Kerb Wise

Guide · breakdown cover explained

What does breakdown cover include?

Six things, in practice: roadside assistance, home start, national recovery, onward travel, European cover and personal cover. Almost every entry-level policy sold in the UK includes the first one and none of the other five. That gap — between what people assume they’ve bought and what’s actually on the certificate — is where most breakdown-cover disappointment comes from.

The six features below are the axes we score every provider on. Read them once and you’ll be able to price any policy properly, because you’ll know which of the six you’re being sold and which you’re being upsold.

The six features, and what each one actually does

1. Roadside assistance

A patrol comes to you and tries to fix the car at the side of the road. If they can’t, they tow it — but only as far as the nearest garage, which may be nowhere near where you were going. This is the one feature every policy includes, and it’s the one people mean when they say “I’ve got breakdown cover”.

The clause to look for is the distance exclusion. AA’s roadside tier, for example, covers breakdowns more than a quarter of a mile from home. Break down on your own drive and roadside assistance does not apply — that’s what home start is for.

2. Home start

Cover for a car that won’t start at home, or within that quarter-mile radius. It’s the single most common upsell, and for most drivers it’s the one worth buying, because the most likely breakdown you’ll ever have is a flat battery on a cold morning on your own driveway.

If you only add one thing to a basic policy, add this.

3. National recovery

The car gets taken to a destination of your choosing anywhere in the UK — home, your own garage, or where you were heading — rather than the nearest one that will take it. Without it, a breakdown 200 miles from home leaves you with a car at a garage you’ve never heard of and no way of getting to it.

Worth paying for if you drive long distances, tow, or take the car on holiday. Skippable if your car rarely leaves a 30-mile radius.

4. Onward travel

What happens to you once the car has gone on a truck: a hire car, a night’s accommodation, or train fares home. Usually capped — a category of spend up to a stated limit, not a blank cheque.

This is the feature most often missing from cheap policies, and the one whose absence hurts most on the day it matters. It’s also the one that generates the most reimbursement disputes, because you pay first and claim back.

5. European cover

Breakdown assistance in mainland Europe. Almost always a separate add-on, often sold per-trip as well as annually. If you take the car abroad once a year, do the arithmetic on both — per-trip is frequently cheaper.

6. Personal cover

Cover that follows you rather than a registration number, so it goes with you into any car, as a driver or a passenger. Useful if you drive several household cars, borrow vehicles, or you’re often a passenger in other people’s cars.

The alternative shape is vehicle cover, which follows one car and covers whoever is driving it. Households with one car and two drivers usually want vehicle cover; a person who drives four different cars a week wants personal. Our guide to personal or vehicle cover covers the limits each one carries.

Which providers include all six?

At most providers, that depends on the level you buy, not the brand. The cheapest level is usually roadside help plus a short tow. These are from providers’ own pages, checked on 22 October 2026:

A few build more into every policy. GEM says “Both our personal & vehicle breakdown cover automatically include home and roadside assistance, nationwide recovery and onward travel“. AutoAid lists “Home Start Cover Included“, but it only sells personal cover.

Levels and prices move as providers rewrite their pages, so check the level you’re quoted for against the six above before you buy. For how the providers compare, see the full ranked comparison, or the provider directory for individual reviews.

What entry-level cover actually buys you

Entry tier, on almost every provider, is roadside only. It is genuinely useful — a patrol at the roadside fixes a large share of breakdowns then and there — but it is one feature out of six, and the headline price you see advertised is nearly always that tier.

So when you compare two providers on price, check you’re comparing the same tier. An entry price against a mid-tier price isn’t a comparison, it’s a category error — and it’s the mistake the advertising is designed to encourage.

The honest short version

  • Buy roadside plus home start if your car is your daily runaround and stays local. That covers the two most likely breakdowns you’ll have.
  • Add national recovery if you regularly drive more than an hour from home.
  • Add onward travel if being stranded would cost you a booked ferry, a hotel, or a day’s work.
  • Add European per trip, not annually, unless you’re crossing the Channel more than twice a year.
  • Choose personal over vehicle cover only if you genuinely drive several different cars.

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