Insurance on a provisional licence, explained
If you hold a provisional licence and drive on a public road in Great Britain, you must be insured on that specific car. You can get that cover three ways: your own learner policy, being added to someone else's insurance, or short-term cover bought by the hour or day.
You need insurance on the car, not on yourself
This is the thing people get wrong. UK car insurance attaches to a vehicle and the people named on that vehicle's policy, not to you as a driver. So "am I insured?" is never the right question. The right question is "am I insured on this car?"
That matters because a learner practising in a parent's car is a different insurance problem from a learner practising in their own. The answer, and the list of providers who will help, changes completely.
The three routes, and what each one costs you
Your own learner policy
You are the policyholder. The cover is in your name, on a named car, which can be yours or somebody else's depending on the provider.
The point of this route is that a claim is your claim. If you have an accident in your mother's car, her insurance and her no-claims bonus are not involved. That is the single reason learner-specific insurance exists as a product, and every provider we read leads with it.
Added to someone else's policy as a named driver
The car owner adds you to their existing insurance. Often the cheapest way to get a few hours of practice, and the administration is trivial because their insurer already has the car.
The catch is the same fact in reverse: a claim is their claim. Their premium, their no-claims bonus, their record. Some owners are entirely relaxed about that and some have a protected nine-year bonus they are not putting anywhere near a learner.
Short-term cover
Bought by the hour, the day or the week, as you need it. Simple, flexible, and it keeps the owner's policy out of it the same way an annual learner policy does.
It adds up. If you are practising most weekends for six months, hourly cover will cost more than a policy would have.
Which providers cover which
Not every provider does all of this, and the gap that catches people out is your own car.
Several providers on our list will only insure you in somebody else's car. Marmalade says plainly on its own product page, which is to its credit. Others leave you to discover it at e quote step.
- Your own car: Collingwood, Dayinsure, Tempcover, Adrian Flux, Insure Learner Driver,
- Only someone else's car: Marmalade states this explicitly, and Cuvva covers your own car
- The widest age range: Tempcover and GoShorty both publish 17 to 75. Several stop at 50,
What the law requires of the person next to you
Your supervisor is not optional and not a formality. In Great Britain they must be at least 21, have held a full licence for that category of vehicle for at least three years, and be qualified to drive the car you are in, which means a manual licence if the car is a manual. That is GOV.UK, not a provider rule.
Providers can and do ask for more. Marmalade requires a supervisor aged 25 or over with three years' licence, which is stricter than the law. If your intended supervisor is 22, that rules Marmalade out before you start.
Before you buy
Read the Insurance Product Information Document. It is two pages, it is free, and it is the thing that says what is actually excluded. Every provider has to give you one.
Anything above about what the law requires is Great Britain law and comes from GOV.UK. Anything about a provider comes from that provider's own published material, read on 18 September 2026. How we check.
