The Most and Least Expensive States for Car Insurance
The ten most expensive and ten least expensive states for auto insurance on published NAIC data, from $692 to $1,495 in average annual expenditure.
| State | Avg annual expenditure | Group | Published rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Louisiana | $1,495 | most expensive | #1 |
| New York | $1,436 | most expensive | #2 |
| Michigan | $1,418 | most expensive | #3 |
| District of Columbia | $1,415 | most expensive | #4 |
| Rhode Island | $1,391 | most expensive | #5 |
| Florida | $1,372 | most expensive | #6 |
| New Jersey | $1,334 | most expensive | #7 |
| Georgia | $1,255 | most expensive | #8 |
| Delaware | $1,252 | most expensive | #9 |
| Nevada | $1,247 | most expensive | #10 |
| North Dakota | $692 | least expensive | #1 |
| Maine | $704 | least expensive | #2 |
| Iowa | $708 | least expensive | #3 |
| Idaho | $724 | least expensive | #4 |
| South Dakota | $739 | least expensive | #5 |
| North Carolina | $753 | least expensive | #7 |
| Wisconsin | $753 | least expensive | #6 |
| Indiana | $766 | least expensive | #8 |
| Wyoming | $770 | least expensive | #9 |
| Ohio | $781 | least expensive | #10 |
Louisiana is the most expensive state for car insurance in the published NAIC data, at an average annual expenditure of $1,495. North Dakota is the least expensive, at $692. That is a ratio of roughly 2.2 to 1 — a driver in the most expensive published state spends more than twice what a driver in the cheapest published state spends, on average, for the same broad category of coverage.
But the gap is not a simple story of expensive coasts versus cheap interior. The published extremes include only 20 states, and the states in between — including most of the Midwest and much of the South and West — sit in an unpublished middle. Understanding why the extremes look the way they do, and why the middle is missing, tells you more about your own premium than the ranking itself.
What the published extremes actually show
Look at the ten most expensive entries in the table above. They are not a single region. Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia anchor the South. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia are densely populated and urban. Michigan stands alone in the upper Midwest, and Nevada sits in the Mountain West. The common thread is not geography but claims cost: dense traffic, high repair labor rates, heavy litigation environments, and in some states, specific coverage mandates or residual market structures that push average spending upward.
The ten least expensive entries are more geographically coherent. North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Idaho, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina are largely rural or small-metro states with lower traffic density, lower average repair costs, and fewer severe claims per mile driven. North Carolina is the notable outlier — a state with a distinctive regulatory structure for auto rates that has historically held average expenditures down.
The mechanisms that drive state-to-state differences
Average expenditure is not the same as the sticker price of a policy. It reflects what households in a state actually spent on auto insurance across all their vehicles and coverage choices. Several forces move that number:
- Traffic density and miles driven. More cars per square mile means more collisions per driver, and more collisions means more claims paid per policy.
- Repair and medical costs. Labor rates, parts availability, and the cost of treating injuries vary widely by state. A fender-bender in a high-cost metro can cost several times what the same damage costs in a rural county.
- Litigation and claim practices. States differ in how fault is assigned, whether attorneys can recover fees, and how aggressively claims are contested. Those rules feed directly into premiums.
- Coverage requirements and mandates. A state that requires higher liability limits, personal injury protection, or uninsured motorist coverage will show a higher average expenditure simply because drivers are buying more coverage.
- Residual markets and assigned risk pools. Some states insure a larger share of high-risk drivers through public or quasi-public mechanisms, which can raise the average for everyone.
- Weather and theft. Hail, flooding, and vehicle theft rates drive comprehensive claims, which show up in the average even though they have nothing to do with driving behavior.
- Population mix. States with older or younger populations, or with different urban-rural splits, have different loss profiles.
None of these factors operates alone. Louisiana's position at the top reflects a combination of high claim severity, a litigious environment, and coverage rules that require more than the minimum. North Dakota's position at the bottom reflects low density, low repair costs, and a smaller share of high-severity claims.
Why the middle of the country is unpublished
The NAIC data set publishes only the extremes — the top ten and bottom ten by average expenditure. That means the states in the middle are not ranked at all in this view. A driver in, say, a mid-Atlantic state or a Plains state outside the published lists cannot look at this table and find their state's number.
That is a limitation worth understanding rather than working around. The unpublished middle is where most states sit, and the differences among them are often small — a few dollars per year separates many of the states just outside the published extremes. The ranking is useful for identifying the structural outliers, not for fine-grained comparison between, for example, two neighboring states in the middle of the distribution.
If your state is not in the table, the honest answer is that this data set does not tell you where it ranks. You can still use the published extremes as context: if you live in a state with dense traffic, high repair costs, or heavy mandates, expect to sit closer to the expensive end; if you live in a rural state with low claim severity, expect to sit closer to the cheap end.
What to do with this information
State averages are a starting point, not a quote. The same driver can pay very different amounts depending on factors the state average cannot capture:
- Your vehicle. Repair costs, theft rates, and safety features vary by make and model.
- Your coverage choices. Deductibles, limits, and optional coverages move the premium more than most drivers expect.
- Your driving record and claims history. A single at-fault claim can outweigh years of clean driving.
- Your location within the state. Urban and rural ZIP codes in the same state can have very different rates.
- Your household. Adding a teen driver, or a second vehicle, changes the picture entirely.
The practical move is to compare quotes from multiple insurers using the same coverage limits and deductibles, so the comparison is apples to apples. State averages tell you which direction the wind is blowing; they do not tell you what your own policy should cost.
The figures in the table above are statewide NAIC average expenditures, not quotes, and they describe what households in each state spent on average. An individual premium varies with the property, the driver, and the coverage selected, and nothing here is a promise about any particular rate.
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