Sanitas Pet Insurance: 80% of your vet bills reimbursed

It's the most flexible system on the market: you take your dog or cat to any vet you choose, anywhere in Spain, pay the bill as you always have and ask for an itemised invoice. You then submit that invoice to Sanitas through the app and they reimburse 80% of the amount, up to a maximum of €2,500 per year, with no per-illness copays and no annual deductibles — two cuts that quite a few competing pet insurers do apply. A real-world example of what that means: between a poisoning (€230), an accident requiring surgery and an implant (€2,700), the ambulance (€65) and a bout of gastroenteritis (€250), a bad year can add up to €3,245 in vet bills; with the policy you get back the full €2,500 annual limit, so the financial hit shrinks to a fraction. And since there's no closed network, you don't have to switch vets: your pet keeps seeing the one it already trusts.

The premium depends on the species and, for dogs, on the exact breed, across three tiers. The lowest, €45.58 a month, covers 27 breeds: Yorkshire, Chihuahua, Beagle, Jack Russell, Shiba Inu, Poodle, Dachshund and Border Collie, among others. The middle tier, €51.80, is the one for mixed-breed dogs and for most breeds, from the Labrador to the German Shepherd. The highest, €68.89, groups the 41 breeds that statistically generate the most veterinary spending: French and English Bulldog, Boxer, mastiffs, Rottweiler and Saint Bernard, plus a few that come as a surprise, such as the Basset Hound, the Cocker Spaniel and the Pointer. Cats have a single flat premium of €49.95 a month, whatever the breed. If you're already a Sanitas client with any other policy, you get a €100 discount per year for each pet, roughly €8.33 less a month, which brings a small dog down to around €37 and a cat to €41.62. The calculator on this page prices by your dog's exact breed: type it into the search box and you'll see your real premium, the same one we confirm at the office.

No, and it's worth being clear about this because they're two different products: Sanitas Salud Mascotas is veterinary health insurance, which covers the vet bills when your pet falls ill or has an accident — not the damage your animal might cause to other people. Spain's Law 7/2023 on Animal Welfare foresees mandatory civil liability insurance for all dogs, although that specific obligation is still pending implementing regulations; for potentially dangerous dogs, liability cover has been mandatory for years and is required for the municipal licence. The good news is that a dog's civil liability is usually already included in the family's home insurance, or can be added for very little. If you're not sure whether yours includes it, bring your home insurance policy to the office and we'll check it for free — that way your dog is covered on both fronts: health with Sanitas and third-party damage with the liability cover.

Three basic conditions. First, age: your dog or cat must be between 3 months and 9 years old at the time of enrollment; once in, the policy renews automatically every year. Second, identification: a microchip, implanted and registered with your autonomous community's registry, which Spanish regulations require anyway. And third, it must be a companion animal living with you in Spain: working, guard, hunting and competition dogs, and commercial breeding, are excluded. At sign-up you fill in a short health questionnaire, because illnesses and injuries prior to enrollment aren't covered, and there are two waiting periods: 30 days for veterinary care in general and 12 months for euthanasia and illness-related neutering. All of which means the sooner you insure your pet, the more complete its cover will be for the whole life of the policy.

No, vaccination and deworming are excluded, just as they are in virtually every reimbursement pet insurance policy: they're predictable, low-cost expenses that make no sense to insure, because they'd push the premium up by more than they cost at the vet. What the policy does include is an annual preventive check-up of up to €50, which covers your pet's yearly general review. The logic of the product is to protect you against the big, unpredictable expense — the kind that genuinely unbalances a budget: a routine surgery costs between €500 and €3,000, a multi-day hospital stay or a CT scan is just as expensive, and that's where the 80% reimbursement up to €2,500 a year makes the difference. You keep paying for routine prevention as you do now, and if you like, you can combine it with your usual clinic's vaccination plan: they're fully compatible.

They're complementary products, not equivalents. A clinic's wellness plan or "iguala" is a fixed annual fee, typically between €150 and €350, that gets you discounts and usually includes vaccines and deworming — but it's tied to that one clinic and doesn't cover the expensive stuff: if your pet needs surgery, hospitalization or a serious out-of-hours emergency, the bill is yours. Sanitas Salud Mascotas works the other way round: it doesn't tie you to any centre, you can go to any vet you like anywhere in Spain, and it reimburses 80% of any bill, including the big ones, with surgery and hospitalization carrying no separate spending cap within the €2,500 annual limit. It also adds what no clinic plan offers: chronic conditions like obesity and arthrosis, allergies, physiotherapy, a dog walker if you're the one hospitalised, 24/7 veterinary phone advice and emergency cover on trips in the EU and the UK. Many clients keep their clinic's preventive plan for vaccines and cover everything else with the insurance.