Pet insurance cost by state
Where you live moves your pet insurance premium — but by how much, honestly? The only state-level figures published by a source we trust are all-breed medians from Insurify's June 2026 analysis of 250,000+ quotes, read via PetsOfWeb's compilation and collected here on 2026-11-11. This page prints every state median that analysis published, for dogs and for cats — and is explicit about what these numbers are, and are not.
Read this first: these are all-breed medians, not breed prices
No source we trust publishes premiums by breed and state together, so neither do we. A state median blends every breed, age and coverage profile quoted in that state. What it tells you is whether your state runs expensive or cheap relative to the national medians — $43/month for dogs and $23/month for cats (Insurify, June 2026). Your breed's own figures are national, and they live on its breed page. Any website showing you a precise premium for a named breed in a named state has modelled it silently; we would rather show you the gap.
Dog insurance medians by state
Insurify's published dog medians cover 12 states — the most expensive and least expensive ends of its table, plus California and New York from the same analysis. Alaska tops the list at $66/month, roughly half as much again as the national median; Alabama sits at the bottom at $32/month.
| State | All-breed median premium |
|---|---|
| Alaska | $66/mo |
| Massachusetts | $64/mo |
| District of Columbia | $60/mo |
| Delaware | $57/mo |
| New York | $56/mo |
| New Hampshire | $55/mo |
| California | $49/mo |
| Ohio | $35/mo |
| Arkansas | $34/mo |
| Oklahoma | $33/mo |
| Alabama | $32/mo |
| Mississippi | $32/mo |
Cat insurance medians by state
For cats, 9 states were published. The District of Columbia is the most expensive at $34/month and Mississippi the cheapest at $11/month — a wider relative spread than dogs, off a much lower base.
| State | All-breed median premium |
|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $34/mo |
| Delaware | $32/mo |
| Massachusetts | $31/mo |
| Alaska | $30/mo |
| New Jersey | $30/mo |
| California | $25/mo |
| Alabama | $15/mo |
| Oklahoma | $15/mo |
| Mississippi | $11/mo |
Read the two tables together and a pattern emerges: the same states anchor both lists. The District of Columbia, Delaware, Massachusetts, Alaska and California sit in the expensive half for dogs and cats alike, while Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma sit in the cheap half for both. Where the lists differ, it is usually the source rather than the state: New Jersey appears only in the cat table and New York only in the dog table because the compilation published different state selections for each species — not because either species is unpriced in the missing state. Treat any absence from these tables as unpublished, never as average.
Why premiums differ by state
Insurers price expected claim costs, and claim costs are local. Veterinary labour, clinic rent and specialist availability all cost more in dense coastal metros than in rural areas, and emergency and referral hospitals cluster where people — and pets — are concentrated. State regulation matters too: rates and policy forms are filed state by state, and states differ in what they require of insurers. Claim patterns themselves vary with lifestyle — indoor city cats, suburban dogs with fenced yards, and working ranch dogs do not present the same risks. None of that changes the single biggest driver of your individual premium, which is still your pet's breed and age; state is the weather, breed is the climate.
The one breed-and-state figure we can show
Insurify also published state medians for a single breed, the Labrador Retriever: $50/month in Tennessee to $69/month in Missouri, recorded on our Labrador page from the same compilation. One breed is an anecdote rather than a table, but it shows the shape of the state effect inside one breed: the same dog, quoted across states, spans a range wide enough to matter — before breed, age band or coverage profile enter into it at all.
If your state isn't listed
Then the compilation didn't publish it, and we mark it data-pending rather than filling the gap with a modelled number. Closing this gap honestly needs a primary quote-sampling pass — running real quotes state by state — not more desk research. Our dataset is refreshed quarterly, and the full position is set out on Methodology & Sources.
How to use these numbers
Find your state and compare it with the national median to see whether you should expect quotes at, above or below the national picture. Then look at your breed's national range — that is the number your quotes will actually be built around. Our cost calculator keeps the two in their proper places: its state selector shows exactly these medians as context alongside the breed figure, and never merges them into a breed-by-state number that no source published.
Get real quotes for your pet
Our quoting partner — a licensed pet insurance comparison service — is being connected now. When it launches, this button will show you live quotes from multiple insurers for your exact pet, using the same coverage settings as the estimates above so you can compare like with like.
Quote comparison launching soonPetPolicyCosts.com never sells your data. Quote requests will be handled by the licensed partner on their own pages.
See the numbers by breed
State medians set the weather; breed sets most of the bill. See the national published ranges for the Labrador Retriever, French Bulldog, Golden Retriever and Maine Coon — or browse the full cost-by-breed index.
Keep reading
- How pet insurance works
- Is pet insurance worth it?
- Most expensive & cheapest breeds to insure
- Pet insurance for senior pets
Or run your own numbers in the breed-by-breed cost calculator — pick a breed and an age band and it prices the same published data used across this site.