Our editorial team spent hundreds of hours combing through data to assess the landscape of the insurance industry and provide you with a complete guide to the best car insurance companies.
We’ve reviewed each provider’s coverage options, features, discounts and reputation among customers and insurance industry evaluators like J.D. Power. Our team also received cost data from Quadrant Information Services for both full and minimum coverage.
The sections below will provide an in-depth look into the factors worth considering as you shop around for the best car insurance coverage. We also offer information into our two car insurance studies completed in 2022.
Auto Insurance Company Rating Factors
Here’s a further look into the factors that influenced how we rated each of the best car insurance companies on our list:
Reputation
The reputation score comes from how the company ranks in J.D. Power consumer studies as well as its Better Business Bureau (BBB rating). The BBB is an organization that evaluates a company’s business practices, licensing information, customer reviews and response to those reviews. We also factor in whether the provider is accredited by the BBB.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction scores come from a mix of online reviews and survey data we’ve compiled ourselves. In particular, we look at the satisfaction scores for many auto insurance companies from our August 2022 insurance survey, which polled 6,923 policyholders.
Coverage
To determine a coverage score, we first look to see whether a company provides the six standard types of car insurance. After that, we check what additional coverage the company offers. The more extensive the coverage options, the better the score in this category.
Availability
A company with a high availability score typically operates across the entire country. This score is weighted a little less for mid-sized companies that only operate in a few states, but have excellent reputations among customers.
Cost
When determining a company’s cost score, we look at average costs for a variety of driver profiles. We then compare those numbers to the national average and determine a score based on whether the company tends to be cheaper or more expensive than the national average.
Companies also get better cost scores when they offer a large variety of discounts that can apply to many kinds of policyholders, from veterans, to students to accident-free drivers.
What Is Quadrant Information Services?
Our cost data comes from a company called Quadrant Information Services, an analytics company that compiles insurance industry statistics from across the country. When calculating average costs for providers’ state minimum-coverage and full-coverage policies, we use data from 100 ZIP codes across each state.
Each driving profile uses either a specific example vehicle or finds the average from the use of several different vehicles. The standard profile for average costs is a 35-year-old driver with good credit and a clean driving record, unless otherwise specified.