The best health insurance covers what you need - like hospital stays, dental, or pregnancy care - without making you pay for extras you won't use. For example, young singles might prioritise affordable premiums, while families could focus on comprehensive extras and maternity cover. The key is finding a policy that fits your health needs and budget.
At Finder, we've analysed over 30 health funds and hundreds of policies, comparing costs, coverage, and customer satisfaction to identify the best value options. Our picks are based on this research, but always check the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) to ensure the policy works for you.
The top picks were updated by our team of insurance experts after 80+ hours of research across 45+ health funds.
Bronze Hospital Plus $750/$1500 Excess + Basic Extras
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$31.78/week
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$31.78/week
Ends on or before 30 Nov 2025. T&Cs and limits apply.
This policy covers 26 in-hospital treatments - which is significantly more than bronze policies are required to cover at the minimum of 18. The Basic Extras with this policy includes everything you’d expect to find in a core extras policy; cover for optical and general dental.
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Cons
Basic Extras
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$5.19/week
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$5.19/week
Extras is arguably the best health insurance type for someone in their 20s, or even in their 30s. Extras make new glasses and trips to the dentist cheaper, as well as giving you access to physio and other services that are really useful for anyone still active (or, in your 30s, when things start not working well).
HBF Basic Extras was highly commended in the 2025 Finder Awards Core Extras category. That makes it a top 3 core extras product for value for money - but of the 3 policies in that list, it's the one that covers the best range of policies for young folks. Basic Extras includes tons of cover for preventative and general restorative dental, plus optical, physio, ambulance and more.
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Medibank Gold Protect + Growing Family 70
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$85.19/week
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$85.19/week
All gold-tier policies include cover for child birth in a private hospital, but this one packs heaps of perks you won't find elsewhere, including cover for IVF treatments, 24/7 access to a telephone nurse service, and continuity of care, which means you can keep seeing your chosen obstetrician throughout your pregnancy. Medibank also offers a Health Concierge service, and has partnered with Monash Uni researchers to improve research around prenatal healthcare.
All of this is great, but what about the price? Well, Medibank's gold hospital policy took a highly commended in the 2025 Finder Health Insurance Awards for the Gold category, and is the cheapest among Australia's big 6 private health funds. Also, its Growing Family extras product covers prenatal and antenatal care while being great value.
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HCF HOSPITAL BRONZE PLUS $750 EXCESS
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$24.03/week
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$24.03/week
HCF has now won the Finder Award for best value bronze policy for 2 years running. It scored higher than all 100+ bronze plans we assessed. It covers 25 hospital treatments - 7 more than a standard bronze policy - including lung and chest surgery, dental surgery, and podiatric surgery.
The not-for-profit also has a strong track record of giving back to its members. Of the open health funds, it returns the highest percentage of premiums as benefits. In fact, it ranks 3rd overall on that metric, beaten only by Teachers Health and Police Health, both of which have restricted membership.
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ahm health insurance
Whatever you're looking for in an extras policy, you'll probably find it from ahm, and at a decent price. ahm almost swept the 2025 Finder Awards in the extras categories, winning 3 of the 4 different awards on offer. In addition, ahm offers some of the better flexible extras products on the market, which let you choose exactly what you want to cover. So even if there isn't a policy that suits your needs exactly, the choosable policies can help you get there.
Thanks to the range of great value policies, as well as the additional offer of the flexible choosable policies, ahm is an easy top pick for flexible extras. Add to this the fact that ahm has a standing offer to waive 2 and 6 months waiting period on the lifestyle, family and super extras products, and you have one very flexible extras offering.
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HCF Hospital Basic Plus $750 Excess
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$20.60/week
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$20.60/week
Basic hospital cover is often only useful for tax, offering essentially no actual cover. This policy bucks that trend by offering cover for 9 treatments including joint reconstructions, hernia and appendix, gynaecology, emergency ambulance and more. This policy won the 2025 Finder Health Insurance Award for best basic hospital cover, which means it's great value for money as well.
Of course, like all basic policies, it will exempt you from the Medicare levy surcharge (MLS) and Lifetime health cover loading (LHC).
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Silver Plus Standard Hospital $750 Excess
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$30.55/week
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$30.55/week
Silver Hospital cover is a great option for anyone wanting very comprehensive cover, but without going full ball on a gold policy. Maybe you don't need cover for childbirth anymore? A silver policy might be just the ticket.
As far as value goes, RT Health Silver Plus Standard Hospital is the best we found, winning the 2025 Finder Award in the Silver Hospital category. It covers more treatments for less money, and is an open membership, not-for-profit health fund owned by HCF, which took out most of the other hospital awards in 2025. All that to say, it's a great place to start your health insurance comparison journey.
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Qantas Insurance
Qantas Health Insurance is the only health fund to offer Qantas Points, making it our top pick for health funds that offer bonuses for members. Qantas Health Insurance offers both sign up points when you join, as well as one point for every dollar spent on your premium. Plus, Qantas Health Insurance policies - while not the absolute lowest cost on the market - still offer pretty decent value.
Qantas Health Insurance is currently offering new customers up to 120,000 Qantas Points over 6 months when you join an eligible combined policy by 5 February – the more comprehensive your cover, the more points you'll earn. T&Cs apply.
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Medibank Gold Protect + Top Extras 60
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$81.08/week
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$81.08/week
For seniors, gold hospital insurance gives you the peace of mind that every treatment category is included. You don't know what's around the corner, and the last thing you need is to not be covered for a treatment when you need it. With that in mind, Medibank has the cheapest gold policy among Australia's big 6 health funds, a 24/7 telephone nurse service, and a health concierge to give you customised advice before you go in for treatment. That's a tonne of peace of mind for a very reasonable price.
Additionally, we believe Medibank offers some of the most robust extras policies for older Australians, with Top Extras 60 covering you for a huge range of treatments including hearing aids, blood glucose monitors and blood pressure monitors, eye therapy consultations, podiatry and more.
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advanced hospital gold + Lifestyle Extras
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$93.54/week
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$93.54/week
This combo of ahm products offers a great comprehensive coverage when looking specifically at mental health benefits, especially for those that need help sooner rather than later. For hospital cover, psychiatric care is only covered under gold tier hospital policies. This is because psychiatric care can often involve extended hospital stays, which quickly gets very expensive, even more than complex surgery. ahm's gold policy covers this - while it's not the cheapest gold policy on the market, it does include a 24/7 nurse telehealth service and a 24/7 mental health support line, giving you the ability to talk to someone at any time of day.
Additionally, ahm extras products offer great coverage for psychology and counselling services. Most importantly, the lifestyle, family and super extras policies have no waiting period on these services, so you can claim right away. This is a standing offer, and is unique across the industry.
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Finding the best health insurance in Australia comes down to value, coverage, and how well a policy fits your needs. The ideal policy should cover everything you're likely to need, without making you pay for services you won't use. To help you along the way, we look at affordability (i.e. how much different health funds cost for similar policies), benefits (i.e. what a policy covers, particularly if it offers more than the minimum for each tier), and strong customer satisfaction (i.e. by looking at customer satisfaction data, as well as its history of complaints).
There's a lot to consider, and the policy that's right for you is not going to be the same as your neighbour, friend, relative, etc. As such, the policies above are a really good starting point, but they might not be your ending point.
Our sources include the Finder Score, the Finder Awards, as well as data from the Ombudsman and APRA, which are the government departments that keep tabs on the health insurance industry. We also use data from customer reviews that we collect through the Finder Customer Satisfaction Awards.
0:08
Hi! I'm Tim Bennett. I'm an expert in health insurance finder.com.au. Now, there is no "best health insurance", just as there is no "best" way to watch the Star Wars movies. Even though this is the correct way to watch the Star Wars movies.
0:22
For health insurance, you need to work out what is right for you. Which is why your health insurance will be different to mine's, will be different to my mom's. Let's go over the very basics.
0:30
In Australia, you've got Medicare, the public scheme, and then you've got private health insurance, and it comes in two flavors: Hospital and Extras.
Hospital covers you for treatment in a private hospital and will help you pay the cost of surgery. This could include back surgery, joint reconstructions, adenoid removals, child birth, as well as dozens of other common treatments and some uncommon ones as well, to be fair.
0:54
When finding the best hospital coverage for you, you're going to need something that covers all of your needs both now and in the future. Cover is arranged into four different tiers to make things easier: Basic, Bronze, Silver and Gold.
1:07
it's a bit like the insurance Olympics, although I guess technically, you wouldn't want to compete if it's your health anyway. It's a bad analogy. Point is, the higher your coverage, the more you'll have to pay in premiums and only you can make that choice.
1:20
Now, let's talk about extras. Now extras covers you for things that Medicare doesn't outside of a hospital. This can include dental, physio and optical. Yeah, I'm going to need to put these back on.
1:33
Now an extras policy will have maximum annual limits that you can claim for. For example, you might have an extras policy that gives you $200 to spend on optical, $300 to spend on general dental, and then $500 to spend combined on physio and chiro, which gives you a total benefit of $1,000 a year.
1:54
Ideally, you want to have enough of an annual benefit limit across all of the extras that you're likely to claim to pay back the amount that you pay in premiums. Now I should say the point of insurance is not to make money on Extras or Hospital, certainly. The point is peace of mind so even if it's going to cost you every year and you're not going to claim back everything, it's about making sure that your health is looked after. We only get one chance on this big blue ball hurdling through the galaxy.
2:21
So there are easy ways to compare health insurance and find the best health insurance for you and that way is finder.com.au. That kind of rhyme, didn't it? Yeah, it was pretty good.
2:31
Head to finder.com.au and we will guide you through the process. There's a tool that asks you a couple of questions that will get rid of all of the policies that don't make sense for you, so you can just focus on the best policies that will fit your specific needs. And remember, your specific needs will change over time and you should make it a habit of comparing health insurance at least once a year. Tax time is a really good time that a lot of people use to remind them.
2:57
Now remember this is not financial advice. It's just general information that, look, I think is pretty useful but when you're comparing health insurance policies, you need to read the PDS, the product disclosure statement, and figure out what's best for you.
3:09
That is it for today. There's a lot more to learn on health insurance. And if you'd like to learn more, head to finder.com.au/health-insurance. But this video should give you everything you need to get started comparing today.
While it's hard to label any single company as the 'best', there are a few things to keep an eye out for that can help you understand each insurer's strengths. We've used data from the government's latest State of the Health Funds report to break down the top 5 for benefits paid, hospital-related charges covered and no-gap medical services.
We only looked at open membership funds – these are ones available to all Australians. If you're entitled to join a restricted membership fund though, it's worth considering. They sometimes perform better than open funds.
This is the percentage of total contributions the insurer received that it returned to contributors in benefits.
The is the proportion of private hospital charges covered on average.
This is the the proportion of medical services for which a gap is not payable by the patient.
These are the hospital insurance policies that came out on top in the 2025 Finder Awards. Each award category is based on the government's hospital tiers for gold, silver, bronze and basic policies.
Below are the results of the Finder 2024 health insurance Customer Satisfaction awards. These tell us which health funds Aussies think is the greatest for customer services and overall experience. We got responses from over 400 Australians to get these results. Funds without a score didn't get enough reviews for us to be confident of the results.
| Brand | Overall satisfaction | Trustworthy/reliable |
|---|---|---|
 | ★★★★★ 4.46 | 100% |
 | ★★★★★ 4.36 | 100% |
 | ★★★★★ 4.35 | 97% |
 | ★★★★★ 4.18 | 94% |
 | ★★★★★ 4.14 | 94% |
"If you think you might need an elective procedure such as a knee replacement or cataract operation in the next few years, health insurance is worthwhile as public hospital waiting lists can be very long."
The Medicare Safety Net provides extra financial support to people who incur high out-of-pocket medical costs. Learn more.
AIA health insurance offers a competitive range of health insurance packages, each offering membership to the unique AIA Vitality health and wellness program.
Single parent health insurance is a cost-effective way for you to protect yourself and every one of your dependants.
Read our guide to health insurance and health funds specific to residents of the Northern Territory.
Read our guide to health insurance for people living in South Australia.
Guide to finding health insurance for those living in Tasmania.
If you’re looking for private health insurance in Victoria, compare the most popular health funds in your state and how much it costs to take out cover.
Start your search today to find a Queensland health fund that offers value for money and the cover you need.
Guide to travel insurance for residents of New South Wales.
Check out our list of the most popular health funds in WA and see how private health cover costs in WA compare with the rest of the country.
I may need cataract surgery and am wondering what results there are for
for the best cover for this procedure.
Also if there is a bulk billing available for seniors .
Hi Robert, Check out our guide to cataract surgery costs and cover for information on policies that will cover this. Generally this does require more expensive policies. Cataract surgery is covered under Medicare, but the waiting lists can be longer and you may still have to pay some specialist fees.
Could you please tell me which health fund covers dependents at no extras cost. Adult dependents who are not studying, living with parents and not working or in a de-facto relationship and between the age of 21-25?
Hi Dean,
Typically, there’s no extra cost for dependents – up to the policy’s stated maximum age (which is 31). There’s no age limit for any dependents with a disability.
Feel free to compare your health insurance options in the table above. Be sure to read through the terms and conditions of your chosen insurer with care before you buy.
Regards,
James
Which private health insurance companies offer the best reimbursement of the cost of hearing aids?
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your question.
The best insurance company for you would be the one that best meets your needs, preference, and budget.
If you would like to review the cover limits of Australian funds for hearing aids please head over to our health insurance for hearing aids article.
Open that link and you will find a list of health insurance brands that offer hearing aids cover. Check our comparison table to get an overview of their offer. Once you’re done comparing, you can then select the “Go to site” button to be redirected to your chosen provider’s official website.
While looking for insurers, please make sure you read the terms and conditions of the policy to learn more and know if it is the right policy for you or not.
I hope this helps. Should you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach us out again.
Have a wonderful day!
Cheers,
Zubair