Bupa vs Vitality health insurance: What are the main differences in 2025?

Both Bupa and Vitality reward customers who don’t claim, but they go about it in very different ways.

Bupa By You uses a traditional no claims discount (NCD). Each person on the policy has their own discount, starting at level 12 of 14 (65% off). If you don’t claim, you move up the scale and receive a bigger discount at renewal, up to a maximum of 70%. This doesn’t usually mean your overall premium goes down, since medical inflation and age push costs up, but the larger discount can help soften the increase.

Vitality Personal Healthcare, on the other hand, works on what they call the ABC model: Age, Base inflation, and Claims. The “Claims” element is linked to your Vitality Status (Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum), which reflects how much you engage with their wellbeing programme. The more active and engaged you are, the higher your status - and the better your discount at renewal.

How Bupa and Vitality renewal approaches differ in practice

On an individual level, it’s hard to say which approach is “better.” It often comes down to whether you’d actively participate in Vitality’s programme or prefer the simplicity of Bupa’s NCD.

Where Bupa tends to have the edge is when you add more people to the plan:

• Bupa’s NCD is individual. One person’s claim only affects their own discount, not anyone else’s.
• Vitality’s system is group-based. The claims of each person affect the overall renewal price for all members on the policy.

When you add a second adult to a Vitality plan, the claim thresholds that trigger price changes do increase, but the claims activity of both adults still affects the overall cost. You could see this as either a positive or a negative, but let’s move on to what happens when there are more than two people on the plan.

Three or more people on a Vitality plan introduces a new risk

When you have three or more people on a Vitality Personal Healthcare plan, the claims thresholds that affect your discount don’t change. They stay at the same level as they would be for two adults. This means you now have more people, and therefore a higher chance of claiming, but no increase in the threshold that triggers changes to your discount.

Example of how Bupa and Vitality renewal models can affect families

A couple in their fifties with a 13-year-old child have a Vitality Personal Healthcare plan. The adults’ cover makes up the bulk of the annual premium, at least 85%, maybe more. If the child claims, it doesn’t just affect their share; it changes the discount for everyone, including the more expensive adults who haven’t claimed. With Bupa, that same claim would only reduce the child’s NCD, barely moving the needle on the overall premium.

What to remember about Bupa’s and Vitality’s approach to claims and renewals

Vitality’s “group” approach can leave couples and especially families more exposed to sharp increases in renewal premiums. By contrast, Bupa compartmentalises each member, with premiums calculated individually - reducing the risk of one person’s claims driving up costs for everyone named on the policy.

Both Bupa and Vitality offer outpatient cover, but the way they structure limits and allowances is very different. With Bupa, outpatient cover is only available if you choose its Comprehensive plan, while with Vitality you can add it as an optional extra.

Bupa gives you a choice of limits - No limit, £1,000, £750 or £500 per person, per year. 

Vitality offers a wider range - Unlimited, £1,500, £1,250, £1,000, £750 or £500. It also lets you separate consultations from diagnostic tests, with the option to add full cover for outpatient diagnostics alongside your chosen limit.

At first glance, the two insurers’ options may look similar, but once you scratch beneath the surface, the way allowances work and are applied to different treatments varies quite dramatically.

The impact of Bupa’s and Vitality’s approaches to outpatient benefits

The most important difference is how much each insurer expects your outpatient allowance to cover. With Bupa, once you apply an outpatient limit, a wide range of treatment types draw from it - consultations, diagnostic tests, physiotherapy, mental health and complementary therapies. 

Vitality takes a more flexible approach. Most treatment types either have their own separate options, or don’t draw on your outpatient allowance at all. For example, physiotherapy is covered in full within Vitality's network, while mental health and complementary therapies are available as standalone add-ons. You also have the option to upgrade to full cover for outpatient diagnostic tests, further reducing the strain on your outpatient allowance.

In practice, this means that Vitality's allowance could go much further than Bupa’s. 

What to remember about Bupa’s and Vitality’s outpatient benefits

Bupa’s outpatient cover is straightforward and includes more treatment types as standard. But if you set a limit, it has to work harder because so many treatments draw from it. Vitality gives you more flexibility, with fewer things chipping away at the allowance - though you’ll need to add options to match Bupa’s breadth of cover.

Bupa and Vitality differ significantly in their mental health cover options. Both include some cover within their base products, with the option to extend it. But how they structure those options and the impact on members is quite different.

Bupa includes mental health cover as standard on both its Treatment and Care and Comprehensive plans. The key difference is that Comprehensive includes outpatient mental health treatment, while Treatment and Care does not. Bupa also offers a range of mental health support services, such as a family mental health helpline.

Vitality, by contrast, includes up to eight self-referred Talking Therapy sessions for all members. These cover therapies like CBT or counselling, arranged through Vitality’s mental health panel. Members can then add Mental Health Cover for access to broader treatment. In addition, Vitality provides digital resources such as a 12-month subscription to the mindfulness app Headspace.

At a headline level, both insurers’ resources and support services look strong, but there are key differences to be aware of.

Bupa covers more mental health conditions, and for longer

Bupa stands out by covering more mental health conditions than most insurers, including alcohol and substance misuse. It also promises not to withdraw cover when conditions require long-term treatment. This commitment helps protect members from suddenly losing cover when they may need it most.

Vitality, in line with most of the market, takes a stricter approach. Its terms allow mental health conditions requiring long-term treatment to be reclassified as chronic, at which point cover is withdrawn. Vitality doesn’t specify exactly when this might happen, leaving members uncertain until the decision is made. If cover is withdrawn, the member would either have to self-fund treatment or rely on the NHS, and no other insurer would cover the condition as it would be classed as pre-existing.

Vitality provides talking therapies available to all after three months

Vitality includes eight talking therapy sessions per person each year as part of its Core Cover, and this applies to children on the plan too. You don’t need a GP referral - sessions can be arranged directly through the Vitality GP app or Care Hub with one of their panel therapists.

Importantly, once you’ve been a member for three months, most exclusions and pre-existing conditions don’t apply to these sessions. The only caveat is that treatment must be helping to improve the condition, not just control symptoms.

What to remember about Bupa’s and Vitality’s mental health cover

Bupa provides broader protection, covering more conditions and promising not to withdraw cover for long-term mental health needs, alongside cover for young people too. Vitality offers easier access to short-term support, such as eight self-referred Talking Therapy sessions and digital tools, but excludes more conditions and risks withdrawing cover over time.

When you get a health insurance policy, it’ll usually come with cash benefits, which are best described as cashback for specific treatments or healthcare services.

An NHS cash benefit is one of those, which will mean if you decide to use the NHS for treatment that you could have claimed and gone private for, your insurer will pay you a set amount of money. Think of it like a bonus for not claiming, which has the added advantage of not affecting your renewal premium either. 

While the principle of what Bupa and Vitality offer is the same, the approach they take with NHS cash benefits is quite different.

Vitality pays more for general NHS treatment, including day-patient treatments

Vitality pays substantially more for general NHS treatment that would otherwise be covered by your policy: £250 per night for inpatient care (£2,000 limit), and £125 a day for day-patient treatment (£500 limit). Bupa, by contrast, pays £50 per night (£1,750 limit) for inpatient stays and nothing for day-patient treatment. In practice, this means that if you need shorter-term hospital care, perhaps just a few days or even a single day, you’ll receive more from Vitality than Bupa.

Vitality limits NHS cancer cash to £10,000, Bupa doesn’t state a limit

Vitality sets a clear £10,000 per year cap on NHS cancer cash benefits. Bupa’s terms are less explicit, with payments tied to the specifics of your plan and the length of treatment. It may be that Bupa does apply a limit, but equally, it could extend further and, in some cases, pay more overall. If this is important to you, it’s worth checking your policy documents, speaking directly to Bupa, or consulting a broker for clarity.

What to remember about NHS cash benefits

Using your NHS cash benefit is a good way to avoid renewal premium increases, while also getting some extra money in your back pocket while you’re undergoing treatment.

Vitality offers better short-term general cash benefits, but as Bupa doesn’t explicitly state a limit to its cancer cash benefit, it could be that you’d get more from Bupa in the longer term for NHS cancer treatment.

A significant benefit of Vitality Personal Healthcare is that all members, regardless of whether they have outpatient cover, get up to six self-referred physiotherapy sessions each policy year. These are only available within Vitality's network of providers, but still, for those who are active and occasionally pick up a knock, it’s a great inclusion. 

Vitality includes six self-referred physiotherapy sessions within its core product for each member on the policy. The only stipulation is that those sessions take place within its network of providers. If you want additional cover, then simply adding any amount of outpatient cover to your plan unlocks unlimited physiotherapy appointments, a remarkably generous benefit. 

The only consideration you may have is how close the nearest physio within Vitality’s network is to you. For physiotherapy outside of its network, you’ll need outpatient cover, and Vitality limits the amount they’ll pay to just £35 per session, which is relatively modest based on research we’ve done. 

With Bupa on the other hand, to see a physiotherapist as an outpatient, bar some you might receive after hospital treatment, you’ll need some outpatient cover. If you opt to include an outpatient limit, outpatient physio fees will count towards it.

Bupa and Vitality have different rules around who can join their policies and how dependants are treated, so if you have a family, this section is important for you.

Vitality’s claims thresholds don’t grow with your family

With Vitality, claims thresholds that impact renewal premiums stay the same once you go above two people, so you’re effectively loading additional risk of premium rises for everyone on the plan as you add more people. The larger your family, the further those thresholds need to go.

Bupa is more family-friendly in this respect: each person has their own no-claims discount, a child’s claims don’t affect an adult’s premium, you get a 10% family discount, and you need only pay for your eldest child.

Over 79? You can’t join Vitality

Vitality won’t accept new members over 79 and limits children to joining before 25. Bupa has no upper age limit and will allow dependents of any age to join, making it more inclusive for older adults and families with grown-up children.

Vitality’s unique benefits for children

Although Vitality’s pricing model may potentially deter some families, it actually has some very nice child focused benefits that Bupa doesn’t. It pays a £100 childbirth/adoption cash benefit, adds newborns on a Medical History Disregarded basis (if the parent has been covered for 10 months), and uniquely covers some corrective surgeries for young people, such as ear reshaping or removing port wine birthmarks from the face, with a 25% co-payment. Parents can use the Vitality GP app to book appointments for their child from the age of one.

Bupa has several family-focused benefits to offer, too

Bupa, on the other hand, covers parent accommodation for hospitalised children up to age 17 (versus 14 with Vitality), and its Family Mental HealthLine is available to parents or carers even if the child isn’t on the policy. Bupa also covers mental health symptoms (like anxiety or depression) linked to otherwise excluded conditions such as ADHD or autism - something Vitality excludes.

What to remember about Bupa’s and Vitality’s eligibility and family benefits

Bupa is more flexible overall, with no age caps and family-friendly pricing that protects adults from a child’s claims, plus extended mental health and strong parental support. Vitality is stricter on age but offers several unique benefits that Bupa doesn’t.