What pet insurance costs — and what actually moves the price
The average US dog on accident-and-illness coverage costs about$70 a month ($836 a year), and the average cat about $36 a month($435). Those are the only premium figures anybody can publish with a source behind them.
Why we don't publish a price for your breed
Pet insurers file rates by ZIP code, and underwriting runs on your dog's exact age, medical history, and the deductible and reimbursement you choose. There is no public dataset of breed-level or state-level premiums — not from NAPHIA, not from any regulator, not from any insurer.
So anyone showing you "Labrador Retriever in California: $41–$67/month" invented that number.It may be a plausible-sounding multiplication of a breed guess and a state guess, but it is not a rate, and it should not be treated as one. We used to publish figures like that ourselves. We no longer do, because we could not point to where they came from.
What we can publish is the real industry baseline, the real state-level pattern, and the real factors that move your quote. That is everything below.
US average annual premium by plan type
Source: NAPHIA 2026 State of the Industry Report (2026-06-21), covering the 2025 calendar year.
| Plan type | Dogs / year | Dogs / month | Cats / year | Cats / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accident only | $190 | $16 | $112 | $9 |
| Accident & illness | $836 | $70 | $435 | $36 |
| With embedded wellness | $1414 | $118 | $859 | $72 |
Monthly figures are the annual number divided by twelve, rounded. These are averages across every insured pet in the US — a single dog's quote can sit well above or below them.
State premium index
NAPHIA also publishes, for every state, that state's share of US insured pets and its share of total US premium. Dividing the second by the first gives a premium index: the average premium contributed by an insured pet in that state, relative to the national average.
How to read it: 1.00 means the state's insured pets contribute exactly the national average premium. 1.18 (Massachusetts) means 18% above; 0.85 (Ohio) means 15% below. This is arithmetic on two published percentages — not an estimate, and not a quote for any specific dog.
One caveat that matters: this measures average premium per insured pet, not the price of an identical policy. If more owners in a state buy cheap accident-only plans, that state's index drops even when its veterinary fees are the same. Read it as a market-level signal, not a rate card.
| State | Share of US insured pets | Share of US premium | Premium index |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | 3.4% | 4% | 1.18above avg |
| Connecticut | 1.7% | 2% | 1.18above avg |
| New Hampshire | 0.8% | 0.9% | 1.13above avg rough |
| California | 18.1% | 19.9% | 1.10above avg |
| Maryland | 2.1% | 2.3% | 1.10above avg |
| New York | 7.4% | 8.1% | 1.09above avg |
| New Jersey | 4.7% | 5.1% | 1.09above avg |
| Colorado | 3% | 3.2% | 1.07above avg |
| Illinois | 3.3% | 3.5% | 1.06above avg |
| Florida | 6.2% | 6.5% | 1.05above avg |
| Virginia | 3% | 3.1% | 1.03average |
| Pennsylvania | 4.5% | 4.6% | 1.02average |
| Washington | 3.8% | 3.8% | 1.00average |
| Arizona | 2.1% | 2.1% | 1.00average |
| Rhode Island | 0.5% | 0.5% | 1.00average rough |
| Hawaii | 0.5% | 0.5% | 1.00average rough |
| District of Columbia | 0.4% | 0.4% | 1.00average rough |
| Alaska | 0.3% | 0.3% | 1.00average rough |
| West Virginia | 0.2% | 0.2% | 1.00average rough |
| Mississippi | 0.2% | 0.2% | 1.00average rough |
| North Dakota | 0.1% | 0.1% | 1.00average rough |
| Wyoming | 0.1% | 0.1% | 1.00average rough |
| South Dakota | 0.1% | 0.1% | 1.00average rough |
| Oregon | 1.7% | 1.6% | 0.94below avg |
| North Carolina | 2.7% | 2.5% | 0.93below avg |
| Texas | 6.1% | 5.6% | 0.92below avg |
| Georgia | 2.3% | 2% | 0.87below avg |
| Utah | 0.8% | 0.7% | 0.87below avg rough |
| Nevada | 1.4% | 1.2% | 0.86below avg |
| Minnesota | 1.4% | 1.2% | 0.86below avg |
| Wisconsin | 1.4% | 1.2% | 0.86below avg |
| Ohio | 2.6% | 2.2% | 0.85below avg |
| Michigan | 2% | 1.7% | 0.85below avg |
| South Carolina | 1.3% | 1.1% | 0.85below avg |
| Tennessee | 1.3% | 1.1% | 0.85below avg |
| Maine | 0.6% | 0.5% | 0.83below avg rough |
| Iowa | 0.5% | 0.4% | 0.80below avg rough |
| Louisiana | 0.5% | 0.4% | 0.80below avg rough |
| Idaho | 0.5% | 0.4% | 0.80below avg rough |
| Indiana | 1.2% | 0.9% | 0.75below avg |
| Kansas | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.75below avg rough |
| New Mexico | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.75below avg rough |
| Delaware | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.75below avg rough |
| Missouri | 1.1% | 0.8% | 0.73below avg |
| Alabama | 0.6% | 0.4% | 0.67below avg rough |
| Kentucky | 0.6% | 0.4% | 0.67below avg rough |
| Nebraska | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.67below avg rough |
| Arkansas | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.67below avg rough |
| Vermont | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.67below avg rough |
| Montana | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.67below avg rough |
| Oklahoma | 0.5% | 0.3% | 0.60below avg rough |
All 51 jurisdictions are listed because NAPHIA publishes all of them. Rows marked rough have a pet share under 1%, where the report's one-decimal rounding swamps the signal — treat those indexes as indicative only. The same rounding means the columns sum to 99.8–100.0% rather than exactly 100%.
What the largest claims actually cost
Averages hide the tail, and the tail is the whole reason to buy insurance. NAPHIA publishes the largest single claims paid in 2025. These are real settled claims, not estimates:
| Breed | Condition | Location | Claim paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bernese Mountain Dog | Undiagnosed illness — chronic | Philadelphia, PA | $66.6K |
| Small mixed breed | Undiagnosed hepatopathy | San Mateo, CA | $60.1K |
| Toy Poodle mix | Bite wounds | New Jersey | $59.7K |
| Medium mixed breed | Acute renal failure | Philadelphia, PA | $56.7K |
| Old English Sheepdog | Anemia | Brooklyn, NY | $54.7K |
Five largest dog claims paid, 2025, North America. Source: NAPHIA 2026 State of the Industry Report, Section 6. Note that four of the five largest dog claims are for ordinary-sized dogs — a toy Poodle mix and a small mixed breed both cleared $59K. The catastrophic tail is not reserved for giant breeds.
Set that against the national average premium: a dog on accident-and-illness coverage costs $836 a year, so the $66.6K claim at the top of that table is roughly 80 years of average premiums in a single bill.
The four things that actually move your quote
1. Your ZIP code
Veterinary fees vary enormously by geography, and premiums follow the underlying bill. The state index above is the macro version of this; within a state, a dense metro ZIP can price well above a rural one. Insurers file rates at ZIP level, which is why two identical dogs an hour apart can get different quotes.
2. Your dog's age
Premiums rise with age because claims rise with age — cancer, heart disease, and chronic conditions all cluster in later years. The practical consequence is that the cheapest policy you will ever be offered is the one you buy while your dog is young and healthy. It is also the only one that will not exclude the conditions that develop later. For a new puppy, that window is open right now — seepet insurance for puppies for what a first-year plan covers and why enrolling early is the whole game.
3. The plan you configure
Annual limit, deductible, and reimbursement percentage are the three dials that set your price. A higher deductible and a lower reimbursement rate both cut the premium, at the cost of a bigger bill when you claim. This is the one lever you can pull immediately without changing anything about your dog.
4. Your dog's documented breed risk
Breed enters through the claims profile: a breed with high-prevalence hereditary conditions generates more and larger claims, so it prices higher. That is why thebreed profiles here focus on documented health risk rather than a dollar figure — the risk profile is real, sourced data, and it is what the underwriter is actually looking at.
Get a number that means something
The only price that matters is the one an insurer will actually write for your dog. Request quotes from several carriers with identical deductible and reimbursement settings — spreads of 30% or more for the same coverage are routine, so a single quote tells you very little.
Sources
- NAPHIA 2026 State of the Industry Report— average annual premiums (Section 4), state distribution of insured pets and premium (Section 5), and largest claims paid and most common conditions (Section 6), all covering the 2025 calendar year.
- Insurer policy documents and published terms, for the coverage details on thecomparison page.
For the wider industry picture — market size, how many US pets carry cover, and the largest claims on record — see pet insurance statistics. Seeour methodology for what we do and do not publish, and why.