Gold Plan review: 80,000 € of Schengen hospital coverage for exactly 20% more than Silver

The Neat Gold Plan is the upper of two Schengen visa insurance tiers. It pays emergency hospital costs abroad up to 80,000 € per person per year, arranges repatriation at actual costs, and refunds your premium if the consulate refuses your visa. It costs exactly 20% more than the Silver tier, at every trip length.

We read both binding documents for this contract, the insurance product information document and the 25 pages of general conditions, and they are clear about what separates the two tiers. The guarantee table calls them Formula 1 and Formula 2. Formula 1 is Silver. Formula 2 is Gold. Two lines in that table change between them and no others: the emergency hospital ceiling moves from 30,000 € to 80,000 €, and the visa-refusal refund goes from not covered to covered at actual costs. Everything else, the dental cap, the legal assistance advances, the repatriation, the funeral costs, is written once for both.

We score it 3.4 out of 5. It earns its points for being the only plan on our Schengen shelf that carries more than the legal minimum of medical coverage, for charging the same premium whether you are 9 or 75, for quoting Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Bulgaria and Romania where several rivals return nothing, and for costing less than most 30,000 € plans anyway. It loses them for paying only inside a hospital and only after 24 hours, for reimbursing on French social security tariffs rather than on the bill you were handed, for an 80 € excess charged per procedure, and for a residence clause that can strike out a policy our own quote form will happily sell you.

Both documents exist in real English, which is rarer than it should be for a product sold almost entirely outside Europe. Nothing below rests on a translation we made ourselves. Documents read and prices captured in September 2026.

A fifth more, and nothing else changes in the arithmetic. We quoted both Neat tiers across every trip length our comparator will sell, and the upper tier came back at exactly 1.2 times the lower one in every single band. On a 30-day visa that is 34.80 € against 29.00 €, a difference of 5.80 € for 50,000 € of extra hospital coverage and a refund right the lower tier does not have.

The second thing those quotes reveal is that Neat does not price per day. It prices in bands, and the jump between two bands is abrupt. A 30-day trip costs 34.80 €. A 31-day trip costs 46.80 €. One extra night adds 12.00 €, a 34% increase, for the same coverage.

Read the band edges before you pick your dates. If your itinerary is flexible by a day, ending a trip on day 30 rather than day 31, or on day 90 rather than day 91, is worth 12.00 € and 60.00 € respectively. The 91-day step is the steepest on the curve: the premium doubles.

Age changes nothing at all. We ran the same 30-day quote at ages 0, 17, 34, 70, 74 and 75, and 34.80 € came back every time. At 76 the plan disappears. That flat curve is unusual and it is the plan's quiet strength: at 75, Gold Plan was the second cheapest of the five Schengen policies our comparator could still quote that day, and the only one of the five carrying more than 30,000 €.

The premium is strictly per person, with no family rate. Two adults and two children on a 16-day trip came back at 139.20 €, which is four times 34.80 €. Adding destinations is free, though: the same 16-day trip priced at 34.80 € whether we entered France alone or France, Germany and Italy together.

Further than the Schengen visa code asks for, and less far than the number suggests. The visa rules require travel medical insurance worth at least 30,000 €, covering emergency treatment, emergency hospital care and repatriation. Gold Plan's 80,000 € is 2.7 times that floor, and it is the only ceiling above the floor on our entire Schengen shelf. But the contract caps reimbursement at French social security tariffs, so the ceiling is not the same thing as the bill.

Two of those rows are worth saying out loud. The dental and legal lines are identical on both tiers, which matters because the sales description of the upper tier promises extended emergency dental care and enhanced legal assistance abroad. The binding table grants neither. Gold buys the ceiling and the refund, and those two things only. We have reported the wording to the team that maintains the plan listing.

On the ceiling itself, the general conditions add a sentence that most readers will skip: reimbursement bases for healthcare costs are those in effect under French social security rates, and no reimbursement may exceed that rate. A private clinic in Milan or Lisbon can bill well above a French public tariff, and the difference stays with you even though you are nowhere near 80,000 €. The ceiling protects you against a catastrophic bill. It does not guarantee that an ordinary bill is paid in full.

Anything that does not involve a hospital stay of more than 24 hours. The guarantee is called emergency hospital medical expenses abroad, and the wording means every word of that name. A doctor's appointment for a chest infection, a pharmacy receipt, an X-ray at a walk-in clinic, a physiotherapy session: none of them are inside this contract at any price, on either tier.

• ✓
  Emergency hospital care to 80,000 € a year: Hospital fees, medication prescribed inside the hospital, and the stay itself, once the assistance doctors have agreed to it.
• ✓
  Repatriation at actual costs: Medical transport home or to a suitable hospital, plus a return ticket for an insured person travelling with you, with no ceiling.
• ✓
  A certificate the consulate accepts: Issued for the Schengen area as the contract defines it, naming you and your exact dates.
• ✓
  Emergency dental treatment to 150 €: Subject to the same 80 € excess, so the most you can actually recover on this line is 70 €.
• ✓
  Legal help if you fall foul of local law: A 1,000 € bail advance and 1,000 € towards a lawyer, both repayable to the insurer within a month.
• ✓
  Your premium back if the visa is refused: The one guarantee the Silver tier does not carry at all.

• ✕
  Outpatient and general practice care: Only hospital medical expenses are listed. Curative care must last a minimum of 24 hours in a hospital establishment to qualify.
• ✕
  Anything you pay for without calling first: Expenses incurred without the prior agreement of the assistance service are excluded by name, and you have 48 hours from the event to open a file. After that the service can advise you but cannot handle the claim.
• ✕
  Whatever another insurer covers: The contract pays only the portion no other insurer you hold has paid, and only once they have paid, on production of their statement.
• ✕
  Trip cancellation, baggage and travel delay: None of the three exists on either tier and none can be added. This is an assistance contract, not a comprehensive travel policy.
• ✕
  Personal liability: Damage you cause to someone else is not covered, and professional liability is excluded explicitly.
• ✕
  Care back home: Medical and hospitalization costs in your country of residence are excluded, and coverage stops the day the assistance doctors judge you fit to be flown home.

The plan listing on our comparison card says advance of costs is included, and the guarantee table does say yes to an advance in case of emergency hospitalization. The article that defines it says something narrower. The advance is conditional on you, or someone acting for you, wiring the equivalent amount to the assistance company before it is released, and a later article states that the advance guarantee is effective only if the insured holds a health contract, and is not carried out by the assistance company itself. Treat it as a settlement mechanism between insurers, not as a promise that you will never be asked for a card at a hospital desk.

Gold Plan refunds the full premium if your Schengen visa is refused, and this is the guarantee that most clearly separates it from the Silver tier, where the guarantee table simply reads not covered. Three conditions decide whether you actually get the money, and all three catch people out.

1. Your request has to arrive before the policy starts. Not before you travel, before the effective date printed on your subscription certificate. The date the recorded letter was sent is what counts, and a request that lands after coverage has begun is rejected.
2. You need the original refusal letter. The wording asks for the original of the official letter stating the refusal to issue the visa for the insurance period concerned, not a copy and not a screenshot of a portal.
3. Everyone on the policy has to be refused. The refusal of a visa for some of the insured parties does not result in any reimbursement, and partial reimbursements are not eligible. If a family of four applies together and one child is refused, nobody gets anything back.

The request goes to Neat rather than to the insurer, by email to the customer service address in your policy documents. Separately, the general conditions grant a 30-day withdrawal right where you can prove you were already covered for one of the same risks, which is a different mechanism with its own list of conditions.

For residents of about twenty countries and territories, yes, and this is the most serious thing on this page. The first line of the exclusions strikes out insured persons whose country or territory of residence is listed in the contract's own definition of the Schengen Area, when the stay is planned inside that area. That definition is not the official Schengen list. It contractually adds thirteen countries and eleven French overseas territories.

The countries the contract adds to its Schengen Area, and whose residents the exclusion therefore catches, are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Ireland, Iceland, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, the United Kingdom and Serbia. The territories are Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Reunion, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna.

Practically, if you live outside Europe and are applying for a Schengen visa, which is the situation this product was built for, none of this touches you. If you hold residence in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the western Balkans, Moldova, Cyprus or a French overseas territory, do not buy this policy for a trip inside the Schengen area on the strength of the price you are shown. The exclusion is the first line of the exclusions list and it is not ambiguous.

At 75, and the two documents do not agree on which side of that line a 75-year-old falls. The general conditions say persons aged over 75 cannot subscribe to this contract, which leaves a 75-year-old eligible. The insurance product information document lists, among the people who are not insured, those who took out the contract after their 75th birthday, which excludes them. Both documents govern the same policy.

Our own quote form follows the more generous reading. We tested it: a 75-year-old is quoted 34.80 € for a 30-day trip and a 76-year-old is refused. Because the flattering of two contradictory clauses is never the safe one to plan around, a buyer who has already turned 75 should assume the stricter reading applies and choose a plan with an unambiguous age limit above it.

Everything else about eligibility is straightforward. Between 1 and 50 people can be named on one policy, children are quoted at the adult premium from birth, the policy has to be taken out before your departure date, and the earliest start date our form accepts is the day after purchase.

Between 365 days and 90 days, depending on which page of the general conditions you open. Article 4.4 says subscription is limited to 12 consecutive months. The definitions section, four pages earlier, says the validity period of the guarantees corresponds to the dates of the stay, with a maximum duration of 90 consecutive days unless otherwise stipulated in the contract. Our quote form sells up to 365 days and refuses 366, so it follows the 12-month article.

If your visa is for a stay of 90 days or less, which covers every standard Schengen short-stay visa, the contradiction cannot reach you and you can ignore it. If you are buying for a long-stay national visa of six months or a year, this is a real question to put to the insurer before you pay 118.80 € or 238.60 €, because the phrase unless otherwise stipulated in the contract is doing a great deal of work and nothing in the purchase path stipulates anything.

One related clause is unambiguous: a separate exclusion removes events occurring beyond 90 days for insured persons residing in Thailand, and Thai stays cap subscription at three months with a three-month waiting period before a new policy. That carve-out only applies to Thailand.

Yes, and the contract names two different figures for it. The guarantee table on the last page ends with a line reading maximum assistance 100,000 € per event. The operating rules section, six pages earlier, states that the maximum amount per commitment will be 150,000 € including tax, this limit being set per event. Our own plan record stores the table's 100,000 €.

This lid matters in exactly one situation, and it is the situation the guarantee is for. A serious accident abroad can combine a long hospital admission, an air ambulance home and the repatriation of someone travelling with you. The medical line alone can reach 80,000 €, and repatriation is written at actual costs with no ceiling of its own, so the total is capped not by the 80,000 € but by the per-event lid above it. Plan on 100,000 €, the lower and more recent of the two readings, and treat anything above that as a figure to argue about rather than one to rely on.

One more rule shares the same page: when several insured people are hurt in the same event, the insurer's commitment is limited to that single maximum regardless of the number of victims, and compensation is reduced proportionally. For a family of four on one certificate, the lid is shared, not multiplied.

Anything with a motor, used for sport or leisure, on land, in the air or on water. The guarantee table carries a second medical line just for it: emergency hospital medical expenses abroad in the framework of the use of a motor vehicle are capped at 1,000 € per person per year, with the same 80 € excess. A jet ski in Greece, a quad bike in Portugal, a rented scooter taken off-road: the 80,000 € headline does not apply, and 1,000 € does. The exclusions phrase it the other way round, excluding such consequences above 1,000 €, which comes to the same thing.

The rest of the sports rules work as a closed list. The general conditions open with roughly seventy named activities, from athletics and badminton to via ferrata and windsurfing, and state plainly that where an activity is not on the list, no coverage is provided. Activities marked with an asterisk, including scuba diving to 20 metres, horse riding, parasailing and archery, are covered only when organized or supervised by a qualified professional, and coverage is void if you signed a waiver releasing that professional from liability.

Skiing deserves a clarification, because our own comparison card can mislead here. The card shows no ski benefit for this plan, and on a narrow reading that is right: there is no piste rescue, no ski pass refund and no equipment coverage anywhere in the contract, and search and rescue costs are not in the guarantee table at all. But skiing and snowboarding on marked slopes, cross-country skiing, monoski on marked slopes and snowshoeing are all on the covered activities list. Break an ankle on a marked run and the emergency hospital costs fall under the 80,000 € like any other accident. Only the getting-you-off-the-mountain part is on you.

Five years, on the reading you should plan around, and the contract offers three different answers. The exclusions section is the strictest and the most detailed: claims related to any pre-existing medical condition diagnosed, treated or requiring hospitalization within the five years preceding the trip are excluded, as are any heart condition and any cancer diagnosed before the booking date.

The definitions section is looser. It describes pre-existing conditions as pathologies prior to taking out the contract requiring continuous treatment or having resulted in hospitalizations, with no time limit, and separately defines an insurable illness as one that has not been the subject of hospitalization in the six months preceding the event. The information document simply says illnesses prior to subscription and their consequences. Three windows, one policy.

Where a contract contradicts itself on a medical exclusion, the responsible assumption is the strictest version, so treat the five-year rule as the one that will be applied. The practical consequence is easy to state: if you live with a treated chronic condition, this plan is not the one to rely on for anything connected to it. A stable condition you have not been treated for in five years is outside the exclusion, but the wording also strikes out care made necessary by a state of health you could not have been unaware of before departure, even with no formal diagnosis.

Pregnancy has a cleaner boundary. Only unforeseen complications are covered, and everything is excluded from the thirty-sixth week onwards, so coverage runs to the end of week 35. Termination, childbirth, fertility treatment and any pregnancy that led to hospitalization in the six months before the request are all excluded by name.

Three companies appear on this contract and only one of them carries the risk. The risk carrier is Ressources Mutuelles Assistance, an assistance union governed by Book II of the French mutual code, registered in Vertou near Nantes under SIREN number 444 269 682. When a hospital bill is settled or a repatriation is arranged, that is the entity on the hook.

The company you will actually deal with is LLT Consulting, which trades as VYV International Assistance and is based in La Rochelle. It holds the management mandate and acts in the risk carrier's name: its doctors decide whether you are repatriated, its claims service reimburses you, and its number is the one to call. Neat is the third name, a Bordeaux company that subscribes the group contract and sells the membership to you. Neat handles the visa-refusal refund; the assistance company handles everything medical.

Two practical consequences follow from that structure. First, everything runs through one phone call: no service is provided without first calling the assistance centre, you have 48 hours from the event to do it, and you will be given a case number to quote afterwards. Second, the contract is governed exclusively by French law, disputes go to French courts, and the language of the contractual relationship is French, even though the documents you are given are in English.

• Is the Neat Gold Plan accepted for a Schengen visa application?

  Yes. It provides 80,000 € of emergency hospital coverage, well above the 30,000 € the Schengen visa rules require, plus repatriation at actual costs, and the certificate is issued for the Schengen area as the contract defines it. Check one thing first: you must be resident outside the contract’s own Schengen Area definition, which includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus and several Balkan countries.

• How much does the Neat Gold Plan cost?

  From 10.80 € for a trip of 1 to 3 days, 18.00 € up to a week, 22.80 € up to 15 days, 34.80 € up to 30 days, 46.80 € up to 45 days, 58.80 € up to 90 days, 118.80 € up to 180 days and 238.60 € for up to a year. Those quotes were captured on hellosafe.com on 11 September 2026 for one traveller resident in India travelling to France, and they do not change with age up to 75.

• What is the difference between the Gold Plan and the Silver Plan?

  Two things, according to the binding guarantee table. The emergency hospital ceiling is 80,000 € on Gold against 30,000 € on Silver, and the visa-refusal refund exists on Gold and is marked not covered on Silver. Dental, legal assistance, repatriation and funeral costs are identical on both. Gold costs exactly 20% more at every trip length.

• Does the Gold Plan really cover 80,000 € of medical costs?

  It covers emergency hospital expenses up to 80,000 € per person per year, but with three restrictions written into the same guarantee. Reimbursement is calculated on French social security tariffs and cannot exceed them, an 80 € excess applies per person and per procedure, and the insurer pays only the portion no other insurer of yours has covered, after they have paid.

• Does the Gold Plan cover a doctor's appointment or medicines?

  No. The guarantee is emergency hospital medical expenses, and the wording requires curative care of at least 24 consecutive hours in a hospital establishment. Outpatient visits, walk-in clinics, pharmacy purchases outside a hospital and physiotherapy are outside the contract on both tiers.

• Does the Gold Plan refund my premium if my visa is refused?

  Yes, at actual costs, and this is the guarantee the Silver tier does not have. Three conditions apply: the request has to reach Neat before the policy’s effective date, you have to produce the original refusal letter, and every person named on the policy has to have been refused. Partial refusals are not eligible.

• Is there an age limit on the Gold Plan?

  The two documents disagree. The general conditions say persons aged over 75 cannot subscribe, which allows a 75-year-old. The information document excludes anyone who took out the contract after their 75th birthday. Our quote form prices a 75-year-old and refuses a 76-year-old. Below 75 there is no ambiguity, and the premium is the same as for a 20-year-old.

• Does the Gold Plan cover skiing?

  There is no dedicated ski benefit: no piste rescue, no ski pass refund and no equipment coverage. Skiing and snowboarding on marked slopes, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing are on the contract’s list of covered activities, though, so a hospital admission after an accident on a marked run falls under the 80,000 € like any other accident.

• Does the Gold Plan cover trip cancellation or lost baggage?

  Neither, at any price, and neither can be added as an option. This is a visa assistance contract covering emergency hospital care, repatriation, legal help and the visa-refusal refund. If you need to protect a non-refundable booking or your luggage, you need a different product alongside it.

• What is the 80 € excess on the Gold Plan?

  It is the fixed amount you keep for yourself on medical costs, charged per person and per procedure rather than per claim or per trip. Two separate treatments on the same trip therefore cost you 80 € each. It also applies to the 150 € emergency dental line, which means the most you can actually recover on a dental claim is 70 €.

On the 30-day trip we priced for this review, seven plans came back and six of them carried the same 30,000 € medical ceiling. Gold Plan was the only one above it, at 34.80 €, and it still came in cheaper than five of the six plans stuck on the legal minimum. That is an unusual place for the most generous plan on a shelf to sit, and it is the reason this review ends where it does.

Your own premium will differ the moment your dates do, so run the comparison below rather than trusting these figures. If you want the mechanics of the visa application itself, the appointment, the documents and the fees, we keep them on our Schengen visa guide, and the wider market sits on our travel insurance comparison.

Recommended for youA. Fruchard · Co-Founder & Travel Insurance Expert

Buy the ceiling and the refund, and know what you are not buying

Gold Plan does one job unusually well for the money. On the trip we priced, it was the only plan on the shelf carrying more than the Schengen minimum of medical coverage, and it still undercut five of the six plans that carry the minimum. The premium does not move an inch between a nine-year-old and a seventy-five-year-old, which almost nothing else on this market does, and it quotes Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Bulgaria and Romania where several rivals return nothing at all. For a visa applicant over sixty, or for anyone with a multi-country itinerary, it is the rational pick on this shelf.

The step up from Silver on a 30-day visa is a modest one and the easiest decision on this page. It buys 50,000 € of extra hospital coverage and the right to your money back if the consulate says no, which the lower tier does not have at all. What it does not buy is extra dental or extra legal assistance, whatever the plan description suggests.

I would hesitate in three situations. If you live in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus, the western Balkans or a French overseas territory, the exclusions strike you out for a Schengen stay even though our form will quote you. If you live with a treated chronic condition, the five-year pre-existing exclusion is wide enough to matter. And if you expect the policy to pay for a clinic visit rather than a hospital admission, it will not: this contract starts at 24 hours in a hospital bed. Run the quotes below on your real dates before you decide.

Gold PlanUnderwritten by Vyv International Assistance

From€34.80

Included coverage

Emergency medical expenses€80,000

Direct billingIncluded

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

24/7 worldwide assistanceUnlimited

See all 12 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

Silver PlanUnderwritten by Vyv International Assistance

From€29.00

Included coverage

Emergency medical expenses€30,000

Direct billingIncluded

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

24/7 worldwide assistanceUnlimited

See all 12 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

Go SchengenUnderwritten by Mutuaide

From€45.00

Included coverage

Emergency medical expenses€30,000

Direct billingIncluded

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

24/7 worldwide assistanceUnlimited

See all 12 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

Go Schengen +Underwritten by Mutuaide

From€51.00

Included coverage

Emergency medical expenses€30,000

Direct billingIncluded

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

24/7 worldwide assistanceIncluded

See all 12 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

Schengen StartUnderwritten by AIG

From€110.00

Included coverage

Emergency medical expenses€30,000

Direct billingIncluded

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

24/7 worldwide assistanceUnlimited

See all 12 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

Schengen AnnualUnderwritten by AIG

From€749.00

Included coverage

Emergency medical expenses€30,000

Direct billingIncluded

Emergency medical evacuation & repatriationCovered in full

24/7 worldwide assistanceIncluded

See all 12 benefitsGet a quote

Personalized quote · no obligation

Real quotes captured on 11 September 2026 on hellosafe.com: 1 traveller aged 34, 30 days in France (10 October to 8 November 2026), residence India, no cancellation option, in euros. Schengen visa policies are sold and paid in euros, so every plan here is priced in euros. Gold Plan is the only plan on this shelf whose emergency hospital ceiling is 80,000 EUR; the other six all sit at 30,000 EUR, the Schengen visa minimum. Your own premium changes with your dates: Neat prices in duration bands, not per day.