Car Insurance for Multiple Drivers

If you share vehicles in a multi-driver household, it's worth keeping in mind some best practices for car insurance for multiple drivers. Let's dive into the details to understand how additional drivers affect your policy, available discounts, and where to find the cheapest multiple-driver auto insurance options.

Yes. As long as all drivers are listed on the policy and someone pays the bills, you shouldn’t have a problem sharing car insurance with multiple drivers. Your monthly premium will reflect the added risk of multiple drivers using one vehicle — so you'll most likely pay more than you would for a single-driver policy. However, a multiple-driver policy is usually cheaper than purchasing two individual auto insurance policies.

If one of the drivers using the vehicle doesn’t reside in the household, you can add them to the policy as a “non-resident driver.” This means someone on the policy doesn’t live in the listed residence but uses the vehicle frequently. While the exact definition of “frequently” may vary, it’s typically used to describe a driver who uses a car more than 12 times per year.

If one driver on the policy gets into an accident or receives a ticket, the entire premium will increase. This isn't meant to punish the safe drivers on the policy, but to reflect the increased risk presented by the policy as a whole. Because an insurance company can’t discern between drivers on a shared policy, it applies a blanket rate increase.

If you decide to close the multi-driver policy and purchase car insurance on your own, your new premium should not reflect the accidents or citations caused by the other driver. Violations and insurance claims are connected to you via a Motor Vehicle Report (MVR) — a granular report connected to your driving record and used to calculate your personal premium.

If you feel you are paying a penalty for violations not caused by you, look to your MVR If any claim or violation is being tied to you that you did not cause, look to your Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) or MVR for details.

In order to find which is the cheapest company for multiple drivers, we created a user profile and compared rates across 5 zip codes in the US. Using a married couple with two vehicles, we discovered that Geico and Progressive were the cheapest companies for our user profile.

Use the above rates as a jumping-off point before comparing insurance companies to find the ideal policy for you. The easiest way to get free online car insurance quotes is to use The Zebra's auto insurance comparison app.

A car insurance policy for multiple drivers isn't much different than a single-driver policy. As long as each driver is added to the policy and someone pays the bills, you shouldn't run into issues with your insurance company. The only unique attribute of multi-driver auto insurance is how every driver’s history will affect the policy. Because insurance companies can’t compartmentalize risk distribution between individual drivers on a policy, your rates could rise if one driver exhibits reckless behavior. Rest assured, however, their driving record won’t follow you if you decide to split the policy up in the future.

Listing multiple drivers on a single policy will generally be cheaper than maintaining two separate insurance policies. Many insurance companies provide a “multiple drivers” discount, rewarding you for adding an extra line of business to your policy. The same goes for insuring multiple cars, or adding a renters or homeowners policy.

We randomly selected five zip codes in five areas in the US by using the five most popular companies, based on net premiums written. Here are the zip codes we selected:

This is the driver profile information we used: