Pet health insurance reimburses you for covered costs on your vet bills — helping you pay for your dog or cat’s unexpected medical expenses.

Take your pet to any licensed vet without worrying about provider networks. After their care, you pay your vet bill and submit a claim to us. Next, we reimburse you for covered expenses — typically, within 5 days.² You can receive direct payments or paper checks. Learn more about how pet insurance works.

Metlife Pet plans start at $7 per month for cats and $16 per month for dogs.⁴ However, the cost of pet insurance — aka the premium — depends on a variety of factors. These include the species, breed, and age of your pet.

Other factors that can impact the price are where you live, the level of coverage you choose, adding more pets to a policy, as well as whether you enhance your plan with optional coverage. You can learn more about pet insurance costs, or get a free quote to see your exact rates.

You can customize your plan so it fits your pet’s needs and your budget. Choose your reimbursement rate, deductible, and annual benefit limit, add coverage for routine wellness expenses, or pick a family plan.^2,3,12,13

Check out our Plans page to help you decide which level of coverage is right for your family.

Metlife Pet policies can cover costs related to accidents and illnesses that first occur after enrollment and any waiting periods are over.

Coverage for accidents and optional Preventive Care benefits start at midnight after you enroll in a policy. Coverage for illnesses begins 14 days after enrollment.⁵ Download a sample policy for more information.

Pet health insurance typically covers unexpected accidents and illnesses, not routine care. However, you can add our Preventive Care plan to your policy for an additional cost and save on routine expenses like teeth cleaning, spaying and neutering, vaccinations, and parasite prevention all year long. 

You can enroll your dog or cat no matter what their breed is, and we don’t have any upper age restrictions. We also don’t have per-incident limits on claims — you can be reimbursed for covered expenses up to your annual benefit limit.¹³

Our insurance plans typically don’t cover pre-existing conditions. But if you switch from another provider to a MetLife Pet policy through your employer, your pet’s previously covered pre-existing condition may be covered by us, too.

Other things our policies usually don’t cover include microchipping, grooming, obedience training, elective or cosmetic procedures, breeding, and non-prescription food. Reference your policy for full details.

MetLife Pet Insurance policies can be used at any licensed vet in the U.S. Veterinarians don’t need to accept an insurance policy for you to use your benefits because there’s typically no direct payment between the vet and the insurance company.

Unlike with human health insurance, there’s no such thing as “in-network” and “out-of-network” providers. So if you have a vet you currently love, stick with them!

When you have multiple pets, most pet insurance providers require you to enroll each one in their own policy. However, MetLife Pet has a unique family plan that covers up to three pets on one policy with a shared deductible.³

Covered expenses for all of the pets on your family plan count toward one deductible,¹² so you can meet it faster and start getting reimbursed sooner. Plus, take advantage of a shared annual limit¹³ for flexible coverage, and combine cats and dogs on your family plan.