We have claimed on our travel insurance more than once. Bad weather interrupted a trip in the Philippines and our expenses were covered. A hospital visit in Hong Kong for terrible abdominal pain turned into a massive medical bill. Add to that lost connections, broken equipment and a couple of robberies.
All of those claims were on a World Nomads policy, and for years this page was a review of that one company. It isn’t any more. We earn nothing from any insurer here: there are no affiliate links on this page and every link goes straight to the company’s own site.
What follows is how five of the options long-term travellers actually use compare on the things that decide a claim — where you live, whether you can still buy once you have left, what the limits are, and what the wording quietly leaves out.
No affiliate links, no sponsored placements. Read our disclosure.
What actually decides which policy you can buy
Most comparison lists start with price. Price is the last thing that matters, because three filters knock out most of the options before you ever see a quote:
- Where you live. Travel insurance is sold by country of residence, not by where you are going. Allianz Travel’s plans, for example, are “only available to U.S. residents”. True Traveller is “only able to insure residents of the UK and Europe”. If you don’t fit, the quote form will take your money and the claims team won’t.
- Whether you have already left. Most mainstream policies assume you buy before departure. A minority will sell to you mid-trip, and that is the single most useful feature for anyone who is already on the road.
- Your age. Every one of these has a cut-off, and it is lower than people expect — often 64 or 69, not 75.
Only after that do the limits matter: emergency medical, evacuation, the excess you pay per claim, and the per-item cap on your gear. That last one catches more backpackers than anything else.
The five options compared
| Provider | Who can buy | Buy once you’ve left? | Ages | Built around |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| World Nomads | Regional policies: US, UK, EU, AU/NZ, rest of world | Yes | Vary by region; 70+ goes to a partner | Adventure activities, open-ended trips |
| SafetyWing | Essential by age band; Complete only if you live outside the USA | Yes | Up to 69 (Essential); 18–64 (Complete) | Medical cover as a subscription |
| True Traveller | UK and Europe residents only | Yes, after 48 hours | 75 single trip; 65 multi-trip | Long trips, with activity packs |
| Allianz Travel | US residents only | Not stated | Not published | Insuring prepaid trip cost |
| InsureMyTrip | A comparison site, not an insurer | Depends on the plan | Depends on the plan | Comparing US plans side by side |
World Nomads
The one we have actually claimed on. World Nomads is not a single insurer: it is a brand that sells regional policies underwritten by different companies — Pacific International in Australia and New Zealand, Collinson Insurance Europe in the EU, Astrenska in the UK, United States Fire Insurance Company in the US and Zurich in Canada. That is why the cover you read about in a blog post from another country may not be the cover you get.
For US residents, World Nomads publishes the two plan levels side by side: emergency medical and dental of $125,000 on Standard against $150,000 on Explorer, emergency evacuation of $400,000 against $500,000, trip cancellation of $2,500 against $10,000, and baggage and personal effects of $1,000 against $2,000. Per-item sublimits sit in the policy wording, not on that page, so read it before you assume your laptop is covered.
Two things it does better than most. You can buy at home or while travelling and claim online from anywhere, which is the reason we used it for years on open-ended trips. And it covers 150+ activities — but not all of them on every plan. Their own wording is that “you may need to upgrade the policy and sporting level to receive the cover you require” and pay more for higher-risk activities. Check your specific activity against your specific plan, not against the marketing page.
The limit worth knowing: if you are 70 or over, World Nomads does not insure you on its own policy. It hands you to TripAssure, a Generali brand.
Best for: someone on a long, loosely planned trip who wants adventure activities covered and may need to buy or extend once they are already away.
SafetyWing Nomad Insurance
The one that behaves least like travel insurance. SafetyWing sells it as a subscription: you buy in four-week blocks or 364 days at a time (the longer block is discounted 10%), and you can sign up “before you depart or at any point during your travels or while living abroad”. Underwritten by SafetyWing Insurance I.I., a Puerto Rico domiciled insurer.
On the Essential plan the headline figures are an overall limit of US$250,000 and emergency evacuation capped at US$100,000 for the life of the plan. Lost checked luggage is covered at US$500 per item to a maximum of US$3,000, and there is US$5,000 for a ticket home in the event of a death in the family. Electronics theft is a paid add-on, not part of the base plan. Essential also includes up to 30 days of medical coverage in your home country, which is unusual and genuinely useful if you pass through.
Two eligibility details that are easy to miss. The age bands stop at 60–69, so there is nothing above 69. And the Complete plan is stricter than the marketing suggests: its description of cover requires the policyholder to “reside in a country other than the United States of America” and to be “at least eighteen (18) years old and up to sixty-four (64) years old”.
What it is not: this is medical-first cover. The only trip-interruption payout listed on Essential is that US$5,000 ticket home after a death in the family, plus $60 for a 3–8 hour delay and $150 beyond that. If you have thousands of pounds of non-refundable flights and tours booked, this is not the product protecting them. Essential also “does not cover pre-existing conditions, maternity care or cancer treatment”.
Best for: people living abroad indefinitely, and anyone who wants to pay month by month rather than commit to a trip length up front.
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True Traveller
The most transparent of the five, because the full policy wording is a public PDF with the limits table on page three. You can read exactly what you are buying before you buy it, which almost nobody else lets you do.
It only insures residents of the UK and Europe. Single-trip cover goes up to age 75 and multi-trip to 65, and trips can run to 548 days, or 731 for worldwide cover including the USA and Canada — though from age 50 you are capped at 366 days.
Medical and repatriation is £10 million on all three levels. The difference between them is the excess you pay on a claim: £125 on True Value, £75 on Traveller, £35 on Traveller Plus. Search and rescue is £50,000 on Traveller and £100,000 on Traveller Plus, and is simply not available on True Value.
The detail that matters most to backpackers: baggage cover is optional, and even when you buy it the single-item limit is £150, £300 or £350 depending on level, with all your valuables together capped at £250, £400 or £500. A camera body or a laptop blows straight through that. You can insure specific items separately at up to £500 each, or £850 on Traveller Plus — and if your gear is worth real money, that is the line you need, not the headline £10 million.
You can also buy once you have already left, with two conditions worth reading twice: cover starts 48 hours after purchase, and there is no 14-day cooling-off period, so no refund if you change your mind.
Best for: UK and EU residents on a long trip who want to see the numbers before paying, and who are willing to pay extra to get their gear properly covered.
Allianz Travel
A different animal. Allianz Travel’s plans are built around protecting the money you have already committed: OneTrip Basic, Prime, Premier, Emergency Medical and Cancellation Plus for single trips, and AllTrips Basic, Prime, Premier and Executive for a year of them. Benefits are underwritten by BCS Insurance Company or Jefferson Insurance Company depending on your state and plan, and distributed by AGA Service Company.
Two hard limits. Plans are “only available to U.S. residents and may not be available in all jurisdictions”. And the whole structure assumes a trip with a start date, an end date and a prepaid cost — which is the opposite of what open-ended backpacking looks like. The annual AllTrips plans are the closest fit if you are based in the US and take several trips a year.
Best for: US residents with an expensive, fully booked trip they cannot afford to lose — not for someone leaving with a one-way ticket.
InsureMyTrip
Worth being clear about what this is: InsureMyTrip does not insure you. It is a comparison marketplace with licensed insurance agents that has, in its own words, “for over 25 years” helped travellers compare plans from multiple providers, and it says it uses insights from over 100,000 customer reviews to rank them.
That makes it useful for one specific job: if you are in the US and your trip is conventional enough that a dozen comprehensive plans could fit, running a single quote there beats opening a dozen tabs. It is much less useful if you are not a US resident, or if what you need is a niche — an 18-month one-way trip, cover bought mid-trip, or a long list of adventure activities — because the plans that do those well are often not the ones on comparison sites.
Best for: US residents comparing conventional trip plans on price and benefits in one go.
Why there are no prices on this page
Because any figure we printed would be wrong for you. Premiums on all of these move with your age, your country of residence, where you are going, how long for, which activities you add and how much gear you insure. A “from $X” number is a number for a 25-year-old going to Portugal for a week, and you are probably neither.
The one price structure worth understanding is SafetyWing’s, because it is not a trip premium at all: it renews every four weeks until you stop it, or you buy 364 days up front at a 10% discount. Everything else here is quoted per trip, and the only honest way to compare is to put your real dates and destinations into each form and read the two numbers that actually differ — the premium and the excess.
Five things to check in the wording before you pay
These are the clauses that decide claims, and they are never on the sales page.
- The single-item limit on your gear. Not the total. True Traveller caps individual items at £150 to £350 and all valuables combined at £250 to £500; SafetyWing pays US$500 per item on lost checked luggage. If your camera is worth more than that, you need specified-item cover or a separate gadget policy.
- The excess, per section. True Traveller’s runs £35 to £125 depending on the level you buy, and it applies per person and per section of the policy, so a single incident can trigger more than one.
- Pre-existing conditions. SafetyWing states plainly that Essential “does not cover pre-existing conditions, maternity care or cancer treatment”. Allianz states its exclusions apply “including for pre-existing conditions”. Assume excluded unless the wording says otherwise in writing.
- Anything that already happened. True Traveller puts it plainly: if you lost your camera yesterday, a policy you buy today will not cover it. Buying mid-trip does not backdate anything.
- Your activity, on your plan. World Nomads covers 150+ activities but not all of them on every plan, and higher-risk ones cost more. True Traveller includes its Traveller pack and sells Adventure, Extreme and Ultimate packs on top. Find your activity by name on your own certificate.
How to claim without losing the argument
The claims we won were the ones where we had the paperwork. The ones that were painful were the ones where we didn’t. What we do now, on any policy:
- Call the assistance line before treatment if you possibly can. Most policies want to be told about anything serious while it is happening, not afterwards.
- Photograph receipts and policy documents before you leave, and keep them somewhere that doesn’t depend on the phone that might get stolen.
- If an airline loses your bag, report it before you leave the airport, fill in their form and keep a copy.
- Report theft to the police straight away. True Traveller’s wording requires written proof from the police, your accommodation, tour operator or carrier “within 24-hours of the discovery” and warns that failing to get it “may result in your claim being declined”. Most policies say something similar.
- Keep damaged items. Insurers can ask to see them, and throwing them away can sink the claim.
- Claim refunds from the airline, hotel or tour operator first. Insurance covers what you could not recover elsewhere, not what you didn’t bother to ask for.
So which one would we buy
There isn’t one answer, and any page that gives you one is selling something.
If you are leaving on a one-way ticket and expect to climb, dive or ride something, World Nomads is still the one we would start with, for the activity list and because you can buy and extend from the road. If you are a UK or EU resident who wants to know the exact numbers before paying — and especially if you are carrying a camera — True Traveller’s published wording and specified-item cover make it the better-informed choice. If you have already moved abroad and “trip” has stopped being a useful word, SafetyWing’s subscription fits your life better than any trip policy will. If you are a US resident with a booked and paid-for trip, Allianz or a comparison run through InsureMyTrip is the right shape.
Whichever you pick, spend twenty minutes on the policy wording. It is boring, and it is the only part of this that a claims handler will read.
With some insurers, yes. World Nomads states you can buy at home or while travelling, SafetyWing lets you sign up at any point during your travels, and True Traveller sells to travellers who have already left — with cover starting 48 hours after purchase and no cooling-off period. Nothing that happened before you bought is covered, on any of them.
Rarely at its full value under the standard baggage section. True Traveller’s single-item limit is £150 to £350 depending on the level, with all valuables combined capped at £250 to £500; SafetyWing pays up to US$500 per item on lost checked luggage and sells electronics theft as an add-on. For anything expensive you need specified-item cover or a separate gadget policy.
Always, and it is lower than most people assume. SafetyWing’s age bands stop at 60–69, and its Complete plan is for ages 18 to 64. True Traveller covers to 75 on single-trip policies and 65 on multi-trip. World Nomads’ limits vary by country of residence, and from 70 it passes you to its partner TripAssure rather than insuring you itself.
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