Methodology

To calculate auto and home insurance rates, NerdWallet averaged rates based on public filings obtained by pricing analytics company Quadrant Information Services. These are sample rates, and your own rates will be different.

Auto insurance

For auto insurance, we examined median rates for 35-year-old men and women for all ZIP codes in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Although it's one of the largest insurers in the country, Liberty Mutual is not included in our rates analysis due to a lack of publicly available information.

In our analysis, “good drivers” had no moving violations on record; a “good driving” discount was included for this profile. Our “good” and “poor” credit rates are based on credit score approximations and do not account for proprietary scoring criteria used by insurance providers.

We used a 3-year-old Toyota Camry L for all drivers and assumed 12,000 annual miles driven.

Sample drivers had the following coverage limits:

• $100,000 bodily injury liability coverage per person.
• $300,000 bodily injury liability coverage per crash.
• $50,000 property damage liability coverage per crash.
• $100,000 uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage per person.
• $300,000 uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage per crash.
• Collision coverage with $1,000 deductible.
• Comprehensive coverage with $1,000 deductible.

In states where required, minimum additional coverages were added. We used the same assumptions for all other driver profiles, with the following exceptions:

• We changed the credit tier from “good” to “poor” as reported to the insurer to see rates for drivers with poor credit.
• For drivers with one at-fault crash, we added a single at-fault crash that happened six months ago, resulting in $10,000 in property damage and no bodily injury claim.
• For drivers with a DUI, we added a single drunken driving violation that happened six months ago.
• For drivers with a ticket, we added a single speeding violation for driving 16 mph over the speed limit.

Homeowners insurance

For homeowners insurance, we averaged rates for 40-year-old homeowners from a variety of insurance companies in every ZIP code across the U.S. All rates are rounded to the nearest $5.

Sample homeowners were nonsmokers with good credit living in a single-family, two-story home built in 1984. They had a $1,000 deductible and the following coverage limits:

• $300,000 in dwelling coverage.
• $30,000 in other structures coverage.
• $150,000 in personal property coverage.
• $60,000 in loss of use coverage.
• $300,000 in liability coverage.
• $1,000 in medical payments coverage.

We made minor changes to the sample policy in cases where rates for the above coverage limits or deductibles weren't available.

We used the same assumptions for all other homeowner profiles, with the following exceptions:

• For homeowners with a claims history, we added a single wind damage claim.
• We changed the credit tier from “good” to “poor” as reported to the insurer to see rates for homeowners with poor credit.
• To see the effect of changing your dwelling coverage amount, we changed the limit to $200,000 or $500,000. This also changed some of the other coverage limits that were tied to the dwelling coverage amount. For example, the other structures coverage limit is typically 10% of the dwelling coverage amount, so our sample policy with $200,000 of dwelling coverage had $20,000 of other structures coverage.