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Provisional licence car insurance​

Provisional licence car insurance quotes

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What is a provisional licence?

A provisional licence is also known as a learner permit. It's the licence that enables someone to practice driving before they take the road test to gain their full UK driving licence.

With a provisional licence, you can't drive a car unsupervised; you must be supervised by a driving instructor or friend or family member who is:

  • Over 21 years old (although this is the legal minimum, some insurers will need you to be supervised by someone over 25).
  • Qualified to drive the car you’re learning in (for example, if you’re practising in a manual car, they must be licensed to drive one).
  • A holder of a full UK driving licence or a licence from the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, or Liechtenstein for three years.
  • Not using a mobile phone while supervising you.

Also, you must have the right type of insurance to drive with a provisional licence. If you're only driving with a qualified driving instructor, you should be covered under their insurance. But if you're practicing in between lessons, you'll need to buy insurance for a provisional licence, which is most commonly referred to as learner insurance.

Temporary car insurance for provisional licence holders

Most provisional licence car insurance is sold on a temporary basis—that is, it covers days or weeks, not a whole year like a regular car insurance policy. You'll have your choice of time duration when buying provisional driver insurance. But please note, you can use this insurance up to and including a successful road test.

Once you've passed the road test, the provisional licence insurance typically is invalided (although some insurers like GoShorty allow you three hours of cover after passing the test, so you can drive home). This means once you pass your test, you'll need insurance for someone with a full UK licence. Why do insurers do this? Because once you've passed your test you are allowed to drive without supervision. And that is riskier than driving with supervision, so insurers need to charge more to insure these new (but fully licenced) drivers. You'll quickly find out that the cost of young driver insurance can be astronomical!

Can I insure a car with a provisional licence?

The short answer is yes. If you’re learning to drive in your own car you must have suitable provisional driver car insurance. Remember that by law you also need to be supervised with a provisional licence, even if you’re practising in your own car.

But if this is your car that you're practicing on (as opposed to a friend or family member's car) then be wary of signing up to an annual policy (as one usually does for their own car). An annual policy for a provisional licence can easily cost £3,000 - £4,000. But you probably won't need the policy for a whole year. Instead, you may find it cheaper and simpler to get temporary provisional licence car insurance, whether it's your car you're practicing on or someone else's.

In most cases, a provisional licence holder gets insured to drive someone else's car (because they don't have their own car yet).

Cheap car insurance provisional driving licence

Cheap car insurance for provisional licence holders typically starts from around £15+ per day, or £35+ per week or £58+ per month. But prices can be pretty variable from one provider to the next.

NimbleFins tested half a dozen popular showed that the cheapest car insurance for a provisional driving licence is Veygo. Read more about how prices compare and how we identified the cheapest provisional driving licence provider in our article on cheap short term car insurance.

Best car insurance for provisional licence holders

Cheapest isn't always best. While Veygo had the cheapest rates for our sample driver, other companies provide benefits that might be appealing. For example, our partner GoShorty offers cover to provisional licence holders for three hours after they pass their test, so they can drive home. And Marmalade is another popular choice to mention. Here is some more information on these three provisional licence car insurance providers, listed in alphabetical order.

GoShorty

GoShorty has higher customer ratings (4.8 out of 5) on Trustpilot, pointing to an excellent customer experience. And we like that on their monthly provisional car insurance, you can use the policy to take your test AND it is valid for 3 hours afterwards so you can drive home if you need (or want!) to.

Policies lasting 1 hour up to 24 weeks (~6 months) are available. And they say you can get quotes, buy online and be fully insured and on your way in less than 2 minutes!

They cover drivers from 17 up to 75 with a low excess, and can provide comprehensive cover for vehicles with a value up to £50,000.

In terms of cancellation, learner policies less than one calendar month’s duration can be canceled but there will be no refund of premium. But policies longer than one month are entitled to a limited refund in some cases—e.g. you could receive a refund of premium less a charge for the days for which cover has been in force if you cancel within 14 days. (Read details here.)

Marmalade

Marmalade is very popular for provisional licence car insurance. It's suitable for provisional licence holders aged 17-34 who are learning to drive on a friend or family member's car, as they practise for and take their driving test. While popular, Marmalade is only rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, however, with 10% of customers rating the company with only 1 star. To avoid being one of the disappointed, please note that when the learner passes their driver test, that there is no refund. For example, if you have paid for 2 and half months and the learner passes their test in one month, you essentially burn the remaining 1.5 months of cover.

In NimbleFins tests, Marmalade was more expensive than Veygo.

Veygo

Veygo is part of Admiral, the UK's largest car insurance company. The Veygo brand sells temporary car insurance for full UK or provisional licence holders, and is rated a lower 4.6 stars out of 5 on Trustpilot.

Policies can be bought on a pay-as-you-go or on a rolling monthly basis. Pay-as-you-go cover can be for as little as one hour; Monthly cover can be canceled at any time.

Need to cancel? If your policy hasn’t started yet, you will receive a full refund. If your policy has already started, they’ll recalculate the price based on a shorter policy and refund the difference. If any refund is due, this will be returned to the original payment method automatically within 3 to 10 days.

You can't change a learner policy into new driver insurance, but they'll give Veygo learner policyholders 10% off one of their new driver policies when you pass.

How much is car insurance for provisional licence?

The cost of car insurance for a provisional licence depends on a lot of factors, like the driver age and what car they'll be driving. To give you an idea of potential costs, we received quotes from Veygo, which is part of Admiral, the UK's largest car insurance company. We found that Veygo is the cheapest of the companies we tested, so consider these to be 'starting' or 'from' prices.

NimbleFins found that an 18-year-old provisional licence holder who wants to practice on a 5-year-old VW T-Roc would pay from around £58 per month for their provisional licence car insurance, when bought on a rolling, monthly basis. For a shorter-term policy, they'd pay around £50 for two weeks of cover, £40 for one week or £15 per day.

Sample quotes for provisional licence car insurance
One day£15
One week£40
Two weeks£50
Per month (rolling policy)£58
One month (one-off policy)£72

As you can see, it's cheaper per day to buy a longer-term policy. For example, if you have one month until your driving test and you want provisional licence car insurance to practice on a parent's car until then, it makes better economic sense to buy a month-long policy (one or or on a rolling basis that you later cancel) as opposed to buying week-long cover over and over. In that case, a one-off, month-long policy would cost £72, which is cheaper than buying four week-long policies at a cost of £160 (£4 weeks times £40).

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The guidance on this site is based on our own analysis and is meant to help you identify options and narrow down your choices. We do not advise or tell you which product to buy; undertake your own due diligence before entering into any agreement. Read our full disclosure here.

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