Insurance

What pet insurance actually costs

The benchmark premium insurers publish themselves, what your state does to it, and the honest answer to "how much is insurance for my breed".

Pet insurance is quoted in monthly dollars and sold on fear, which makes it hard to tell an ordinary price from a bad one. There is a straightforward benchmark: the insurers themselves publish what the average policy costs. For a dog it is $836 a year for accident and illness cover, the kind most people mean by "pet insurance". Anything far above that on a healthy young dog deserves a question.

What the average policy costs

North American Pet Health Insurance Association, State of the Industry Report 2026 — highlights (2025 data). Figures are 2025 premiums across the North American market.

Two things in that table are worth a second look. Accident-only cover costs about 77% less than full cover — it pays when a dog is hit by a car or swallows a sock, and pays nothing for the cancer and the hip that actually dominate late-life bills. And a cat costs roughly 48% less to insure than a dog, which is the clearest single number in the whole species comparison.

What it costs in your state

Premiums follow the price of veterinary care, and care is not priced the same everywhere. The table applies each state's price level for services to the national average — the same adjustment every figure on this site uses. End to end that is $108 a year, or 14%, between New York at $870 and North Dakota at $762.

Be careful with how much weight you put on that. A real quote can differ far more between two postcodes than our 14% spread suggests, because insurers price the postcode itself, not a state-wide index. Read the column as "roughly where your state sits", not as a rate.

Estimated: the national average scaled by the state's price level for services (BEA regional price parities). Insurers do not publish premiums by state, so this is our adjustment, not a quoted rate.

Why there is no per-breed price here

Searches for insurance are almost always breed-shaped — people look up their own dog. A real insurer does price by breed: a bulldog and a whippet of the same age in the same street get different quotes, because the claims history behind them is different. So why does this site not publish that number?

Because it is not published anywhere. Insurers treat their breed loadings as pricing, not as data; the figures that circulate online are either one company's marketing or a guess dressed as research. We hold every number on this site to a source you can open, and a per-breed premium would fail that test. The same rule is why we publish no breeder price either.

What is true and usable: within any one insurer, the levers that move your quote most are the dog's age at signup, your postcode, and the deductible and reimbursement rate you choose — a $1,000 deductible at 70% reimbursement is a different product from a $250 at 90%, and the gap between them is usually larger than the gap between two breeds. Get quotes for your own dog, and compare them against the $836 benchmark above.

What the premium is buying

Set against ordinary care, the premium is not a small line. For a West Highland White Terrier in Colorado our model puts routine veterinary care — exams, vaccines, preventives, a share of dental work — at $810 a year, and the insurance premium at $833. Insurance is not a way to make that cheaper; none of it is claimable. It is a bet against the year with a $6,000 surgery in it.

Whether that bet pays depends on a number you can work out: the size of vet bill at which the policy returns more than it costs. Our break-even tool does it for your breed, state, deductible and reimbursement rate.

Sources and method

Premiums come from the North American Pet Health Insurance Association's State of the Industry Report 2026 — highlights (2025 data), the industry's own annual count of policies and average premiums, published in June 2026 for 2025. State figures are that average multiplied by the state's price level for services from the Bureau of Economic Analysis regional price parities — the same multiplier used everywhere else on this site, and marked as an estimate because it is one.

What this page is not: a quote, a recommendation of any insurer, or a per-breed price. Insurance links on this site are marked as partner links and are disclosed on how we make money.

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