Best home insurance companies 2026

Begin by comparing prices from trusted comparison websites, including Compare the Market, Confused.com, GoCompare, and MoneySuperMarket. Don’t overlook insurers such as Direct Line and NFU Mutual, which may offer competitive rates. 

Start getting quotes at least a month before your policy renewal date, allowing sufficient time for negotiation. While cashback sites like Quidco and TopCashback can provide additional savings, ensure you’re not compromising essential coverage for a cash reward.

Review your coverage to ensure it aligns with your actual needs, whether it’s for building insurance, contents insurance, or a combined policy. Accurately assess the rebuild value of your property and the value of your contents to avoid overpayment. Set a reasonable excess level that balances affordability with potential claims costs. If feasible, select annual payments over monthly instalments to avoid high-interest charges.

Enhancing your home’s security can also contribute to reduced insurance premiums. Consider installing high-quality locks and burglar alarms or investing in smart security systems to minimise risk in the eyes of insurers. 

Lastly, don’t hesitate to negotiate with your current insurer using competitive quotes as leverage, as haggling could result in big savings on your premium.

Find out more by reading our full guide on how to find cheap home insurance.

In the UK, home insurance typically covers the cost of repairing damage to the structure of your property (buildings insurance) and contents within the home (contents insurance). 

This could include protection against events such as fire, theft, and damage. Liability coverage, alternative accommodation, and optional add-ons for personal possessions and legal expenses may also be included in comprehensive policies.

Check out our guides on best buildings insurance and best contents insurance for more detailed information.

There are two main types of home insurance – buildings insurance and contents insurance. As their names suggest, buildings insurance covers your home’s physical structure, and contents insurance covers your possessions and items within your home. 

Buildings insurance covers your windows, walls and roof, as well as permanent fixtures in your home such as fitted kitchens and bathrooms. Your policy will protect you against damage caused by fire, flood, fallen trees, vandalism, malicious damage, subsidence and vehicle or aircraft collisions. 

Contents insurance covers the cost of replacing items in your home if they’re destroyed, damaged or stolen. Insurers tend to consider your ‘contents’ as items that you would take with you if you moved home. This can include furniture, kitchenware, entertainment, soft furnishings, and jewellery, among other things. 

It is recommended that you purchase contents and buildings insurance together but you can buy them individually. This is more popular for renters or people who pay service charges as they don’t need to have a buildings insurance policy in place. 

No, unlike car insurance, home insurance is not a legal requirement. You do not have to have a home insurance policy in order to own or rent a home in the UK. 

That said, most mortgage lenders will require you to hold buildings insurance.

However, if you choose to skip taking out a home insurance policy you are putting your home – both the building and the contents – at risk. If something were to happen to your home such as subsidence or a break in, you would have to pay for the repairs and loss of possessions in full. 

According to the Financial Conduct Authority, in 2025, 70% of claims on combined home insurance policies were accepted – with the average claim covering £7,024 worth of damage. Without home insurance cover, you would be left to pay that figure without any financial support. 

The chances are, your home is the most expensive thing you will ever buy. So making sure it is protected and cared for will be worth it in the long run. 

And while prices of home insurance appear to be creeping up at the moment, your policy doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. 

Paying annually and shopping around for a competitive home insurance quote are a few ways to help keep your costs down and help you find cheap home insurance. 

Home insurance typically covers damage caused by electrical faults – but usually only if this is the result of sudden damage by an external force. They usually won’t cover issues related to wear-and-tear and faulty workmanship. Some policies offer extras like home emergency cover, which is designed to provide rapid assistance in urgent situations, separate from regular home insurance.

Home emergency cover can be useful for emergencies ranging from plumbing issues to problems with pests or vermin and electrical faults. The cover usually costs around £50 a year. 

If your home experiences a blown consumer unit or loss of power due to an electrical failure, you could potentially claim on your home emergency cover to address the problem promptly. However, home emergency cover is unlikely to cover:

• Temporary electrical wiring
• Wiring outside your home
• The electrical supply to your outbuildings and garages.

Find out more: Home insurance: add-ons, fees and charges explained.

To ensure you have the right cover, it’s worth having a precise idea of how much you need to insure.

Find out the rebuild price of your property (this will be lower than the value). The Association of British Insurers provides a free-to-use calculator to help you estimate this.

The same goes for the combined cost of your contents. Our contents calculator can help you tally up the value of your possessions.

Yes you can, and it can be very effective.

Negotiating a cheaper insurance price isn’t a dark art – it can be as simple as calling your insurer and asking if they can do better than the renewal offer.

If you’ve shopped around, you’ll be able to give examples of deals you’ve seen elsewhere.

New rules protecting renewing customers from being charged more than if they were new don’t stop your insurer offering you a cheaper price if you haggle.

Don’t just let your home insurance roll over each year.

Insurers used to be able to charge you more if you were renewing with them than they would if you were new. They can’t do this anymore, but you still stand to lose out by not checking if you’re being offered a good deal.

Whether you’re thinking about switching or want to stay put, assume that the figure posted out to you in your renewal letter is up for debate.

Take 10 minutes to run a quote on a comparison site. This will give you an indication of what your insurer’s rivals are prepared to offer.

In our latest Customer Satisfaction survey, Bank of Scotland and NFU Mutual jointly achieved the highest Customer Score of 86%. You can find out how this compared with the results of other providers in our tables above. 

Not all of us live in ‘typical’ circumstances or conventional properties. If your home has a thatched roof, a history of subsidence or is of unusual construction, you may need to stray off the beaten track to find reasonably priced cover.

There are insurers and brokers that specialise in particular types of risk, so it’s worth including them in your search. The British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) has a ‘Find Insurance’ tool and a helpline (0370 950 1790) for this purpose.

Yes. However you may find fewer insurers that are willing to cover you for a listed building, due to the often less typical materials used in a listed building and the potentially higher cost of claims. If you own a listed building and struggle to get affordable home insurance cover from mainstream suppliers or through a price comparison site, a specialist insurance broker may be able to help. 

Use the ‘find insurance’ service offered by British Insurance Brokers’ Association, or call 0370 950 1790.

Which? Money members can also contact the Which? Money guidance team for advice on finding cover.

If your home is going to be empty for more than 30 consecutive days, you’ll likely need a specialist unoccupied home insurance policy. 

Standard home insurance usually covers your property all year round, but it typically requires that your house isn’t left unoccupied for longer than 30 days. 

Some policies may give more time, sometimes up to 60 days, but it varies. 

Unoccupied property insurance tends to be more expensive than regular home insurance because insurance companies see an empty house as a bigger risk.

If you’re a landlord and your property is empty between tenants, landlord insurance might cover it for up to three months. But, depending on your insurer, you might need to add extra coverage for empty properties. It’s a good idea to check with your insurer to make sure you’re covered.

Probably – but the details of what is covered are likely to depend on your policy. 

Most buildings policies generally cover ‘permanent’ features of a garden (such as walls, patios, fitted sheds). 

Contents insurance policies cover anything moveable in a property. 

Some, but not all, contents policies extend this to the contents of your garden, such as garden furniture or potted plants. Some items (such as tools) may need to be in a locked shed to be covered.

If it’s important for you to have cover for the contents of your garden, check the details of a policy before you purchase. 

Granny flats can be a bit of a grey area for home insurance. Whether a granny flat can be covered under your main home insurance policy may depend on a number of factors, including whether it’s attached to the main building or a standalone building, and whether it’s self-contained (with its own kitchen and bathroom). 

Standalone, self-contained buildings are more likely to need their own home insurance policy, even if a relative lives there. 

If in any doubt based on the policy small print, we’d recommend getting in touch with the insurer to check whether a granny flat is included in your main policy or whether it needs its own home insurance. 

Renters and leaseholders do not usually need to arrange buildings insurance, as responsibility for this usually rests with the landlord (for renters) or the freeholder (for leaseholders). For leasehold flats, the freeholder or management company typically arranges buildings insurance for all flats in a building, and covers the cost through service charges. 

It’s worth checking the terms of your rental agreement or lease to make sure that your property is covered by building insurance. For leaseholders, appropriate buildings insurance is likely to be a condition of your mortgage. 

However, both renters and leaseholders are usually responsible for arranging contents insurance for their belongings. 

If you are renting a furnished flat, the landlord’s furniture is likely to be covered by their own policy, but anything else won’t be. Contents insurance isn’t a legal requirement, but if you’re considering doing without, it’s worth totting up the likely cost of having to replace all your belongings if they were damaged or destroyed in a fire or flood.