Direct Line pet insurance review

Lifetime policies

These pay out for ongoing issues your pet may have throughout its lifetime. There are two main types:

• Annual cover has a maximum overall limit that includes all conditions your pet may experience, which resets each year. With some policies, there may also be a lower maximum amount you can claim per year for any single condition.
• Per condition per year has a maximum limit for each condition you'd need to claim for, which resets each year.

Non-lifetime policies

These policies exclude certain conditions after you hit a claims limit.

• Per condition or ‘max benefit’ pays a limited amount for each condition and the condition is excluded once the limit has been reached.
• Time-limit per condition has both a condition limit and a time limit of 12 months after you first claim for that condition before it is excluded.

Accident only

Accident only policies pay out a fixed amount for each accidental injury to help pay for your pet’s treatment. It’s the cheapest type of pet insurance cover but excludes illnesses entirely.

We analyse and rate 31 elements of cat insurance policies and 34 elements of dog insurance policies – plus how much each pays in vet fees – to come up with the overall policy score.

Different policy elements are enhanced or reduced within the policy score, to reflect the relative importance of each. 

For example, the amount a policy pays for vet fees and how this money is made available counts for more in the score than the amount provided for holiday cancellation.

We’ve awarded Which? Best Buy status to some lifetime policies that have high policy scores, meet minimum criteria for the amounts they’ll pay out in vet fees each year, and that provide dental cover for both accidents and illnesses. 

We haven’t been able to evaluate all insurers offering Best Buy policies on their levels of customer service.

You can find out more about how Best Buys are selected in our guide to the best pet insurance.