I switched to CrowdHealth and I’m sharing my brutally honest review, including an in-depth breakdown of how it works and everything you need to know.

Why I Switched to CrowdHealth

I decided to forgo traditional health insurance and switch to CrowdHealth because I’m relatively still young and healthy and the reviews seemed positive. None of my friends or family had ever heard of them, but I was just so tired of paying over $500 a month when I never even visited the doctor. When you’re insured, bills are overinflated on purpose, and it’s ridiculous you have to pay a costly premium for a high-deductible plan. Even while I’m insured I’d always worry my insurer would refuse to cover things.

It’s bonkers how when you’re self pay, prices drop dramatically. I went to the emergency room and they told me it would cost $600 to start with, and when I said I was cash self pay, they immediately told me it would cost $250. That’s less than half of what they would’ve charged to an insured person!

The traditional system feels pretty broken in a lot of ways, and there was something that appealed to me about opting out of it and pooling resources directly with a community instead of being at the mercy of an insurer that profits from denying you. I stopped hemming and hawing about it, and decided to just try it out, see if CrowdHealth is actually legit, and cancel anytime without penalty if I didn’t like it.

What is CrowdHealth and How Does It Work

CrowdHealth is a healthcare cost-sharing platform, not an insurance company. It’s its own category: a crowdfunding platform with no networks and no deductibles. Members pay a $60/month Advocacy Fee (a subscription fee) plus a variable monthly “crowdfunding ask” (capped at $140/month for an individual under 55, more for older members or families) to help fund other members’ medical bills.

In exchange, when you have a qualifying medical expense, you pay a fixed “member commitment” (a premium of $500) and CrowdHealth submits the rest to the crowd for crowdfunding. It’s a whole lot cheaper than traditional health insurance for young, healthy people, and it has a strong track record of funding bills so far. You must go in with your eyes wide open though and understand the risks, which I’ll get into further down.

How Much Does It Cost per Month

In a nutshell, the max you will pay for your membership as an individual is $200 per month, but it’s most likely you’ll pay around $100-$120 monthly. It’s broken down into two parts: your base cost, which goes to Crowdhealth admin costs (they call it an “Advocacy Fee”), and Crowdfunding Ask, which goes towards other members’ bills. So far I’ve never had to pay the max ask. My total cost each month has been $100.

• Advocacy Fee: This is my fixed monthly base cost of $60 per person, per month, regardless of claims activity. This funds CrowdHealth’s staff, who review bills and negotiate them down with providers.
• Monthly Crowdfunding Ask: A separate, capped monthly amount you may be asked to contribute toward other members’ bills — up to $140/month for an individual under 55, $280/month for ages 55–64, and up to $420/month for a family of four or more. You’re never asked for more than your cap in a given month, but you can be asked for the full cap repeatedly. So far I’ve not been asked for the max yet.
• Member Commitment for a Health Event: Your own out-of-pocket amount per health event before crowdfunding kicks in is $500 for a standard event, $3,000 specifically for maternity care, or $15,000 if you’ve chosen the lower-cost Major Medical tier instead of Full Service.

Here’s an example: an individual under 55 on Full Service pays $60 advocacy + up to $140 crowdfunding ask = up to $200/month in a bad month, or as little as $60 in a month with no active bills in the crowd. If you have a $20,000 emergency room visit, CrowdHealth negotiates the bill down first (the company advertises 30–60% discounts on negotiated bills), you pay the first $500, and the rest goes out to the crowd for funding.

Cost of CrowdHealth vs Traditional Insurance For Me

In 2026, if I went with Kaiser Permanente’s cheapest plan Bronze 60 HMO 7500 it would cost me $370 per month. It comes with a $7,500 annual deductible which would also be my out of pocket max.

In a year with no health events, the cost difference looks like this:

• Kaiser: $370 per month = $4,400 a year
• CrowdHealth:
  • $60 Advocacy Fee with a max monthly contribution of $140: $200 per month or $2,400 per year.
  • In reality, I’ve never been asked for the max amount so it looks more like $1,440 per year.
  • The downside is California has an insurance mandate so I have to pay a penalty to the state, but if I didn’t the savings would be roughly $3,000 a year.

Let’s say, knock on wood, I actually have a major health event happen and I get a bill from the hospital of $30,000, which would actually be over $60,000 if I were insured. The cost difference would break down like this:

• Kaiser Permanente: $7,500 (my deductible) + $4,440 (premiums) = $11,940
• CrowdHealth: I pay the $500 Member Commitment with the rest of the bill funded by the community. Plus the $200 monthly membership cost.
• The total potential savings is around $10,000.

My Personal Experience with CrowdHealth

I’m diving into the nitty gritty of my entire experience using Crowdhealth as an alternative to health insurance so far. No BS here.

Submitting my claims in practice

When I first joined, wondering if my claims / bills would actually get crowdfunded was the most nerve-racking part! From the moment I first submitted my bill to when the funds were transferred to my bank account took eleven days total. It seems most people’s experiences have been similar to mine. I was definitely nervous and opened the app everyday to check on the progress!

Submitting a bill is a total cinch and takes me a few minutes tops. The process looks like this:

1. I create a “Health Event” in the app and answer all the questions regarding the event (my symptoms, care I received, diagnosis).

2. Upload pictures of the bill

3. Crowdhealth reviews the bill before approving it for crowdfunding (this takes the most time and I waited around a week).

4. The Crowd (other members) fund my bill after I cover the first $500.

It was so unbelievably easy, straightforward and painless. And as a self pay patient, the hospital cuts my bill down to nearly 60% of what the insured rate is. I once received an unexpected additional bill in the mail from the hospital months after the first bill and I was able to add it to original Health Event and have the extra costs crowdfunded. I simply uploaded the photo and the extra bill was crowdfunded in 10 days.

There’s a few awesome perks I particularly love and one is the annual wellness event they allow per member per year. It’s the only event you don’t have to pay the usual $500 commitment and can have up to $300 crowdfunded. This can go towards a primary care physical exam (including naturopathy), pediatric child visits, direct primary care (DPC) membership fee, an annual female gynecological exam and labs, dental exam, including cleaning and X-rays, or vision exam. I considered using it for a Function health test but ended up using it for an overdue TDAP.

Crowdfunding other people’s bills

So the max ask for me as an individual is $140 per month, but I haven’t been asked for the max amount yet. I can see exactly where and what my money is helping pay, like this month I helped a woman in Texas help pay for an Ovarian Mass Event and last month I helped a member in Florida pay for a Heart Murmur.

CrowdHealth will send you a notification letting you know who needs your help for what each month and you can manually approve it, otherwise the payment automatically goes out anyway. I’ve never manually denied a request (it would automatically go out to someone’s health event anyway, so I don’t see the point) so my generosity score is a perfect 100, which, in turn, helps my chances of getting my own bills funded.

CrowdHealth pays for all my therapy sessions

My membership pays for itself thanks to the free Betterhelp therapy sessions and it made signing up for CrowdHealth totally worth it. I used to be signed up directly with Betterhelp and paid over 200 bucks a month for a weekly therapy session and now I never even see a bill for it. I was going through a tough life transition and it was great not having the financial stress of paying for therapy separately, which can be super expensive! It’s actually even better than having a standard BetterHelp subscription, because you can do unlimited sessions as a Crowdhealth member but only one session per week as a regular BetterHelp member.

My Personal Care Advocate Ellie is Awesome!

Shoutout to Ellie, my personal care advocate, who immediately answers all my texts and questions over the phone. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a real human being dedicated to helping me one-one-one like a personal concierge, especially since I was nervous joining. I’m always surprised at how quickly she responds, (I’m talking within minutes!) and it feels strange but really cool to be able to casually text her like she’s any friend or family member in my contacts. Any email that I’ve sent to the general support email always gets replied to by a real human in a timely manner.

My Pros and Cons

This is what I personally like and don’t like about CrowdHealth. I’m sure it varies from person to person, so this list is not exhaustive.

Pros:

• Substantially cheaper than anything I could find on Covered California
• No provider network restrictions — any doctor or hospital is usable.
• I can cancel anytime
• Free unlimited therapy
• Great customer service and support via email, text and phone
• Submitting a bill is easy and painless and all my bills have been crowdfunded so far.
• I’ve never had to pay the max Crowdfunding ask so far

Cons:

• No legal guarantee my bills will be funded. Contribution from other members is entirely voluntary. CrowdHealth is not health insurance – it’s health cost sharing based on a good faith system.
• No dental or vision care outside of the Annual Wellness Event that covers $300. Knock on wood, I don’t have any teeth or eye problems right now so this wasn’t a dealbreaker for me, but I can imagine it could be if I did.
• Prescription meds coverage is a bit iffy. CrowdHealth covers prescription medications tied to an eligible new health event for up to 12 consecutive months, but NOT for one tied to an Annual Wellness Event. Pre-existing conditions, routine maintenance meds needed before joining, or prescriptions past a 12-month limit are excluded from crowdfunding.
• I can’t pay my monthly costs with a credit card (not a biggie but it would’ve been nice if I could).

Overall, I think if you were to sign up for CrowdHealth, now is the sweet spot ideal time. They’ve been around five years now, so it’s not so new that they have no track record, but they haven’t grown so big either that they’ve had to implement stricter rules or member support has become less personal / slower. Right now, every new member is precious to them and they seem to treat each one so. There’s around 40,000 people total in the “Crowd” as they call it and 15k of that signed up in the previous year alone, so I would say they’re growing quickly.

CrowdHealth Membership Perks

Here’s the full list of perks included with CrowdHealth membership:

Care & Advocacy

• A dedicated Personal Care Advocate (a real person, not a call center) who helps you find care and manages your bills. I text mine directly and it feels like I’m texting a friend.
• Bill negotiation on your behalf — the company advertises discounts ranging from 70% up to 90%+ off original hospital charges in some cases
• “Find a Doc” service connecting you to a database of tens of thousands of vetted physicians nationwide

Virtual Care

• Unlimited virtual primary and urgent care visits through HealthTap, available in all 50 states and eligible for community funding
• Unlimited virtual talk therapy through BetterHelp (including teen and couples counseling), no upfront payment required. You can choose one type of therapy and it’s fully covered (I’ve never seen a bill sent my way for my therapy sessions).

Prescriptions

• A prescription discount card through a partnership with MedalistRx, with members reportedly seeing 25–85% off self-pay pharmacy costs

Wellness & Preventive Care

• Up to $300/year in funded preventive care (checkups, labs, gynecological exams) with the usual $500 member commitment waived
• Quarterly Specials — discounted access to tests like CAC (coronary artery calcium) scores, gut health testing, DEXA scans, and fitness assessments
• The “Exit Diabetes” pilot — a 6-month program aimed at reversing Type 2 diabetes

Cost-Reduction Programs

• Longevity Discount Program: up to 20% off your monthly contribution by passing one or two of three biomarker tests (fasting insulin, hs-CRP, or a DEXA visceral fat scan) during an annual testing window — 10% for one passed test, 20% for two

What Does CrowdHealth Not Cover

CrowdHealth doesn’t cover cosmetic procedures, fertility care, long. term prescriptions, and if you’re on the Black Swan membership tier, maternity. Procedures and treatments tied to a pre-existing conditions are not eligible for funding in the first and second years of your Membership, and funding is limited in subsequent years.

Dental and Vision Care: Dental and vision care is not eligible for funding outside of an Annual Wellness Visit which covers a max amount of $300.

What to Know Before Joining

Eligibility

• Tobacco users are declined entirely — defined as daily tobacco use for a year or more at any point in your life, not just currently. This is stricter than most health shares, which typically just charge tobacco users more rather than excluding them.
• Weight limits apply — roughly 220 lbs for women and 260 lbs for men, per Maryland’s advisory. This kind of underwriting is something ACA-compliant insurance is legally barred from doing.
• Pre-existing conditions are excluded for the first two years of membership entirely, then phase in at up to $25,000/year in year three onward.
• Cosmetic procedures, fertility treatment, and long-term prescriptions (12+ months) are not eligible for crowdfunding at all, and dental and vision care outside of an Annual Wellness Event.

Uninsured Penalty

If you live in a state with an insurance mandate you can still join CrowdHealth but you’ll get hit with a penalty by your state if you live in California, DC, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, or Vermont. Check your state’s laws.

The Regulatory Reality

Some view CrowdHealth as gambling because there is no legal guarantee your bills will be paid for by other members. The whole thing operates on good faith. You also don’t get ACA protections like guaranteed pre-existing condition coverage or an out-of-pocket cap, generally don’t have access to negotiated provider-network rates the way insured patients do, and face eligibility restrictions most insurance can’t legally impose.

Large Bills or Scheduled Procedures

There is no max amount to a bill you can submit for crowdfunding, but if it’s very large, what they’ll most likely do is split it into different months so other members aren’t overwhelmed. For really large bills, they advise you to not pay upfront and reach out to your Personal Care Advocate so they can negotiate the bill down on your behalf first.

Am I a Good Fit?

CrowdHealth makes the most sense for someone who is young, healthy, not managing a chronic condition, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t live in a state with a mandate requiring health coverage, and is either self-employed or doesn’t have access to employer-subsidized insurance. I’d only recommend it if you’re fully aware and understand that you’re opting out of legally guaranteed coverage in exchange for a much lower monthly cost and a strong (but not contractual) track record. Crowdhealth is better than nothing, especially if you would be totally uninsured without it, but is not the same as health insurance.

If you feel this is a good fit for you, you can use the below to have your maximum crowdfunding request reduced to $39 the first 3 months (which brings the total monthly cost to under $100).

Sign Up Here
use OBL for $39 max crowdfunding ask for first 3 months