Flight compensation companies compared: what they charge, and the free route first

Checked 15 Sep 2026·10 min read · 4 tables

£0 is what the CAA says ADR costs a UK261 passenger, and a claims company that takes your case to ADR uses the same free route before it charges its fee. This page explains that route first, then compares five companies alphabetically by their own published fees.

#Can you claim the full amount yourself, for free?

£0 is what ADR costs, and the CAA says plainly that “you do not need to use a third-party claims management company (CMC) to take your complaint to ADR.” Complain to the airline first, then take an unresolved UK261 claim to AviationADR or CEDR, or to the CAA’s Passenger Advice and Complaints Team (PACT) if the airline belongs to neither.

Source: CAA, Alternative dispute resolution; CAA, How to make a complaint — caa.co.uk, checked 2026-09-22.

The Civil Aviation Authority is blunt about it: ADR “is free to use and, in most cases, will provide you with its decision within three months.” Complain to the airline first; if it turns the claim down or has not responded within 8 weeks, take it to whichever ADR scheme the airline belongs to, or to PACT if it belongs to neither. When compensation is owed, the UK261 scale of £220, £350 or £520, or the EU261 scale of €250, €400 or €600, then arrives in full, with no fee taken. The CAA’s complaints guidance adds that such agencies “typically charge consumers a fee for this service which can often be a significant proportion of the compensation amount being sought”, and that “not all airlines will deal with your complaint” if you use one. A claims company can also reach ADR on your behalf, using “the same services and processes that you are entitled to access yourself for free”, the CAA notes, before it may “deduct a significant proportion” of the payout as its fee.

Submit within 12 months of the airline’s final reply, over an incident from the last 6 years, 5 if you live in Scotland. Accept the decision and it binds the airline; refuse it and you can still go to court instead. Every fee compared here assumes compensation is actually owed: if the airline proves extraordinary circumstances, no compensation is due, and a company’s fee is a percentage of nothing.

Send your claim to the airline in writing before you look at any of the five companies below.

#What do flight compensation companies charge?

35% is what AirHelp (VAT included) and Compensair (VAT not stated) each charge on a successful claim; Skycop charges €110, €176 or €264, including VAT, on €250, €400 or €600; Flightright charges “usually 20–30%” plus VAT; and Bott and Co charges a flat 42% excluding VAT. Five companies, five different ways of stating one fee.

Flight compensation company fees, checked 22 September 2026

Source: each company’s own published fee page, checked 2026-09-22 (see Sources).

Skycop’s 44% rate, including VAT, applies to any compensation amount outside its three fixed bands; AirHelp also lists “a fee of US$29.99” for goodwill claims, and sells a separate subscription, AirHelp+, which is a different product from a per-claim fee and is not compared here. Bott and Co publishes a full flat-fee table rather than a single percentage: £110 becomes £47, £175 becomes £75, £220 becomes £93, £260 becomes £113, £350 becomes £150, and £520 becomes £225, each figure excluding VAT. Reading a percentage alone hides how it is charged. AirHelp and Compensair both state 35%, yet only AirHelp confirms VAT is already inside that number. The CAA puts no figure on the “significant proportion” it warns about, and with VAT included, excluded or unstated, the headline percentages cannot be lined up against one another.

ClaimCompass has no fee page to compare: claimcompass.eu and www.claimcompass.eu now redirect to airhelp.com, checked twice on 22 September 2026, so it carries no row here.

Decided a company is worth the fee anyway? AirHelp (third-party claim service) takes UK261 and EU261 claims no win no fee, and keeps 35% including VAT from any payout, plus a further 15% where its Legal Action Fee applies; the free ADR and PACT routes above stay open regardless.

Do it yourself · freeClaim with the airline yourself

• Write to the airline and keep the reference
• Refused: the regulator for your route, free
• You keep all of the compensation

Check your flight in the calculator →

Hand it overAirHelp takes the claim, no win no fee

• They deal with the airline for you
• AirHelp's fee is 35% of the compensation, VAT included, and nothing if the claim fails.

Start with AirHelp →Third-party claim service

Before you sign with any company, ask whether its percentage includes VAT.

#How much of £220, £350 or £520 reaches you after the fee?

£338 is what you would keep from a £520 UK261 payout once AirHelp’s 35% fee, VAT already included, is deducted; £143 from £220, and £227.50 from £350. Only AirHelp and Skycop state their fee inclusive of VAT, so only their net figures can be computed honestly on this page.

AirHelp on UK261 amounts (35%, including VAT)

Skycop on EU261 amounts (fixed fees, including VAT)

Source: AirHelp fee page; Skycop price list, checked 2026-09-22.

Bott and Co’s own printed table shows £225 deducted from a £520 payout, but that figure excludes VAT by the firm’s own wording, so the amount you actually keep is lower than £295 once VAT on the fee is added; this page applies no UK VAT rate, so it does not compute that final figure. Flightright’s “usually 20–30%” is a range, not a number, and states VAT applies on top; Compensair’s payment policy is silent on VAT altogether. Neither can be reduced to one net figure without guessing.

Compare that £338 with the £520 you would keep by claiming yourself when compensation is owed: the fee is the entire gap between the two figures, not a processing charge on top of what you would get anyway. Skycop’s fixed euro amounts only match the EU261 bands exactly; a compensation figure outside €250, €400 or €600 falls to its 44% general rate instead, which this page has not reduced to a net amount because the underlying compensation figure would vary. None of these figures include a court-stage fee, covered next, which can take a further cut if your claim needs a hearing.

Ask any company in writing for the exact amount it would deduct from your own compensation figure before you sign anything.

#What extra fee applies if the claim goes to court?

15% is the extra Legal Action Fee AirHelp may add on top of its 35% service fee if a claim needs court action, in “statistically 3% of all cases” by its own count. Flightright adds 14% only on success; Compensair may add 10%; Skycop’s court fee replaces its standard fee; Bott and Co’s flat 42% already includes court costs.

Court-stage fees, by company

Source: each company’s own published fee page, checked 2026-09-22 (see Sources).

Three shapes cover all five companies. AirHelp, Flightright and Compensair add a second fee on top of the first. Skycop replaces its standard fee with a different one entirely. Bott and Co folds court costs into the 42% it already charges, so nothing changes at that stage.

A worked example shows the size of that second fee: on a £520 UK261 payout that reaches court, AirHelp’s combined 35% plus 15%, both including VAT, comes to 50%, so £260 is deducted and £260 reaches you, half of the £520 award. Flightright’s 14% surcharge applies “only in case of success”, so a case that is lost adds no extra fee to what was otherwise agreed. Compensair “reserves the right to charge” its extra 10% without saying when it would. Skycop’s switch works differently: its Legal Proceedings fee of €125, €200 or €300 on the three bands, or 50% otherwise, stands in for the standard fee instead of adding to it. Bott and Co’s 42% plus VAT stays the same at the court stage.

Read a company’s court-stage terms before your case gets anywhere near a hearing, not after.

#Does using a company change how the airline treats your claim?

2022 produced two UK court rulings on this question. The Court of Appeal held that barring a claims company from filing through an airline’s online portal could be a material obstacle to compensation; the Supreme Court held that an airline on notice of a solicitor’s lien can be ordered to pay its fee.

Source: Dore & Anor v EasyJet Airline Company Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 1553; Bott & Co Solicitors Ltd v Ryanair DAC [2022] UKSC 8 — caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk, checked 2026-09-22.

For UK261 claims, in Dore & Anor v EasyJet Airline Company Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 1553, the Court of Appeal held that passengers who used easyJet’s own online portal had made a valid claim, and that a claims company, or anyone else, may submit that claim through the portal in the passenger’s name; barring it could be a material obstacle to compensation. The decision binds lower courts in England and Wales. Separately, in Bott & Co Solicitors Ltd v Ryanair DAC [2022] UKSC 8, the UK Supreme Court held, by a 3-2 majority, that a solicitor has an equitable lien over the compensation it claims for a client, so an airline that pays the passenger directly after notice of that lien can still be ordered to pay the solicitor’s fee. Neither ruling stops an airline disliking claims companies. The CAA’s own advice is to complain to the airline directly first, partly because “not all airlines will deal with your complaint if you use services such as Resolver or Claims Management Companies.”

Send your own claim to the airline before you involve any company, so a refusal to deal with agencies never closes a door you needed. If the airline still says no, airline refused compensation covers what comes next, with or without a company.

#How are the companies on this page compared?

5 companies appear in this page’s tables in alphabetical order: AirHelp, Bott and Co, Compensair, Flightright and Skycop, each checked on its own fee page on 22 September 2026. A company’s own statement about its own price is the only primary source for that price; it is never a source for any legal fact on this page.

Source: each company’s own published fee page, checked 2026-09-22.

Withdrawal terms, whether an airline pays a company directly, refusal rates, payout speed per company and review scores are not on this page, because none of them could be checked against a primary source. How long airlines take to pay compensation is covered separately, from passenger reports rather than company marketing, at airline compensation payout times. The full method for how claim-company fee pages are checked and re-checked sits at how we verify.

Every fee above was read directly from the company’s own live page on 22 September 2026, not from a marketing email, a review site or a search snippet. The CAA’s own advice, to complain to the airline yourself before involving any agency, shaped the page’s order: free route, then fees, then what is left, then the court-stage exception, then how a company changes the airline’s response. A fee page can change between two checks, which is why every row in the fee table carries the date it was read. Amounts stay in the currency the company itself quotes, £ where a company states sterling and € where it states euros; neither is converted into the other anywhere on this page.

Re-read a company’s own fee page before you rely on any figure here: a percentage or a VAT position can change without notice.

#Sources

• Civil Aviation Authority, Alternative dispute resolution - caa.co.uk, checked 2026-09-22.
• Civil Aviation Authority, How to make a complaint - caa.co.uk, checked 2026-09-22.
• AirHelp, Our fees - airhelp.co.uk, checked 2026-09-22.
• Flightright, Costs - flightright.co.uk, checked 2026-09-22.
• Bott and Co Solicitors, Flight delay compensation fees - bottonline.co.uk, checked 2026-09-22.
• Skycop, Price List - skycop.com, checked 2026-09-22.
• Compensair, Payment Policy - compensair.com, checked 2026-09-22.
• Dore & Anor v EasyJet Airline Company Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 1553 - caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk, checked 2026-09-22.
• Bott & Co Solicitors Ltd v Ryanair DAC [2022] UKSC 8 - caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk, checked 2026-09-22.
• Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 as it forms part of UK law, art. 7 - legislation.gov.uk; Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, art. 7 - eur-lex.europa.eu, checked 2026-09-15.

#FAQ

Do I need a claim company to get flight compensation?

No. The CAA says: "You do not need to use a third-party claims management company (CMC) to take your complaint to ADR." Complain to the airline yourself, then use AviationADR or CEDR, both free. When compensation is owed, and no extraordinary circumstances apply, you keep the full £220, £350 or £520.

How much does AirHelp charge?

35% of the compensation, including VAT, is AirHelp's standard fee on a successful claim. In what it calls "statistically 3% of all cases", a 15% Legal Action Fee, also including VAT, is deducted on top. AirHelp lists a separate fee of US$29.99 for goodwill claims.

Which claim companies include VAT in their fee?

2 of the 5 companies compared here state their fee inclusive of VAT: AirHelp (35%) and Skycop (fixed amounts on €250, €400 or €600). Flightright and Bott and Co both charge theirs "plus VAT" or "exclusive of VAT"; Compensair's payment policy does not state a VAT position at all.

What is a legal action fee?

An extra fee some claim companies add if a compensation claim needs court action, on top of their standard percentage. AirHelp adds 15%, Flightright adds 14% only on success and Compensair may add 10%; Skycop's version replaces its standard fee instead of adding to it; Bott and Co folds court costs into its flat 42%.

Is ADR free for flight delay complaints?

Yes. The CAA states ADR "is free to use and, in most cases, will provide you with its decision within three months." That applies whether you go to AviationADR or CEDR yourself once the airline turns you down or 8 weeks pass without a response, or a claims company takes the same route and deducts its fee.