Pet health insurance (Tierkrankenversicherung) in Germany is a real growth story, but not yet a cultural default the way it is in Sweden. Industry reporting on the German market shows the number of insured pets more than doubled between 2019 and 2024, from roughly 845,000 to over 2 million, with gross premiums rising from around EUR 173 million to EUR 720 million over the same period.

Two things are driving that growth: real advances in veterinary care that make more treatments possible (and more worth paying for), and the revision of the Gebührenordnung für Tierärzte (GOT), Germany's official vet-fee schedule, at the end of 2022, which raised the cost of many standard treatments and made insurance a more obviously useful hedge. Comprehensive cover has grown fastest, rising from around 22% to nearly 40% of insured animals between 2020 and 2024, overtaking older surgery-only policies.

Even with that growth, Germany's roughly 27 million dogs and cats mean insured pets are still a modest share of the total, not the majority. For a visiting owner, the practical takeaway is the same as everywhere: confirm your own policy covers veterinary treatment in Germany specifically, since German practices bill at the time of treatment under the GOT fee schedule regardless of how your home country's system usually works.