Compare the Market: The Meerkat Rewards Trick Most People Don't Know About
Compare the Market's the one everyone recognises from the adverts, but the actual reason I keep using it isn't the insurance comparison itself, it's what you unlock afterward. Buy a qualifying product and you get a full year of Meerkat Movies and Meerkat Meals, 2-for-1 cinema tickets and 2-for-1 meals at a long list of restaurants. That's on top of whatever you were comparing for in the first place.
How Meerkat Rewards Actually Works
Once you buy a qualifying product, insurance, energy, most household bills count, you register your account through the Meerkat app and the rewards run for 12 months from your purchase date. Meerkat Movies gets you 2-for-1 cinema tickets every Tuesday or Wednesday at major chains. Meerkat Meals gets you 2-for-1 or a percentage off at a wide range of restaurants, including takeaway and delivery on some.
Here's the bit worth knowing, you don't need to buy a big policy to unlock it. Single-day travel insurance usually counts as a qualifying product, and it typically costs somewhere around a pound or two. If you don't currently need insurance but want the rewards, that's the cheapest legitimate route in, plenty of people use exactly that approach and it's openly documented by Compare the Market themselves as a qualifying product.
Making the Rewards Actually Worth It
One cinema trip or one meal out with the 2-for-1 applied usually covers whatever you spent unlocking the scheme in the first place, everything after that is pure saving for the rest of the year. If you go to the cinema even occasionally or eat out with someone else regularly, this quietly becomes one of the better value schemes going, not because of the insurance comparison itself but because of what it unlocks afterward.
A few things worth knowing before you sign up:
- Check which restaurants and cinemas near you actually participate, since coverage varies by location and some venues opt in and out over time.
- Rewards run 12 months from your purchase date, not from when you first use them, so activate as soon as your policy goes live rather than sitting on it.
- If you do need real insurance, compare properly rather than picking the cheapest option purely to unlock rewards, the reward scheme is a genuine bonus but shouldn't drive the actual cover decision.
Is Compare the Market Worth Using?
For the comparison itself, it does what most comparison sites do, pulls a range of quotes so you're not checking each provider manually. The real reason it stands out is Meerkat Rewards, a genuinely useful ongoing perk that most comparison sites don't offer, and one that's easy to unlock cheaply if you don't need a big policy right now.
Check VoucherMe for the latest Compare the Market offer before you compare.
