Cheap Car Insurance in Florida for 2024
Florida is one of the most expensive state for auto insurance with an average premium above $3,900 a year. We researched the cheapest insurers in Florida and how you can save.
How Much Does Car Insurance Cost in Florida?
In our larger story on car insurance, we found that a good national average for auto insurance was $1,800. In Florida, depending on what city and county you live in, you’re probably going to be paying a lot more than that.
| Rates we found reported as “typical” or “average” | Average (annual) | Adjusted average* (annual) |
|---|
(*) The “adjusted average” is computed by eliminating the highest and lowest values and averaging the remaining values.
Who Has The Cheapest Car Insurance in Florida?
- State Farm
- Geico
- Direct General
- Mercury
- Allstate
- MetLife
- United Automobile
- Progressive
We sampled information based on a number of sources and developed a range of what insurance typically costs in Florida. We based these samples on a driver with at least a decade of driving experience, a clean driving record, driving America’s most popular, non-exotic vehicles.
The important thing to remember is that insurance rates can be all over the place, and change almost daily. This range is only a GUIDE to give you a basic idea about the kind of rates insurance companies charge in Florida.
DISCLAIMER: There are also a ton of other factors that are going to impact the cost of insurance on your car. We’ll provide info on some of those variables, but your best bet is to read our article on Cheap Car Insurance for 2024 to get a better idea.
Who Has The Best Cheap Car Insurance in Florida?
Best Large Insurance Carrier - State Farm. In almost every instance, State Farm provided the least expensive car insurance in the state.
Cheapest Insurance with Bad Credit - Geico. Florida is one of the states that allows insurers to make your life worse by charging you more if you have bad credit. The insurer that seems to behave the least horribly is Geico.
Cheapest Insurance with One Accident - State Farm. Again, State Farm comes in as a winner in terms of raking you over the coals the least if you’ve actually had to use your insurance for anything.
Cheapest Insurance for Higher Mileage - Geico. Most insurers seem to be willing to tack on charges if your average mileage goes from say 7,500 miles per year up to 15,000 miles per year. In the data we looked at, Geico seemed to stick pretty close to one price, regardless of mileage.
Why Are Insurance Rates Higher in Florida?
Well, “Florida Man” isn’t just an internet meme. Florida has done a lot to reduce fraud since 2011, when fraud and abuse cost Floridians $658 million in one year alone. Since 2012, it has instituted reforms that have reduced Personal Injury Protection claims by some 13.6 percent, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.
But while progress has been made, Florida is still a “no-fault” state with what’s known as a “verbal threshold” for personal injury claims. The idea was that if there’s a monetary threshold before you can sue for injury (say $10,000), the plaintiff will simply find a doctor willing to write up more than $10,000 in bills. With a verbal threshold, the thought was there would be less fraud. Only it turned out that in Florida, there was more. Much more, resulting in Personal Injury Protection (PIP) claims pushed ever higher by unscrupulous doctors and clinics that bill for unnecessary services.
Along with that, there are loads of other circumstances that can cause your insurance to go up in Florida. Accidents, speeding tickets, any kind of claims whatsoever, your family status, and even your credit rating can cause your insurance cost to rise.
One of the big ones is where you live in the state. If you live in West Palm Beach, your insurance rate can be $1,000 more per year that someone living in Cape Coral on the Gulf Coast.
How Do Accidents Affect Rates in Florida?
The bottom line here is that if you get in an accident, your insurance rate is going to go up. Exactly how much it can rise depends on the same day-to-day fluctuations that impact your rate if you didn’t have an accident. Here’s what we did find out, though:
| Range of Rate Increases for One Accident | Average of Rate Increases | Adjusted Average of Rate Increases |
|---|
It’s hard to pin this information down because the means of applying surcharges varies widely by insurer. For example, if you’ve paid more in your annual insurance cost to be a part of Allstate’s Accident Forgiveness program, your increase for one accident is 0%, but your overall cost of insurance is higher every year than if you hadn’t. Same with a program like Progressive’s Snapshot usage-based insurance plan.
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How Do Tickets Affect Rates in Florida?
It’s a similar story with tickets. The percentage ranges from zero to 42 percent, depending on insurer, but nailing down exactly what kind of violation we’re talking about -- was it for 10 over on the highway or 32 over in a school zone? -- is impossible. Here’s the range of data we were able to find for speeding violations in Florida:
| Range of Rate Increases for One Speeding Violation | Average of Rate Increases | Adjusted Average of Rate Increases |
|---|
How Can You Get Car Insurance Discounts in Florida?
The most significant discount you can realize in Florida is to move. You don’t necessarily have to move out of state, but living in one city versus another in Florida can save you over $1000 per year. But that seems like a lot of effort. The easier way to go about it is to avoid accidents and speeding tickets. Avoiding accidents has gotten easier in recent years as vehicles with adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking systems have come to market, even in entry level vehicles like the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla. It’s even starting to become standard equipment in a lot of those products.
We also have an entire story on the tens of thousands of discount programs available, based on memberships, military service and other associations.
What’s The Minimum Coverage Allowed in Florida?
Ironically -- or maybe not -- Florida has some of the lowest levels of minimum coverage in the United States, despite being one of the most expensive states to insure a car. You are required to have insurance in Florida, but the requirements for Personal injury Protection (PIP) and Personal Damage Liability (PDL) is just $10,000 per accident.
Considering you could run up a $10,000 bill just replacing the hood, bumper cover and front fenders on a Honda Civic, that’s way too low. Now consider what a broken bone and a few weeks of lost wages would cost at your average Florida hospital. $10,000 in PIP isn’t going to cover the bill for the plaster and the Tylenol. We’d recommend a level of $50,000 each, which is going to have a significant impact on the cost of insurance every year.
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