GEICO vs. Progressive vs. State Farm

GEICO, Progressive, and State Farm comprise a large share of the US car insurance market. Despite these insurers' similar size, they offer different rates, discounts, and policy options. Let’s compare rates and rating factors and help you decide if GEICO, Progressive or State Farm is right for you.

Although car insurance is designed to cover your vehicle in the event of a crash, most companies will still raise your rates after an at-fault accident. GEICO, Progressive and State Farm raise rates by an average of $676 per six-month policy after an at-fault accident.

If you’ve caused an accident, State Farm is the cheapest insurance company moving forward. For more information — and additional insurance rates — see our additional resources below:

Insuring your teen driver is an inevitable — and expensive — part of parenting. On average, adding a teen driver to your policy will more than double your monthly premium. Given their lack of driving experience and penchant for risk behind the wheel, teen drivers are treated as liabilities by insurance companies.

Your best bet for affordable car insurance for a teen driver is GEICO, with an average six-month premium of $987. For the methodology used to these rates, see here.

The vehicle you drive has a huge impact on your insurance premium. Given the value of a luxury vehicle versus a sedan, the former will be much more expensive to insure than the latter, regardless of your insurance company.

Below are the cheapest companies by vehicle classification:

If you’re looking for more detailed analysis of prices and car insurance premiums for your exact model, see our guides below.

Your credit score is the biggest non-driving factor used to determine car insurance rates. Your credit score tells insurance companies a lot about the kind of driver you have been and the kind of customer you may be. Based on historical data, drivers with poor credit not only file more claims than drivers with excellent credit, their claims tend to be more expensive.

If your credit is less-than-perfect, consider Progressive a good place to start shopping for car insurance quotes. GEICO is a better choice for drivers with strong credit:

Because car insurance is driver-specific, myriad ways to customize your coverage exist. This includes discounts and policy features like telematics programs, accident forgiveness add-ons, and extra insurance coverage for Uber and Lyft drivers.

Many of these policy features and discounts are subject to state regulations.

At the end of the day, it’s difficult to give an exact answer to this question, because car insurance is specifically priced and designed to suit you. This will lead to variation in rates and discount eligibility. Take the above data as a starting point and continue searching policies from GEICO, State Farm, Progressive, and other companies.

We randomly selected five zip codes in five areas across the US. Below are the zip codes we selected:

With that created, we built a base "teen driver" profile for male and female teens with two parents and two vehicles:

Male and female teen driver profile information:

Between September and December 2017, The Zebra conducted comprehensive auto insurance pricing analysis using its proprietary quote engine, comprising data from insurance rating platforms and public rate filings. The Zebra examined nearly 53 million rates to explore trends for car insurance rating factors, averaged by state, including Washington, DC.

Analysis used a consistent base profile for the insured driver: a 30-year-old single male driving a 2013 Honda Accord EX with a good driving history and coverage limits of $50,000 bodily injury liability per person/$100,000 bodily injury liability per accident/$50,000 property damage liability per accident with a $500 deductible for comprehensive and collision. For coverage level data, optional coverage (that must be rejected in writing) is included where applicable, including uninsured motorist coverage and personal injury protection.

National property and casualty losses information is from the Insurance Information Institute and the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters report.

For vehicle make and model data, analysis referenced the most popular vehicles in the U.S. by 2016 year-end sales, according to Goodcarbadcar.net data.

Data may vary slightly throughout report based on rounding.