Cheapest health insurance in Australia

Policy data as of 1 October 2026 · fetched 2 October 2026, 12:41 UTC · generated 2 October 2026, 14:10 UTC · 32 funds ranked out of 34 registered insurers. Refreshed monthly, checked daily.

The cheapest hospital policy from every health fund, for each state, household type and cover tier, read from the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman's monthly release of every insurer's policies. Every policy here is hospital cover that counts for the Medicare levy surcharge exemption.

Pick a state, who the policy covers and a tier: the table lists each fund's cheapest policy for that combination, cheapest first, with its excess, co-payment and how many of the 38 clinical categories it covers. "Any tier" is the cheapest hospital cover of any kind, which is usually a Basic policy that covers little beyond accidents and public hospital treatment but still clears the surcharge. For every policy a fund sells, open the funds list and then the fund.

Hospital cover avoids the Medicare levy surcharge when it is from a registered insurer and the excess is $750 or less for a single or $1,500 or less for a couple, family or single parent; every policy listed meets that test. Whether you owe the surcharge at all depends on your income for surcharge purposes, and the thresholds change each year: check them on the ATO website.

Premiums are monthly, in Australian dollars, before the Australian Government rebate (which reduces them for most people), before any Lifetime Health Cover loading, and before the age-based discount for people joining under 30 where a policy offers it. Restricted-membership funds (for defence, teachers, police, doctors, bank and church employees and so on) are ranked too but hidden by default, because most readers cannot join them: tick "Include restricted funds" to see them, with who may join in the table. Corporate-only plans, policies for overseas visitors and expatriates, and policies sold only as an add-on to other cover are left out; they are all in the per-state JSON files below.

23 policies for a single person in NSW across all tiers, cheapest first, one per open fund

Each fund appears once, at its cheapest policy for the selection, numbered in the order shown; the fund's name opens every policy it sells and the policy name opens the fund's own page for it where the fund publishes one. A "Restricted" mark means only the people named under "Who can join" may take out the policy. "Covered" counts clinical categories covered in full and "Restricted" those paid at the minimum benefit, where you can face large out-of-pocket costs in a private hospital. Policies sold nationally appear under every state.

About this data

Every registered Australian health insurer supplies its policy data to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman, which publishes it monthly on data.gov.au under CC BY 3.0 AU; the same data drives privatehealth.gov.au. We read every open hospital and combined policy, flatten each to one row per state and household type, and rank every fund's cheapest. We check for a new release daily. The same records are published as JSON:

• cheapest.json: the rankings on this page, rankings[state][household][tier], every fund's cheapest policy in each, with fund_type and eligibility.
• funds.json: every registered insurer with membership type, restrictions and sub-brands.
• policies/<STATE>.json: every open hospital and combined policy sold in a state, including restricted-fund, corporate and visitor policies (NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT; minified, over ten megabytes each).
• funds/<fund_slug>.json: one file per fund with every policy and the clinical-category, waiting-period and extras profiles behind them; linked from each fund's page.
• index.json: the dataset index, with the source release and every per-state and per-fund file.

The files are described in the dataset's OpenAPI document; the site's root OpenAPI file links to every dataset's document. Not financial or health advice: check the policy's own product information before you buy.

Funds

25 open funds and 9 restricted funds: every health fund, with the states it sells in, its policy counts and its cheapest single hospital policy.

Deep Almanac is a secondary source and this page is provided for general information and reference. It is not financial, investment, legal, valuation, educational or other professional advice, and it is not a substitute for checking the original source. Premiums change without notice, usually on 1 April each year, and insurers apply waiting periods, exclusions and eligibility rules not fully captured here. You are responsible for any decision you or your software makes in reliance on this page. See our terms of use.