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You’ve probably spent a lot of time on Facebook groups, watching YouTube videos, forums or even asking ChatGPT about moving to France, then you probably came across the same question: How much did everyone pay for their French visa health insurance?
One person paid €600 for the year, while somebody else was quoted €2,500. Another applicant approaching retirement age received a quote closer to €9,000 and started to wonder whether they were being ripped off.
There is no official French government tariff for long-stay visitor health insurance, so none of those figures is the “correct” price, but if two policies differ by several thousand euros, there is a good chance they are not doing the same job.
At FAB French Insurance, a quote that is well under €1,000 a year for an adult (unless they are particularly young) would immediately make us look more closely at the contract. In our experience, prices at that level are very often associated with travel insurance, restricted medical benefits or exclusions rather than broad private medical insurance designed for somebody becoming resident in France.
That doesn’t mean the policy will automatically be rejected by the consulate, but you need to understand what you are actually buying and how much of your visa application depends on the authorities accepting a relatively weak interpretation of the insurance requirement.
So, why can two quotes for seemingly the same French visa insurance be thousands of euros apart, and what should you actually be looking for? Let’s get into it.
What Health Insurance Does France Actually Require for a Long-Stay Visitor Visa?
For the standard visitor residence route, Article L426-20 of the CESEDA requires a visitor to have health insurance covering the duration of their stay, with sufficient resources and confirm they do plan to work while living in France.
France doesn’t require everyone to buy the same type of insurance policy or pay a set price.
Other CESEDA provisions relating to different residence rights are nevertheless useful for understanding what French law regards as meaningful health protection. For example, Article R233-1 refers to insurance that covers a broad range of healthcare, including visits to GPs and specialists, medication, dental treatment, medical tests, hospital stays and surgery.
These rules don’t give us an exact checklist that every VLS-TS visitor insurance policy has to follow, but they do give us a good idea of the principle behind the requirement. France wants people moving here to have proper health cover in place, rather than simply an insurance certificate that ticks a box on their visa application.
Why Is a Visa Insurance Quote Under €1,000 Worth Checking Very Carefully?
Because a full year of broad private medical insurance usually costs more than a few hundred euros once you move beyond the youngest age groups. Very cheap policies are often travel insurance designed for someone who normally lives elsewhere and is temporarily abroad. They may focus on emergencies and hospital treatment while restricting routine healthcare, existing medical conditions, prescriptions or longer-term treatment.
Also, some travel policies come with restrictions on where you can live or how long you can stay abroad. That can become a problem when you’re not just visiting France anymore, but actually moving here and making France your home.
So if you’ve been quoted €600 for the year, it’s worth taking a closer look at the policy to make sure it’s actually designed for someone moving to and living in France, rather than simply visiting.
Is Travel Insurance Automatically Rejected for a French Long-Stay Visa?
No, and this is exactly why online discussions become confusing. People regularly report obtaining a visa with inexpensive travel insurance. That can happen, but just because a policy worked for someone else doesn’t mean it’s one you should automatically rely on for your own visa application.
Visa files are individual and can receive different levels of scrutiny. At Fab, our concern is not whether a weaker policy has managed to pass previously. It is what happens if somebody examines yours closely.
Why Does FAB Talk About Building a “Bullet-Proof” Visa Application?
Because the insurance certificate is only one part of your dossier. A strong application normally tells a coherent story: clear finances, long-term accommodation, appropriate insurance and documents that make sense together.
Other files contain several potential question marks.
An Airbnb, for example, may be perfectly reasonable when you first arrive, but it is still temporary accommodation. Add a cheap foreign travel policy, a monthly payment and several overseas providers, and individually harmless choices can begin to make the overall file look less established.
We encourage our clients to ask one simple question: How French does my dossier look?
It’s not about trying to make yourself look French. It’s about showing that you’ve properly prepared for your move and that the different parts of your application make sense together. Where we can, we want to add reassuring elements to the dossier rather than give the consulate more reasons to ask questions.
Why Can the Same Insurance Be Accepted for One Applicant and Questioned for Another?
The problem with comparing your visa application to someone else’s is that you rarely know what the rest of their dossier looked like.
They may have already owned a home in France, had very straightforward finances or spent years travelling back and forth to France. They may have been married to a French or EU citizen, or worked with a French law firm or adviser who helped them put together a particularly strong application. They may even have applied through a different consulate, where the documents requested or the level of scrutiny was different.
So yes, their €600 insurance may have been accepted, but perhaps everything else in their application was very strong.
That’s why we wouldn’t recommend choosing your insurance simply because someone in a Facebook group used the same policy and got their visa. It’s worth remembering that their situation is probably not the same as yours.
Can Visa Applications Become More Strictly Scrutinised?
Yes. The rules themselves don’t necessarily have to change for the way they’re applied to become stricter. We’ve seen periods where consulates suddenly start asking for documents or looking much more closely at things that previously weren’t questioned as much.
That’s why we don’t want our clients relying on the hope that something will be accepted because it worked for someone else. If an insurance policy only works when nobody looks at it too closely, it’s not one we feel comfortable recommending.
Why Can a Large Deductible Make Visa Insurance Riskier?
There isn’t an official rule that says a €100 deductible is fine but a €501 deductible isn’t. In practice, the higher the deductible, the more of your healthcare costs you would have to pay yourself before the insurance kicks in, and that can raise questions when the whole point of the insurance requirement is to show that you have a proper health cover in France.
From what we’ve seen with visa applications, small deductibles of around €50 to €150 tend to cause fewer issues, although nothing is guaranteed. Once you get above €500, we start to see significantly more problems and, for us, it simply isn’t worth taking that risk with a client’s visa application.
That’s why at FAB, we keep things simple: the visa health insurance policies we offer have no deductible.
Could you get a visa with a policy that has an excess? Absolutely. But when someone is relying on our advice for a move they may have spent years planning, “it will probably be fine” isn’t good enough for us.
Why Does Paying Monthly for Visa Insurance Create Another Potential Weakness?
Paying for insurance monthly is completely normal, but for a visa application there is one important thing to keep in mind: the CESEDA says you need insurance covering the full duration of your stay.
So, if you’re applying for a one-year visa, you want to be able to clearly show that you’re insured for that full year. An annual policy paid in monthly instalments may still give you 12 months of cover, but if the consulate asks for proof of payment as well as the insurance certificate (and they sometimes do), things can become a little less straightforward.
We’ve seen this happen ourselves, particularly during periods of political uncertainty. A good example was in 2021, when Australia cancelled its major submarine contract with France and relations between the two countries became very tense. The French insurance rules didn’t officially change, but in the months after the incident, we noticed Australian visa applications being looked at much more closely. We saw more problems with applications and much more scrutiny around insurance, including whether applicants could prove they had actually secured cover for the full length of their stay.
The law doesn’t necessarily have to change for the way it’s applied to become stricter, particularly when the geopolitical situation is unsettled.
That’s why we ask clients to pay for their visa insurance annually rather than monthly. If the consulate asks for proof of payment, there is no ambiguity: you can show that your insurance has been paid for and secured for the full period of your stay.
What Does Broad Private Medical Insurance Cover That Travel Insurance May Not?
Depending on the policy, resident private medical insurance may cover a much broader range of healthcare, including:
➡️ outpatient and specialist consultations
➡️ pharmacy and diagnostic testing
➡️ hospitalisation and surgery
➡️ rehabilitation and sometimes dental or other ongoing treatment.
French law doesn’t say that every visitor insurance policy has to cover every possible medical expense at 100%. But this is exactly why it can be misleading to compare a €600 travel insurance policy with a private medical policy costing several thousand euros and assume the difference is simply down to price.
You may actually be looking at two very different types of insurance, offering very different levels of cover.
Why Can Pre-Existing Conditions Make Some Policies Much More Expensive?
Your age and health can have a big impact on the price you’re quoted for your insurance. Two people, both aged 68, can still have very different insurance needs. One might be in good health and take no regular medication, while the other may need ongoing treatment for diabetes or a heart condition and want their existing prescriptions covered too.
Some insurers simply exclude pre-existing conditions, while others will cover them but charge more to do so.
So when one quote is significantly cheaper than another, it’s worth looking at what’s actually covered. Sometimes the cheaper policy costs less because it excludes the very healthcare you’re most likely to need.
Why Does FAB Prefer French Insurance for Someone Moving to France?
There’s also the question of what happens if something goes wrong. When you work with a French-regulated broker and a policy designed for the French market, you’re dealing with a company that operates within the French system. That means you have access to French complaints and mediation procedures if you ever need them.
That doesn’t mean an insurer based outside France is automatically a bad choice. Plenty of foreign and EU insurers operate perfectly legally. But if there is ever a dispute, dealing with a company in another country can make things more complicated, particularly when different regulators and legal systems are involved.
If you’re moving to France and there’s a suitable French option available, we think there’s a real benefit to choosing professionals who already understand the French insurance and healthcare system you’re moving into. And from a visa point of view, it’s also one more part of your dossier that fits naturally with your move to France.
What Does “Visa Compliant” Really Mean?
The reality is that no broker can control whether a French consulate or prefecture approves your application. What we can do is give you good advice and make sure the insurance part of your application is as strong and straightforward as possible.
For us, that means recommending insurance designed for someone who is actually moving to France, covering the full period required, with no deductible and clear proof that the policy has been paid for annually. We prefer to remove potential question marks from your application than hope they won’t be noticed.
We take that approach because there’s most of the time a lot more riding on a visa application than the cost of the insurance. You may have already sold your home, booked your accommodation, organised removals and spent months, or even years, planning your move to France.
Of course, nobody can promise that the French authorities will approve your visa. But we’re confident enough in the policies we recommend and the advice we give that our visa insurance comes with a 100% money-back guarantee, subject to the terms of the offer, if your visa application is unsuccessful.
For us, the aim is simple: give the consulate as few reasons as possible to question the insurance part of your application.
Why Does FAB Look Beyond the Cheapest Visa Certificate?
At the end of the day, we’re not trying to find the cheapest policy that might get through a visa application.
Could a cheap travel insurance policy be accepted? Yes.
Could a policy with a deductible be accepted? Yes.
Could you pay monthly and still get your VLS-TS? Absolutely.
But when you’ve spent months or even years planning a move to France, is saving a few hundred euros on your insurance really worth adding another potential question mark to your application?
This isn’t about winning the Facebook group competition for who found the cheapest visa insurance. It’s about putting together a strong application and having insurance you can actually rely on once the visa is approved and you’re living in France.
About FAB French Insurance
FAB French Insurance is a France-based insurance broker specialising in international residents and people planning a move to France. We help clients understand visa health insurance, private medical cover, mutuelles, home insurance and car insurance, with English-speaking support throughout their relocation.
Planning your move to France? Speak to FAB French Insurance about putting the right health cover in place before your visa application.
This article provides general information rather than legal advice and does not replace the individual supporting-document list generated through France-Visas. Visa decisions are made by the competent French authorities, and requirements and administrative practice can vary according to nationality, place of application, visa category and individual circumstances.
