Choosing a breakdown cover policy from us means help will be at hand 24/7. Whether you’re in the middle of the highlands in Scotland or cruising along the Riviera in Southern France, you’ll find cover tailored to your needs.

Who Are We?

Here at CompareBreakdownCover we’ve made it our mission to try and provide you with a great selection of options to help you choose the best breakdown cover for you at a price you’ll love. We've helped over 250,000 customers with their insurance and we work with some of the most recognised and trusted assistance providers in the UK to provide the best support and help they can when you breakdown.

How it Works

Because we’re an insurance broker, we don’t actually provide the assistance when you breakdown, instead we leave that to our Assistance Partners. All our policies are provided by specialist breakdown assistance providers who use networks of professional and recommended garages to help get you back on the road when have a breakdown.

We get it. When most people hear the phrase breakdown cover, they tend to switch off and with good reason. No one wants to spend their time reading through dusty policy wordings and needlessly complicated insurance jargon. That’s why we want to educate everyone on just how simple and easy-to-understand breakdown cover is, once you strip away all that boring stuff.

At its heart, breakdown cover is a contract between you, the customer, and a breakdown cover provider with the understanding that if your car were to breakdown you’d receive a certain amount of assistance in either getting it fixed or getting you moving again.

It’s that simple.

The complicated stuff comes when we talk about what you can actually be covered for in a breakdown policy. But we’ll get to that later.

Why Do I Need Breakdown Cover?

Anyone that has a car will have had something go wrong on them at some point or another. Whether that’s a dead battery, a flat tyre or even a faulty engine – most of us have had that sinking feeling of ‘something’s not right with the car’ and that feeling gets much worse if you’re miles away from civilisation let-alone your house. Breakdown cover gives you that safety net that we all crave in life. We worry an enormous amount every day, more so than usual it’s fair to say, and breakdown cover just gives you that tiny little victory in life, that break from worrying.

Knowing that if something were to go wrong, you wouldn’t be left stranded makes a big difference while you’re driving and for as little as £19 per year, it’s a small price to pay.

Is there anything else I need to consider?

Before comparing breakdown cover, consider if you may already have it in place (with your bank account, your current vehicle insurance or included when you purchased the vehicle).

This will ensure you don't purchase additional cover unecessarily.

UK Breakdown Cover

This cover, predictably offers Breakdown assistance across mainland UK. This can either consist of local or national recovery and can include benefits such a roadside assistance, onwards travel and home start.

Find out more about UK Breakdown Cover

European Breakdown Cover

This is what you’ll need for cover right across the ECC and is split into two further categories:

Single Trip European Cover

If you’re planning a one-off road trip through Europe then this is the cover you'll need. It's a very popular policy type and perfect for those two week summer holidays abroad.

Find out more about Single Trip European Breakdown Cover

Annual European Cover

If your travel abroad more often, or don't want the hassle of purchasing new cover each year, this cover type can be more cost-effective in the long run and means you won't be without cover for the year.

Find out more about Annual European Breakdown Cover

Personal Breakdown Cover

Most breakdown cover only applies to the vehicle you designate at purchase. Personal breakdown cover offers you protection no matter what car you drive.

Find out more about Personal Breakdown Cover

Specialist Breakdown cover

We offer a wide variety of breakdown cover options away from cars. These include Light Vans (up to 3.5 ton), Motorcycles and Motorhomes (up to 7.5 ton).

Please note: We do not offer cover for vehicles used for hire reward or courier services. For a full list of exclusions, please review the Policy Wording and Product Information Documents. You'll find these documents available when you get a quote.

Which Breakdown Cover is Right for Me?

It can be difficult, with so many options, to know which policy is right for your circumstance. But the most important thing to think about is: What exactly do you want from a policy and what is your budget?

Make sure you choose the policy that makes you feel most comfortable and safe whilst driving, especially over long distances – but don’t over-insure yourself, visualise your budget and stick to it. Not everyone needs misfuelling cover for example or they may think European cover isn’t necessary for their needs, so look through all the options and try to choose the cover that fits around your usual driving requirements.

If you need help, head to our FAQs above for all the answers you could possibly need about our breakdown cover.

What's Included in Breakdown Cover?

Here’s where we get into the glorious detail of insurance – so we’ll try and keep this as exciting as possible for you:

Roadside Assistance

This is the bedrock of a good breakdown cover policy. Should you breakdown and require assistance with any of our policies, a recovery agent will often first attempt to fix the problem at the roadside and get you on your way as swiftly as possible.

Find out more about Roadside Assistance

Roadside Recovery

This is another staple of breakdown cover. If your vehicle can’t be fixed by the roadside, then it’s likely that your recovery agent will tow your vehicle to the nearest garage of your choice, or anywhere nationally – depending on your policy type, where it can be fixed.

Find out more about Roadside Recovery

Onward Travel

If you still need to complete your journey, and your car has been taken to be repaired, all of our policies offer Onward Travel, where your assistance provider will make sure you complete your journey via alternative means of transportation.

Find out more about Onward Travel

Home Start

If you have a really bad start (or end) to your journey and breakdown at or within 1 mile of your house, Home Start means that you can still get assistance from your breakdown recovery agent. It’s important to remember that not all policies include Home Start – so you’ll want to check before you buy, in case this is something you definitely want.

Find out more about Home Start

Puncture Cover

All of our breakdown policies offer puncture cover as standard. If you’re not into getting on your hands and knees and changing tyres yourself then you’ll be delighted to know that you won’t have to pay a penny extra to have this cover.

Find out more Puncture Cover

Flat Battery Cover

One of the most common causes of breakdown in the UK is the humble flat battery. It can completely catch people off-guard and if you don’t have jump cables and a friendly passer-by to help you then you could be in real trouble. All of our policies cover flat batteries as standard, so it’s one less thing to worry about when it comes to breakdowns!

Find out more about Flat Car Battery Cover

Misfuelling Cover

This can happen to the best of us. I think nearly everyone has a least almost done this at a petrol station and idly grabbed the wrong pump and just started filling. It happens in an instant and can be an absolute nightmare to sort out without help. Not surprisingly, misfuelling your car is most likely to happen when you’ve just gotten a new one. Getting assistance will massively reduce the stress that this can cause, and you’ll be able to have your car professionally emptied so you don’t do any further damage to your engine.

Find out more Misfuelling Insurance Cover

What About Excess?

This is a question that crops up a surprising amount – and it affects nearly all insurance policies, not just breakdown cover. Excess is the amount of money you’ll be required to pay should you need to make a claim. On most of our policies this is zero, but we do sell a few policies that have minimal excess costs should you breakdown. It’s really important you check the policy you’re about to purchase carefully so that you know what your excess is.

Find out more about Breakdown Excess Cover

Can I add extras to my breakdown cover?

Because we use assistance partners, rather than providing the cover ourselves, your policy benefits are fixed when you purchase. However, because we work with some many different partners, you’ll have a wide variety of cover levels to choose from before you buy.

It’s really important that when you purchase you’ve made sure your policy includes everything you need as you won’t be able to change your cover levels once you’ve bought.

What do I do if I breakdown?

When you purchase a policy from us, we’ll send you an email which will have the phone number you’ll need to use if and when you breakdown. We’d definitely recommend popping this number in your phone so that if the moment comes, you can find it nice and quickly.

Once you phone the number, you’ll get put through to your assistance provider, you can tell them what happened and they’ll let you know what they’ll do to help. You can also head to our claims page to find all our assistance partners’ claim numbers for when you breakdown – just make sure you know which provider is yours.