Travel Insurance for Americans in 2026: Real Quotes From $64 for Two Weeks
- ⚡️ Instant Certificate
- 🆘 24/7 Assistance without upfront costs
- 🔐 Secure Payment
A. FruchardCo-Founder & Travel Insurance ExpertLast updated: October 2, 2026What does travel insurance for Americans actually buy you?
Travel insurance for Americans buys three things no US health plan does: emergency hospital care abroad paid straight to the hospital, a medically supervised flight home, and money back on a prepaid trip. On the plans a US resident can reach today, the medical limit runs from $250,000 to about $560,000.
We rebuilt this page from our own data on September 23, 2026. We ran the market through our comparator as a traveler living in the United States, read the coverage records of the seven plans that came back, pulled the 128 US credit cards in our card database, and checked what 29 US residents have actually paid through HelloSafe.
The result is less tidy than most comparison pages admit. Seven plans accept a US resident. Two of them, Go Explore and Go Explore +, return a real computed premium for your exact dates, ages and party size. The other five publish an advertised daily starting rate and compute the real premium on the insurer's own page once you enter your trip. So anyone quoting a single average cost of travel insurance for Americans is quoting a starting rate, not a quote.
Our working floors for a trip out of the United States are $250,000 of emergency medical coverage, an evacuation limit stated separately from the medical one, and direct billing so the hospital is paid without you advancing the money. All seven plans clear those three floors, which is not something we can say on every market. The real decisions sit further down: age caps, trip length caps, and whether a prepaid trip is refundable at all.
Every year, our experts audit each plan against its binding policy wording: coverage, limits and exclusions, cross-checked with real customer feedback and live market prices. The analysis is fully independent, with zero paid placements and no insurer able to pay to influence a rating. We compare travel insurance across every country and currency, using the plans, prices and coverage actually offered in your country, not a single guide translated.
Learn moreWhich insurers still write cover for a traveler based in the United States?
Seven plans accept a traveler resident in the United States in our comparator: Smart Travel Protection, Atlas International, Atlas International Premium, Standard Plan, Epic Plan, Go Explore and Go Explore +. Two are priced end to end on HelloSafe. Five are quoted on the insurer's page after you start from here.
That is a narrow market by international standards, and it is worth knowing why before you compare. Most of the pan-European contracts we carry do not accept a US residence at all, which is why a list built for a French or British traveler is useless here. The seven below are the ones that will actually take your address.
Which plan we would actually pick
If what frightens you is a hospital bill in Lisbon or Bangkok, you want the hospital paid directly and a flight home organized and paid for. Go Explore + does both: roughly $560,000 of medical coverage and evacuation at actual cost, priced for your exact dates rather than a flat daily rate. Go Explore is the lighter version of the same plan, with a ceiling around $280,000, for a lower price, and it suits a prepaid vacation where the medical side matters more than a long stay in an expensive healthcare market. Two honest gaps: neither plan covers trip cancellation at all, so budget for that separately if you have real money at risk in flights and hotels, and neither accepts a traveler over 80. The cards below show today’s price for your dates.
Included coverage
Personalized quote · no obligation
Included coverage
Personalized quote · no obligation
Starting prices for a US resident, age 40, 7 days in France, departure early October 2026, in USD. Faye, Atlas and World Nomads show their per-day starting rate; Go Explore plans show the computed price for the full trip. HelloSafe data, captured August 2026.
HelloSafe is available as an app inside ChatGPT. Install it from ChatGPT’s Apps tab, then type @HelloSafe followed by your destination and dates to compare travel insurance.
What does a week, a month or a whole year abroad cost to insure?
A US resident under 44 pays $64.24 for a two-week trip on the cheaper of the two plans we price live, and $85.22 on the fuller one. Those figures do not move with the destination. They move with age, with party size, and in steps at 15, 31 and 62 days.
We priced both plans across ages 18 to 79, trip lengths from 3 to 300 days and destinations in Europe, Asia and Latin America on September 23, 2026, for a departure on November 20, 2026. Three things came out of that grid that no rate card tells you.
- Price is banded by duration, not counted by the day. Three days and fourteen days cost exactly the same. The first step lands at 15 days, the next at 31, the next at 62.
- The age step lands at 44, not at 65. A 44-year-old pays about 18% more than a 35-year-old for the same trip, and the second step at 61 puts the premium about 49% above the youngest band.
- The destination does not change the premium on these two plans. France, Japan, Thailand and Mexico all returned the same figure for the same traveler and the same dates.
Traveler profile | Budget (Go Explore) | Premium (Go Explore +) | What decides it |
|---|---|---|---|
Solo traveler, 35 Two weeks in Europe | $64.24 | $85.22 | About $280,000 of medical coverage against about $560,000 |
Traveler aged 44 to 60 Two weeks | $76.07 | $98.37 | The first age step lands at 44, not at 65 |
Senior, 61 and over Two weeks | $95.74 | $116.73 | Both plans stop accepting a new traveler at 80 |
Couple, 36 and 34 Two weeks | $123.28 | $165.25 | A second adult roughly doubles the premium |
Family, two adults and two children Two weeks | $150.83 | $205.91 | Two children added about $28, less than half a second adult |
Long trip, 35 Three months in Asia | $245.18 | $344.82 | The price steps at 15, 31 and 62 days, never per day |
Real computed HelloSafe quotes for a US resident, departing November 20, 2026, in US dollars. Captured September 23, 2026.
One practical consequence for households: a family is quoted for the party, not per head. Two children added $27.55 to the two-week family quote, less than half what the second adult added. If you are pricing a trip for four, read our page on family travel insurance before you buy two separate policies.
What do US travelers on HelloSafe actually end up paying?
The median policy bought through HelloSafe by a traveler living in the United States cost about $117. That is our own subscription record rather than a survey: 29 paid contracts, the cheapest about $26 and the dearest about $472. For figures on the US market as a whole, see our US travel insurance market barometer.
The shape of that record matters more than the median. Twenty-two of the 29 were Schengen visa policies, bought to satisfy a European consulate rather than to protect a vacation. Only six were ordinary tourism policies, and five of those six were Go Explore or Go Explore +. Most Americans who buy through us are buying a document; the ones buying protection are buying the two plans we can price live.
That is also why the average travel insurance cost is a misleading thing to search for. The advertised starting rates on our US shortlist run from $5.16 to $12.50 a day, a spread of more than two to one before anyone enters an age or a trip length, and none of them is a quote. What you actually pay is driven by trip length first and age second. For the full breakdown of the drivers, read our guide to how much travel insurance costs.
Which guarantees do the US plans really carry, line by line?
Every plan a US resident can reach covers emergency treatment abroad and pays the hospital directly, so nobody is asked for a credit card at admission. Where the seven part company is the size of the medical limit, whether evacuation has a limit of its own, and whether a canceled trip is refundable at all.
Plan | Emergency medical abroad | Emergency evacuation | Hospital paid directly | Age limit | Longest trip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Go Explore + Priced live on HelloSafe | About $560,000 | Actual cost | Included | 80 | 365 days |
Atlas International Premium Quoted on the insurer's page | $500,000 | $1,000,000 | Included | 99 | 365 days |
Atlas International Quoted on the insurer's page | $500,000 | $1,000,000 | Included | 99 | 365 days |
Epic Plan Quoted on the insurer's page | $500,000 | Actual cost | Included | 70 | 365 days |
Standard Plan Quoted on the insurer's page | $400,000 | Actual cost | Included | 70 | 365 days |
Go Explore Priced live on HelloSafe | About $280,000 | Actual cost | Included | 80 | 365 days |
Smart Travel Protection Quoted on the insurer's page | $250,000 | $500,000 | Included | 99 | 180 days |
Read the evacuation column before the medical one. A medically supervised flight from Southeast Asia back to the United States is the single largest bill a trip can generate, and it is the one thing no domestic health plan arranges. On Atlas International and Atlas International Premium it has its own $1,000,000 limit. On Standard Plan, Epic Plan and both Go Explore plans it is covered at actual cost, which is stronger still. We explain who decides and who pays on our page about repatriation insurance.
Plan | Trip cancellation | Trip interruption | Baggage | Travel delay | Personal liability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Smart Travel Protection | Trip price, up to $40,000 | $10,000 | $2,000 | $2,100 | Not covered |
Epic Plan | Trip price, up to $15,000 | Trip price, up to $15,000 | $3,000 | $5,000 | Rental vehicle only, $50,000 |
Standard Plan | Trip price, up to $2,500 | Trip price, up to $2,500 | $1,000 | $1,000 | Not covered |
Atlas International Premium | Not covered | $15,000 | $2,000 | $400 | $100,000 |
Atlas International | Not covered | $10,000 | $1,000 | $200 | $25,000 |
Go Explore + | Not covered | Return ticket | About $560 | Not covered | About $1,700,000 |
Go Explore | Not covered | Return ticket | About $280 | Not covered | About $1,700,000 |
Four of the seven plans carry no trip cancellation whatever. That is the fault line on this market: the plans with the highest medical ceilings are medical plans, and the plans that refund a prepaid trip carry smaller medical limits. If most of your exposure is the money already spent, start from trip cancellation insurance instead, and treat the medical limit as the second decision.
Two smaller lines deserve a look. Both Go Explore plans cover personal liability at about $1,700,000, an order of magnitude above the $25,000 to $100,000 on the Atlas plans, and both also pay search fees and some treatment once you are back in the United States. Both also cap baggage in the hundreds rather than the thousands, so a laptop in a stolen bag is effectively uninsured on them.
Does Medicare or your job's health plan follow you out of the country?
No. Medicare's own fact sheet states that in most situations Medicare will not pay for health care or supplies you get outside the United States, and it counts everywhere except the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands as outside.
There are three narrow exceptions, set out in Medicare's fact sheet on coverage outside the United States: you are in the United States when the emergency happens and a foreign hospital is closer than the nearest US one that can treat you; you are crossing Canada by the most direct route between Alaska and another state when the emergency happens and a Canadian hospital is closer; or you live in the United States closer to a foreign hospital than to any US hospital able to treat your condition. Outside those three, you pay the provider in full.
- Routine and emergency care abroad: Outside the three situations above, Medicare pays nothing and you settle the bill yourself.
- Prescriptions bought abroad: Medicare plans cannot cover drugs you buy outside the United States, at any price.
- Dialysis during a trip: Not covered outside the United States unless it happens during an inpatient stay under one of the three exceptions.
- Care on a ship more than six hours from a US port: Medicare stops there, which is exactly where a repositioning leg or an ocean crossing spends most of its time. See cruise travel insurance.
- A medically supervised flight home: The three exceptions cover inpatient hospital, doctor and ambulance services, not the flight back to the United States.
A Medigap policy narrows the gap without closing it. The same fact sheet states that most Medigap plans (C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, M and N) provide foreign travel emergency health care with a lifetime limit of $50,000, pay 80% of the billed charges after a $250 deductible for the year, and only cover care that begins during the first 60 days of a trip. Set $50,000 for a lifetime against the $250,000 to $560,000 a single-trip policy carries, and the arithmetic makes the decision for you.
A Medicare Advantage plan has to follow Medicare's rules but may add coverage abroad, so Medicare's own guidance on travel outside the US tells you to check with the plan before you travel. Medicare's answer to the question is unambiguous: because its coverage of health care outside the United States is limited, you can choose to buy a travel insurance policy to get more coverage. The State Department keeps a page on insurance coverage overseas if you want to check an employer plan before you leave.
When is cheap travel insurance a real saving, and when is it a trap?
Cheap travel insurance is a real saving when you cut the price with the trip length, the cancellation limit or a benefit you genuinely do not need. It turns into a trap when you cut it with the medical ceiling, the age cap or the trip length cap, because those are the three that decide whether the policy answers the phone at all.
- Insure the trip, not the calendar: Both plans we price live are banded by duration. Three days and fourteen days cost the same, so shaving a day off a two-week trip saves nothing.
- Skip cancellation on a refundable trip: Go Explore and Go Explore + carry no trip cancellation at all and are priced accordingly. On flexible bookings that is a genuine saving, not a gap.
- Match the cancellation limit to what you actually prepaid: Standard Plan caps cancellation at $2,500. If your prepaid trip is worth less than that, the cheaper plan is not a compromise.
- Price the party, not the person: Two children added $27.55 to a two-week family quote, less than half what the second adult added.
- Compare the same trip on both coverage levels: Stepping from Go Explore to Go Explore + doubled the medical ceiling for between about 20% and 40% more premium on every profile we priced.
- Count your trips before you buy singles: Three or four trips a year and a per-trip policy stops being the cheap option. Our page on annual travel insurance works the break-even out.
- Relying on a card instead of a policy: Of the 128 US cards in our database, nine carry any emergency medical coverage abroad and eight of those stop at $2,500.
- Buying a plan your age has already passed: Standard Plan and Epic Plan stop at 70, Go Explore and Go Explore + at 80. A price that comes back is not a policy that will still accept you next year.
- Assuming a long trip is covered: Smart Travel Protection is the cheapest of the shortlist and stops at 180 days. The other six run to 365.
- Expecting a refund with no cancellation coverage: Four of the seven plans carry no trip cancellation at all, so a cheap medical plan does nothing for a vacation you have to call off.
- Skipping the pre-existing question: Go Explore and Go Explore + exclude a condition treated or hospitalized in the previous six months, and cover pregnancy only for an unforeseen complication.
- Counting on Medicare to catch you: Medicare pays nothing outside the United States except in three narrow situations, and a Medigap policy is capped at $50,000 for a lifetime.
Our card record for the highest-scoring US travel card puts it plainly: a single emergency room overnight in Europe typically runs $3,000 to $8,000, and the card’s medical coverage stops at $2,500 after a $50 deductible. That is not a small shortfall on a catastrophic bill. It is a shortfall on the smallest bill a trip abroad is likely to produce.
How far does the medical cover on a US travel card actually go?
Not far. Of the 128 US credit cards in HelloSafe's card database, only nine carry any emergency medical coverage abroad and eight of those stop at $2,500. Fourteen carry emergency evacuation. A premium card is strong on cancellation, delay and baggage, and weak on exactly the risk that could bankrupt you.
Card | Emergency medical abroad | Emergency evacuation | Trip cancellation | Annual fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Sapphire Reserve Chase, highest-scoring US travel card in our database | $2,500, $50 deductible | $100,000, pre-authorization required | $10,000 per person | $795 |
Sapphire Reserve Business Chase | $2,500 | Covered | $10,000 per person | $795 |
Ritz-Carlton Chase | $2,500 | Covered | $10,000 per person | $450 |
Venture X Business Capital One | $2,500 | Not covered | $3,000 per person | $395 |
Prestige Citi | Not covered | Covered | $5,000 per trip | $495 |
Platinum American Express | Not covered | Not covered | $10,000 per trip | $895 |
Three clauses matter more than the ceilings. The Sapphire Reserve medical benefit is secondary, which means your US health plan pays first, so if that plan does not follow you abroad the card can end up paying nothing at all. Its $100,000 evacuation benefit has to be recommended by the attending physician and authorized and arranged in advance by the card's own service provider, and costs incurred without that approval are not reimbursed under any circumstances. And its pre-existing condition exclusion runs on a 60-day lookback with no waiver available.
What the card does well is worth keeping. Thirteen named cancellation reasons at $10,000 per person with no deductible, a six-hour delay trigger instead of the usual twelve, and $3,000 of lost luggage add up to better cancellation coverage than four of the seven travel plans on this page offer. We take every US card apart the same way on our credit card travel insurance page. The short version: keep the card for cancellation, delay and baggage, and buy the medical coverage and the evacuation separately.
Which clauses decide whether the bill gets paid?
Four clauses decide most refused claims on this market: a pre-existing condition lookback, a prior authorization requirement on evacuation, an age or trip length cap you passed without noticing, and a cancellation reason that is not on the list. None of them is hidden. All of them are missed.
Pre-existing conditions come first because they are the most common refusal. Go Explore and Go Explore + exclude a condition that was treated or led to a hospital admission in the six months before the trip, and cover pregnancy only for an unforeseen complication. The answer is plan specific, so read our page on pre-existing condition travel insurance before you pick rather than after a claim is refused.
Evacuation is where paperwork beats money. Chase's own wording, in our card record, requires the evacuation to be recommended by the attending physician and authorized and arranged in advance by the card's service provider; anything booked without that call is not reimbursed. Our travel plans route evacuation through a 24/7 assistance line for the same reason. The rule is short: you call the assistance number before anyone books a plane, not after.
Age and trip length caps are checked when you buy, not when you claim, which is why they surprise people at renewal rather than at purchase. Standard Plan and Epic Plan accept travelers up to 70. Go Explore and Go Explore + stop at 80. Smart Travel Protection takes any age up to 99 but caps the trip at 180 days, where the other six run to 365. Our page on travel insurance for seniors tracks which plans still accept a traveler past those thresholds.
Cancellation is never for any reason unless you buy that explicitly. Smart Travel Protection includes a cancel for any reason add-on and Epic Plan offers one as an option; without it you are inside a named list. Our card record for the Sapphire Reserve counts 13 covered reasons, and they are the usual ones: illness, severe weather, jury duty, a terrorist incident within 25 miles of your departure airport. A pandemic, a border closure and a travel supplier going bust are not on it.
Timing is the last one. Five of the seven plans accept a purchase on the day of departure, and the two Go Explore plans need one day's notice. That does not make waiting free: cancellation only protects money you have not yet lost, so a policy bought after the reason to cancel already exists protects nothing. Our page on when to buy travel insurance sets out which benefits carry their own deadlines. If Europe is the destination, the entry rules are covered on our page about travel insurance for Europe.
Your questions on insuring a trip abroad from the US
No US rule requires it. The requirement, when there is one, comes from the destination: a Schengen consulate sets its own minimum medical coverage and asks for proof with the visa application, and several countries have done the same at the border in recent years. For a trip that needs no visa, nothing obliges you to buy coverage, and nothing pays the hospital if you do not.
On the two plans our comparator prices end to end for a US resident, a two-week trip quoted on September 23, 2026 came to $64.24 on Go Explore and $85.22 on Go Explore + for a traveler aged 35, and $95.74 and $116.73 for a traveler aged 61 or over. The five partner plans publish advertised starting rates of $5.16 to $12.50 a day and compute the real premium on the insurer’s page.
The median policy bought through HelloSafe by a US resident cost about $117, across 29 paid contracts, from about $26 to about $472. That median is pulled up by Schengen visa policies, which were 22 of the 29. There is no single average because the premium is banded by trip length first and by age second, not calculated per day.
Rarely, and never completely. Medicare will not pay for care outside the United States except in three narrow situations. A Medigap policy adds foreign travel emergency care capped at $50,000 for a lifetime. A commercial plan may reimburse an emergency after the fact, but reimbursement is not the same as a hospital being paid on the day, and no domestic plan arranges a medically supervised flight home.
Coverage that keeps the medical ceiling and the direct billing, and saves money on things you can afford to lose. Dropping trip cancellation on a refundable booking, choosing the shorter duration band, or matching a $2,500 cancellation cap to a cheap prepaid trip are all real savings. Dropping the medical limit or picking a plan whose age cap you are about to cross is not.
We treat $250,000 as the floor for a trip out of the United States, and prefer $500,000 outside Europe where a hospital stay and the flight home are both more expensive. Every plan on the US shortlist clears the floor: the range runs from $250,000 on Smart Travel Protection to $500,000 on the Atlas and Epic plans and about $560,000 on Go Explore +.
The evacuation benefit on your travel policy, and only if the insurer’s assistance line authorizes and arranges it first. Atlas International and Atlas International Premium cap it at $1,000,000; Standard Plan, Epic Plan, Go Explore and Go Explore + cover it at actual cost. Medicare covers none of it, and a credit card benefit that is not pre-authorized is not reimbursed at all.
Yes, but the shortlist shrinks. Standard Plan and Epic Plan stop at 70. Go Explore and Go Explore + accept a traveler up to 80, and quoted $95.74 and $116.73 for a two-week trip at 61 and over. Smart Travel Protection, Atlas International and Atlas International Premium accept any age up to 99, which makes them the realistic options past 80.
Not for the medical risk. Nine of the 128 US cards in our database carry any emergency medical coverage abroad and eight cap it at $2,500, usually as secondary coverage that pays only after your own health plan. Fourteen carry evacuation. Cards are genuinely good at cancellation, delay and baggage, which is why we recommend keeping the card and buying the medical coverage separately.
Six of the seven. Atlas International, Atlas International Premium, Standard Plan, Epic Plan, Go Explore and Go Explore + all run to 365 days. Smart Travel Protection caps the trip at 180 days. On a long stay the price steps rather than climbing smoothly: on Go Explore, 62 to 90 days quoted $245.18 and 300 days quoted $637.19.
On some plans, yes. Standard Plan and Epic Plan both state that you can buy or extend coverage while already traveling, which is unusual and useful on an open-ended trip. Most plans expect the policy to start before departure, and any cancellation benefit is worthless once the trip has begun, so buying early still costs nothing and covers more.
The plans on this page are written for travel outside the United States, which is where the domestic health system stops following you. A domestic trip is usually a cancellation and baggage question rather than a medical one, and that is the half a premium credit card often already covers. Check the card first, then insure the prepaid portion if it is large.
On the same topic
Travel insurance for Spain: real quotes from $27.12 for a week
Oct 2, 2026
Cover-More travel insurance review 2026: unlimited medical, and the five add-ons you have to buy separately
Sep 25, 2026
Allianz Comprehensive Package review: a $10,000,000 Canadian medical maximum, and four wordings with the same name
Sep 30, 2026
