Cheap full coverage car insurance companies in 2024

Full coverage car insurance shields you from the liability claims of others and offers financial protection if your vehicle is damaged, destroyed, or stolen. For many drivers, Nationwide has the cheapest average monthly rate for full coverage car insurance, just $129 monthly.

Other major carriers with rates below the national monthly average of $158 include Travelers ($131) and Geico ($147).

Drivers experienced sharp increases in their car insurance premiums in 2023 and again this year, a trend that will likely continue in the near term.

“Escalating loss costs continue to plague many auto insurers, ” says Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications for the Insurance Information Institute (III), which provides research and education on the insurance industry.

That means drivers need to be extra diligent to make sure they’re getting the best rates possible and taking advantage of any discounts that might be available.

Key highlights

• Nationwide has the cheapest full coverage car insurance rate, averaging $129 per month or 18% below the national average.
• You may find the best prices with a regional insurer. Auto-Owners Insurance and Erie Insurance offer rates for less than $130 per month.
• Full-coverage car insurance includes liability protection for damage and injuries you may cause others, plus coverage for your vehicle if it’s damaged, totaled, or stolen.
• The type of vehicle you drive affects your rate. Vans are, on average, the cheapest to insure, while sports cars are the most expensive.

What is full coverage car insurance?

Full coverage car insurance combines liability insurance with comprehensive and collision coverage. 

Liability insurance protects you financially if you’re held responsible for injuries to others and damage to their vehicle in an accident.

• Collision insurance provides coverage for your own vehicle if it’s damaged or destroyed in a crash.
• Comprehensive insurance applies to non-collision-related events that damage or total your auto, such as severe weather, fire, theft and vandalism.
• Liability car insurance is required of drivers in every state except New Hampshire, but full coverage car insurance is optional for most people. However, if you drive a brand-new vehicle, you’ll probably want to invest in full coverage to protect your investment.

If that new vehicle is leased or financed, your lender will probably require you to purchase full coverage. You’ll also have to buy gap insurance, which covers the gap between your car’s fair market value and what you owe on your lease or loan if your vehicle is stolen or totaled in an accident.

Full coverage car insurance does not provide unlimited coverage. Your liability insurance comes with limits on how much your insurer will pay, and it is expressed as a fraction, such as 50/100/50. Coverage breaks down like this:

• Bodily injury per person, or $50,000
• Bodily injury per incident, or $100,000
• Property damage per incident, or $50,000

State-mandated liability insurance coverage tends to be very low. Experts recommend carrying at least 50/100/50 or even 100/300/100 if you can afford it.

Comprehensive and collision insurance both come with a deductible, the amount you must pay before your insurer will step in to cover the cost of repairing or replacing your vehicle. Deductibles can range from zero dollars to $1,000 or more, and you can adjust your deductible to suit your financial needs. Generally speaking, the greater your deductible, the lower your premium.

Which companies offer the cheapest full coverage auto insurance?

The cost of full coverage car insurance ranges widely among carriers. Travelers and Nationwide have the cheapest average rates for full coverage, $129 and $132 monthly, respectively. That’s less than the national average monthly rate of $158. On the other hand, Farmers and Allstate have the most expensive average monthly rates for full coverage, $199 and $209, respectively.

The rates below were collected from auto insurance comparison site CarInsurance.com for single, 40-year-old male and female drivers of a 2023 Honda Accord LX with a good insurance score and no violations on their record for full coverage insurance policy with liability limits of 100/300/100 and a $500 comprehensive and collision deductible. Your coverage needs and specific driver profile will impact rates, so your premium may be higher or lower.

Cheapest full coverage car insurance by state

Where you live can play a big factor in how much you’ll pay for insurance, with less densely populated states generally having much lower rates than more populous ones such as California and Florida. Other factors also come into play, such as how prevalent hailstorms, hurricanes or flooding are in your area.

What can affect my insurance premiums?

Where you live isn’t the only thing that can affect your insurance premiums. Carriers will factor in a wide range of other items to determine your rates, including whether you’re a young or first-time driver, have bad credit, have long daily commutes or have a history of getting speeding tickets. If you’ve been charged with driving under the influence, expect to pay as much as 130% more for insurance.

On the plus side, carriers will also credit you for certain things, such as being a young driver who has taken a driver training course, having a daily commute of less than 5 miles each way, or if you’re married.

Here are some of the items insurance companies will factor in to determine your individual premium rate and whether they will have a negative or positive impact.

Negative Factors

Positive Factors

What impact does age have on insurance rates?

Another big factor that will play a key role in determining your car insurance rates is age. Insurance carriers base their rates on risk, and the simple fact is that younger, newer drivers have a much higher accident rate than older adults. 

Male teenage drivers get hit particularly hard, as, once again, they have a higher rate of accidents than females. The crash death rate in 2020 for male drivers between the ages of 16 and 19 was triple the death rate for female drivers in the same age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Drivers can expect their insurance rates to get cheaper as they age—rates start to normalize around age 25. Factors like getting married and buying a family-friendly vehicle will also positively affect insurance rates.

Here’s how age influences your insurance premiums:

Eco-friendly car choices and saving some green

Did you recently purchase an electric car and think your insurance company would reward you for being environmentally responsible? Prepare to be disappointed.

Carriers will charge you more for owning an electric vehicle because they are more expensive to repair, both labor-wise and in terms of parts.

Electric cars require specialized skills, which are still being developed within the repair industry. Replacement parts are sometimes more expensive because they are not yet mass-produced in the same numbers as conventional cars. Stick to a small-engine gas-powered SUV, and you have the best chance of getting the cheapest rates.

Here are the average monthly premiums for different vehicle types:

Military members and veterans get some of the cheapest rates

If you’re one of the more than 2 million members of the U.S. armed forces or a veteran, you and your family qualify to become USAA members. 

As noted above, USAA offers some of the cheapest rates around, with full coverage car insurance rates at about $115 per month. 

Interestingly, USAA was started in 1922 by 25 U.S. Army officers because they couldn’t get affordable car insurance. At the time, carriers considered military officers to be a high-risk group.

Additional considerations for getting affordable full coverage insurance

Aside from your driving history and personal factors, there are several strategies you should consider to lower your rates.
Kevin Lynch, a recently retired assistant professor of insurance at The American College of Financial Services in Bryn Mawr, Penn., says carriers will offer drivers a wide range of discounts. Still, you must let them know you qualify.

“Most carriers have half a dozen or more discounts like a loyalty discount, an auto-home bundle, safe driver and good student discounts and many more,” he says. “The model of car you drive can also make a big difference, particularly when combined with your age.”

Discounts you should ask about (and the possible premium reductions you might see) include:

• Professional discounts for such affiliations as being an engineer, teacher, firefighter, lawyer, medical professional or alumni of a university (10% to 13% premium reductions)
• Professional discounts for such affiliations as being an engineer, teacher, firefighter, lawyer, medical professional or alumni of a university (10% to 13% premium reductions)
• Safe/good driver discount (10% to 30% reductions)
• Good student discount (14%)
• Away from home student discount (16%)
• Education discounts (7% to 8%)
• Being married (8%)
• Pleasure-use only discounts (6%)
• Paid-in-full reductions (9%)
• Electronic billing/autopay (4%)
• Going paperless (4%)

The other strategy Lynch said drivers don’t do nearly enough is comparison shop.

“Although it can be irritating and time-consuming, drivers should comparison shop on an annual basis,” he says. “With the ease of the Internet these days, it’s not difficult to do.”

Also, Lynch says to get quotes from national and regional carriers, such as Erie in the Northeast.

Expert tips on how to shop for the cheapest full coverage policy

The Insurance Information Institute industry group provides tips on how to get the best rates possible. Perhaps the biggest money-saving strategy is tapping into insurance companies' long list of discounts.

“Auto insurance is a very competitive market and carriers want your business,” the Triple-I’s Friedlander says. “Many national and regional companies offer a wide range of discounts that could trim your premium bills by 40% or more.”

Other tips for getting the cheapest rates possible include:

• Adjust your collision and comprehensive deductibles. While paying a higher deductible will lower your premiums, you will have higher out-of-pocket costs if you file a claim. Be sure you have the deductible amount in savings.
• Consider usage-based insurance (UBI). Devices installed in cars or on phone apps that monitor your driving mileage and behavior can lead to lower rates if you demonstrate good driving patterns. “Insurers could ding you with a rate increase if they detect poor driving habits,” Friedlander says.
• Maintain a good credit history. Insurance carriers have plenty of data showing that drivers with poor credit reports also have worse accident records than average drivers.
• Reduce optional insurance on an older car. As a rule of thumb, if your older car is worth less than 10 times the insurance premium, having collision and/or comprehensive coverage may not be cost-effective. To determine the value of your vehicle, use online resources like Kelley Blue Book and the National Association of Auto Dealers (NADA).
• Add your teenage driver to your existing policy rather than having them buy their own policy. Teenage drivers will be faced with paying the most expensive car insurance rates of their driving years. A parent can help their new driver pay as much as 31% less by adding them to their existing policy. Of course, if the teen gets in an accident, it will likely impact the parents’ rates, but it is a way to help your teen get behind the wheel.

The chart below shows the different rates a teenage driver will pay when being added to their parent’s policy versus being on their own:

Which states have the most expensive full coverage insurance?

Living in a state like California, which has a large population and some of the busiest freeways in the nation, can be a recipe for accidents. And that’s one of the reasons why Californians pay some of the steepest insurance rates in the country.

But that’s not all that goes into determining insurance rates for individual ZIP codes or regions. Insurers will also look at a number of other factors such as whether your area is prone to flooding, hurricanes or severe storms. Increasingly, areas that have experienced a series of bad storms with dent-causing hailstones have seen a spike in claims and rates.

Here are states where drivers pay the highest rates across the nation for full coverage insurance:

Which states have the least expensive full coverage insurance?

Conversely, living in a less-populated state like Maine, which has fewer drivers on the road and fewer accident claims, will be priced more favorably by carriers.

Here are the five states that seem to be in the sweet spots for getting the lowest insurance rates:

Bottom line

Insurance rates took a big jump last year and are expected to climb further in 2024. So, while it may be easier to renew your policy with your current carrier, it can pay to shop around and ensure you’re getting the best deal possible.

Resources & Methodology

Sources

• III. "Insurance Information Institute." Accessed September 2024.
• CDC. "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." Accessed September 2024.
• KBB. "Kelley Blue Book." Accessed September 2024.

Methodology

Editors collected rate information from auto insurance comparison site CarInsurance.com for single, 40-year-old male and female drivers of a 2023 Honda Accord LX with a good insurance score and no violations on their record for full coverage insurance policy with liability limits of 100/300/100 and a $500 comprehensive and collision deductible.

In addition, we also calculated rates for these hypothetical drivers, but with one or more of the following on their record: speeding ticket, at-fault accident, DUI/DWI, poor credit history, or a lapse in coverage.

We analyzed more than 53 million quotes, over 34,000 ZIP codes, and 170 insurance companies nationwide.

Note: 100/300/100 means up to $100,000 for the medical bills of those you injure, up to $300,000 per accident for bodily injury liability for all persons injured in one accident, and $100,000 to repair other drivers’ cars and property you damage.