Best-Of Awards 2025 Methodologies
Best Budget-Friendly Homeowners Insurance
How we picked the companies to evaluate:

NerdWallet started with a list of the nation’s 50 largest homeowners insurance companies (by premiums written), compiled by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners using 2023 market share data. These companies collectively account for 87.5% of the market for homeowners insurance in the United States, according to the NAIC. Some of the providers are NerdWallet partners, but this did not influence our selection of the winner.

We narrowed the list to include only insurers that sell policies in a majority of states, that do not restrict availability based on membership criteria (such as military service) and for which pricing data was available for at least 20 states from Quadrant Information Services. Other companies that did not meet this data threshold may be cheaper for many consumers. We also eliminated companies that received more complaints to state regulators than expected for 2021-2023. Complaints received by state insurance regulators are reported to the NAIC, which calculates a complaint index each year for each subsidiary, measuring its share of total complaints relative to its size or share of total premiums in the industry. To evaluate a company’s complaint history, NerdWallet calculated a similar index for each insurer, weighted by market shares of each subsidiary, over the three-year period.

How we chose the winner:
To determine which widely available insurer had the cheapest rates, we analyzed median rates within each state and Washington, D.C., for homeowners with 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 ranked companies by their median rates for a single-family, two-story home built in 1984. Our sample homeowners were nonsmokers with no recent claims on record and a credit-based insurance score considered “good” by each insurer.

As a final check, we also compared rates for this profile across the 13 states where all widely available companies were represented. These 13 states were Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

We then selected the insurer that most frequently had the cheapest median rate among the companies that met the "widely available" criteria.
How we verified our data:
NerdWallet gets insurance pricing data from Quadrant Information Services. Information about where insurers are available to consumers is verified through direct contact with insurance companies and through data supplied by insurance companies to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Information about complaints is verified through data provided by state insurance regulators to the NAIC.