets out where each model stops working.

There is one product where Puffin is very likely to beat us outright and we have not tried to hide it. For annual multi-trip cover our comparator returned only two plans for a UK resident, Safe World at £234.58 a year and Schengen Annual at £717.14. A UK direct annual policy is normally a fraction of that, so if you want annual cover, price Puffin against a UK specialist rather than against us.

A Puffin travel insurance claim runs through a 24 hour medical assistance line for anything happening in hospital abroad, and through an online claims hub run by AXA Partners for everything else, with your tier's excess deducted per person and per incident.

1. Call the medical assistance service before anything is arranged. +44 (0)203 859 9317 is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You must call as soon as possible about any admission to hospital as an in-patient, and before any repatriation is arranged.
2. Claim online for everything else. The claims hub at hub.puffin.uk.axa.travel is open 24/7, or you can call 0203 859 9317 Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm. You will be asked to create or sign in to an AXA Travel Account.
3. Send gadget claims somewhere else entirely. Section 9 is handled by Taurus, not AXA: claim at tiga.taurus.claims, call 0330 020 0032 or email puffin.tiga@taurus.gi. Sending a gadget claim to the main line just delays it.
4. Gather the evidence at your own expense. The wording says so in as many words. Medical claims need invoices, receipts and your GHIC copy for Europe. Theft needs a police report with a crime reference obtained within 24 hours. Baggage needs a Property Irregularity Report from the carrier.
5. Expect the excess per person and per incident. £99, £75 or £50 by tier, applied per insured person and per incident up to two incidents, plus a separate £50 excess on any gadget claim.
6. Escalate if it stalls. Complaints about a claim go to 01737 815227 or claimcomplaints@axa-assistance.co.uk, then to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Puffin is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Two conditions are worth knowing before you need them. On a cancellation claim you must tell the travel agent or tour operator as soon as you know you have to cancel, because otherwise Puffin pays only the cancellation charges that would have applied had you called on time. And on a curtailment claim you need the assistance service's prior approval that coming home early is necessary, before you book the flight.

Puffin travel insurance holds 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 22,407 reviews, with 80% at five stars and 3% at one star, read on 30 August 2026. Unlike the scores of providers who sell parking and hotels alongside cover, this one is for an insurance business, which makes it more useful than most.

That is a strong score on a large sample and we are not going to argue with it. The praise clusters in three consistent places.

• Competitive prices, which is the single most repeated theme and matches what little public pricing exists.
• A simple website and quote form, with the application described repeatedly as quick and straightforward.
• Pre-existing conditions accepted, with reviewers noting the medical screening accommodated conditions they expected to be refused for.

The complaints cluster somewhere just as specific, and they line up with the contract rather than contradicting it.

• Steep renewal quote increases from one year to the next, which is the most common single grievance.
• Administrative fees and friction on refunds and cancellations, which matches a refund ladder that drops to 65% on a single trip policy outside the 14 days.
• A smaller number of claims-handling complaints about delay and communication rather than about refusal to pay.

Nothing in the public record suggests an insurer that avoids paying. The friction sits at renewal and at refund, and at the declaration, not at the decision to settle a valid claim. If you have a condition to declare, our guide to travel insurance with a pre-existing medical condition explains what screening actually asks.

Puffin travel insurance runs a UK customer services line for policy questions and a separate 24 hour medical assistance line for emergencies abroad, which is the number to keep in your phone while you travel.

You can cancel a Puffin travel insurance policy at any time. Within 14 days of the policy start date or of receiving your documents, whichever is later, you get a full refund. After that Puffin refunds 65% on a single trip policy and 5% per full month remaining on an annual multi-trip policy.

That is more generous than a lot of the UK market, where the standard outside the cooling-off period is nothing at all. The conditions are the usual two: you must not have travelled and you must not have claimed. To cancel, call 0333 772 0346, email customerservice@puffininsurance.com or write to Puffin.

• Is Puffin travel insurance any good?

  On cover for the money, yes. Emergency medical and repatriation cover is £10,000,000 on every tier, personal liability is £2,000,000, gadget cover of £1,000 is standard and there is a legal expenses section worth £15,000 to £20,000. Trustpilot scores it 4.6 out of 5 from 22,407 reviews. The weak points are cancellation, capped at £1,500 on Silver and paid only for eight named events, and an excess of £99, £75 or £50 charged per insured person and per incident.

• Who underwrites Puffin travel insurance?

  Inter Partner Assistance S.A. underwrites and administers the policy, and it is part of the AXA Group. PuffinInsurance.com itself is a trading name of Puffin Group UK Ltd, Companies House number 09545476, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference 737328. Section 9 gadget cover is underwritten separately by ERGO TIS on behalf of Great Lakes Insurance UK Limited, with claims handled by Taurus.

• How much does Puffin travel insurance cost?

  Puffin publishes no tariff on its own site. The only public price signal is MoneySuperMarket’s illustrative example for a Puffin Silver policy at £20.43, and the trip behind it is not published, so it cannot be compared like for like. For context, our own comparator quoted £31.37 for a week in Spain for a 40 year old UK resident on 30 August 2026, and £65.72 for 14 days in the United States.

• What is the difference between Puffin Silver, Gold and Platinum?

  Medical cover is identical at £10,000,000 on all three, so the tiers separate on three things only. Cancellation goes from £1,500 to £3,000 to £5,000, the excess falls from £99 to £75 to £50, and on an annual policy the longest single trip goes from 32 days on Silver and Gold to 45 days on Platinum. Legal expenses rise from £15,000 to £20,000 at Gold. Choose by what your holiday cost, not by the medical number.

• What is the excess on Puffin travel insurance?

  £99 on Silver, £75 on Gold and £50 on Platinum, applied per insured person and per incident, up to a maximum of two incidents. Gadget claims carry a separate £50 excess. There is one useful waiver: if a medical bill is reduced because you used a Global Health Insurance Card or private health insurance, Puffin does not deduct the medical excess at all.

• Does Puffin cover pre-existing medical conditions?

  Yes, if you declare them and Puffin agrees to cover them, either by calling 0333 772 0346 or by completing the online medical screening. The warning in the wording is unusually strong: if you fail to declare a condition, Puffin may refuse or reduce any relevant claim, and it says this applies even where the claim is unrelated to the undisclosed condition. Undiagnosed symptoms, anything on a waiting list and any terminal prognosis are never covered.

• What are the covered reasons for cancelling with Puffin?

  Eight, and only eight. Death, injury, illness or pregnancy complication of you, a travel companion, a close relative or a colleague; compulsory quarantine, jury service or a court summons; redundancy; withdrawn leave for armed forces, emergency services, public sector medical staff and senior government employees; certain FCDO advice against travel; FCDO advice to evacuate during the trip; no alternative transport within 12 hours or involuntary denied boarding; and theft of your passport within 72 hours of departure. Damage to your home is not on the list.

• Does Puffin travel insurance cover cruises and winter sports?

  Only if you buy the upgrade and it is printed on your policy schedule. Cruise cover adds missed port benefits up to £750 in total on Platinum, cabin confinement to £1,500 and unused excursions to £750. Winter sports adds ski equipment to £500, piste closure to £400 and avalanche cover to £500, and on an annual policy it buys either 17 or 24 winter sports days in the year, not the whole season.

• Is there a Puffin travel insurance discount code?

  Puffin runs promotions from time to time and it is worth applying whatever is live when you buy. Keep it in perspective though: a discount on a Silver premium still leaves you with a £99 excess per person per incident and £1,500 of cancellation cover. Compare the cancellation limit and the excess against at least one alternative before a code decides it for you.

• Is there an age limit on Puffin travel insurance?

  Puffin sells single trip cover to travellers aged 18 to 84 and annual multi-trip cover to 18 to 80, which is more generous than much of the market. One detail to note inside the policy: from age 65 the personal accident benefit for loss of a limb or an eye is Nil on all three tiers, while the death and permanent total disablement benefits stay at £5,000.

• Can I cancel my Puffin policy and get a refund?

  Yes. Within 14 days of the policy start date or of receiving your documents, whichever is later, you get a full refund. Outside that window Puffin refunds 65% on a single trip policy if the trip has not started, and 5% per full month remaining on an annual multi-trip policy. All refunds require that you have not travelled and have not claimed. Cancel on 0333 772 0346 or at customerservice@puffininsurance.com.

• Is there a cheaper alternative to Puffin travel insurance?

  Not on the one price Puffin has in public, and we would rather say so. Its illustrative Silver example of £20.43 undercuts the cheapest plan we quoted for a European week, at £31.37. What that extra buys is cancellation paid up to the trip value you declare instead of a £1,500 cap, personal liability of about £3,916,800 instead of £2,000,000, search and rescue cover that Puffin does not offer at all, and no excess taken off the settlement. Compare the limits and the excess, not just the premium.

The best alternative to Puffin travel insurance depends on one question: is your holiday cost bigger than your tier's cancellation limit? If it is, a plan that pays cancellation up to the trip value you declare covers the same week in Spain for £31.37. If your booking cost £400 and you are healthy, Puffin Silver is a perfectly sensible buy.

Recommended for youA. Fruchard · Co-Founder & Travel Insurance Expert

Which policy we would actually put in front of a Puffin shopper

If your holiday cost real money, WorldSecure Platinum is the one to look at first. You get emergency hospital care abroad with nothing to advance, repatriation organised and paid at actual cost, about £261,120 of medical cover, and cancellation paid up to the trip value you declare rather than stopping at £1,500, for £31.37 on a week in Spain. It was also £31.37 at 60 and at 65, because it does not price by age band.

If the medical ceiling is what reassures you, Safe Start raises it to about £435,200 for £38.30 on the same trip and adds about £10,445 of trip interruption cover. If you are over 70, World Travel is the plan that still quotes, at £51.70, and it is the only one we could price at 84.

Be clear about what none of these do. They carry no legal expenses section, they will not match Puffin’s £1,000 of gadget cover, they have no winter sports option at all, and their annual multi-trip pricing is not competitive with a UK direct annual policy. If you are skiing, cruising, or buying annual cover, Puffin or another UK specialist is the better product and we would rather tell you so.

P. Laurore, Co-founder & Travel and Credit Card Insurance Expert at HelloSafe

WorldSecure PlatinumInsured by MGEN

From£31.37

Included coverage

Trip cancellationOptional

International emergency medical expenses£250,000

Direct billingIncluded

Baggage & personal belongings£1,700

See the 17 guaranteesGet a quote

Personalized quote · no commitment

Safe StartInsured by Mutuaide

From£38.30

Included coverage

Trip cancellationNot included

International emergency medical expenses£420,000

Direct billingIncluded

Baggage & personal belongings£1,700

See the 17 guaranteesGet a quote

Personalized quote · no commitment

World TravelInsured by Mutuaide

From£51.71

Included coverage

Trip cancellation£1,300

International emergency medical expenses£250,000

Direct billingIncluded

Baggage & personal belongings£840

See the 17 guaranteesGet a quote

Personalized quote · no commitment

Prices for 1 traveller aged 40, 7 days in Spain, departing from the United Kingdom, quoted on 30 August 2026 for a 5 October 2026 departure. Cancellation on WorldSecure Platinum is paid up to the trip value you declare, within the plan ceiling. Policies are pan-European: prices and cover limits are shown in pounds, converted at the live exchange rate.

Puffin is not the only UK direct insurer worth pricing before you buy. AllClear travel insurance and Staysure travel insurance are the medical screening specialists to compare against if you have a condition to declare, while our reviews of EasyJet travel insurance and TUI travel insurance cover the add-on policies you get offered at the checkout instead. If you would rather start from your own trip than from a brand, run it through our travel insurance comparison and read the limits before the price.

Last updated: 30 August 2026. Puffin figures checked against its Travel Insurance Policy Wording of August 2024, version D, and its published product pages on that date. HelloSafe prices are live quotes captured the same day for a UK resident, shown in pounds.