Most drivers read the percentage on their renewal letter and stop there. That percentage turns out to be the small number. Across 917 auto rate filings that took effect in 2026, covering 50.5 million policyholders, the typical rate change moves a bill by about $75 a year.

The carrier price gap inside a single state runs $1,628 at the median. That figure compares only the six brands most drivers actually shop, in the same state, in the same year. It’s roughly 22 times what a typical rate change is worth.

We pulled this from our own corpus of state rate filings, not from a survey or an aggregator’s quote widget. Every carrier that changes auto rates has to file the change with the state, and that filing reports two numbers together: the dollar change in written premium and the number of policyholders it covers. Put those beside the percentage and the carrier’s average annual premium falls out of the arithmetic.

What 917 Rate Filings Show About Price Levels

The median implied annual premium across the corpus is $2,290. The carrier price gap opens up around that midpoint, and it doesn’t come from geography. It comes from which company sold the policy.

We limited the headline comparison to State Farm, Progressive, GEICO, Allstate, Farmers, and Liberty Mutual. At least three of the six filed in the same state in 35 states in the 2026 data, and the ten widest gaps among them look like this. Restricting the field to these six keeps thin non-standard books from setting either end of the range.

STATE	CHEAPEST OF THE SIX	AVG. ANNUAL PREMIUM	PRICIEST OF THE SIX	AVG. ANNUAL PREMIUM	GAP
Georgia	Progressive	$1,594	Liberty Mutual	$4,534	$2,940
Utah	Progressive	$372	Farmers	$3,076	$2,705
Kentucky	Progressive	$1,033	Farmers	$3,715	$2,681
South Carolina	Progressive	$988	State Farm	$3,573	$2,585
Maryland	Progressive	$1,401	Farmers	$3,923	$2,522
Connecticut	Progressive	$1,468	Allstate	$3,893	$2,425
Delaware	Allstate	$509	Liberty Mutual	$2,836	$2,327
Colorado	State Farm	$1,434	Farmers	$3,713	$2,280
Illinois	Progressive	$723	Liberty Mutual	$2,993	$2,270
Iowa	Progressive	$941	Liberty Mutual	$2,930	$1,989

Source: InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of the proprietary SERFF filing corpus, snapshot taken July 26, 2026 (tools/serff_study_8_analysis.py). Premiums are policyholder-weighted averages of each brand’s filed book in that state.

Open the field to every carrier with at least 100,000 policyholders in the corpus and the numbers get larger. Across 39 states with four or more such brands, the median gap climbs to $2,211, or 3.06 times the cheapest book. Georgia stretches to $4,464 once regional carriers join the comparison.

Where the Widest Gaps Show Up

Adding regional and mutual carriers to the comparison changes which states top the list. Colorado, Georgia, and Utah lead once every mainstream brand counts, and the pattern isn’t about which states are expensive overall. Nevada reaches its $2,975 spread from a high floor, while Georgia gets to $4,464 from a low one. Utah is the most extreme case in the corpus: its cheapest book averages $372 and its priciest $4,090, a ratio of 11 to 1.

STATE	BRANDS COMPARED	CHEAPEST BOOK	PRICIEST BOOK	GAP	RATIO
Colorado	10	$1,006	$5,540	$4,534	5.5x
Georgia	10	$602	$5,067	$4,464	8.4x
Utah	9	$372	$4,090	$3,718	11.0x
California	5	$1,461	$4,651	$3,190	3.2x
Nevada	8	$2,378	$5,353	$2,975	2.3x
Louisiana	4	$1,408	$4,312	$2,904	3.1x
South Carolina	7	$988	$3,818	$2,830	3.9x
Michigan	11	$839	$3,544	$2,704	4.2x
Kentucky	10	$1,033	$3,715	$2,681	3.6x
Arizona	12	$647	$3,220	$2,573	5.0x

Source: InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of the proprietary SERFF filing corpus, snapshot taken July 26, 2026 (tools/serff_study_8_analysis.py). Brands with 100,000 or more policyholders nationally in the corpus; states with four or more such brands.

Vermont sits at the other end with a $469 spread across six brands. Two states out of 39 came in under $1,000, so a narrow field is the exception rather than the rule. Michigan is worth a second look at $2,704, because it’s a state where drivers already expect high prices and tend to assume everyone charges them.

The Carrier Price Gap Dwarfs Any Rate Change

Here’s the comparison that matters. In all 39 qualifying states, the in-state price gap is larger than the single biggest dollar move any carrier made with a 2026 rate filing in that state. Not the median filing. The largest one.

So a driver in Kentucky watching Farmers raise rates a few points is tracking a change worth tens of dollars. The distance between that book and Progressive’s Kentucky book is $2,681 a year. The rate change is noise sitting on top of a much bigger signal.

This also explains a pattern we see in our own quoting work. A driver who shops after a rate increase often saves far more than the increase itself, because shopping moves them across the carrier price gap rather than back along it.

The math is worth stating plainly. Undoing a 6% hike on a $2,300 policy saves $138. Crossing the median carrier price gap in the same state saves $1,628. One of those is a rounding error against the other.

No Carrier Is Cheapest Everywhere

The obvious next question has an inconvenient answer. Five of these six brands are the cheapest of the group in at least one state and the priciest in at least one other state.

Liberty Mutual runs $4,534 in Georgia, the highest of the six there. In Nevada it’s the cheapest of the six at $3,428. State Farm is the cheapest of the six in eight states and the priciest in South Carolina.

BRAND	STATES IN DATA	TIMES CHEAPEST	TIMES PRICIEST	ITS OWN LOW / HIGH STATE
Progressive	24	13	0	Utah $372 / New York $2,957
State Farm	16	8	1	Oklahoma $620 / South Carolina $3,573
GEICO	19	5	1	Idaho $917 / New Jersey $4,034
Allstate	38	4	9	Delaware $509 / Nevada $5,353
Farmers	31	4	12	Tennessee $1,169 / Nevada $4,381
Liberty Mutual	28	1	12	Vermont $2,066 / Georgia $4,534

Source: InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of the proprietary SERFF filing corpus, snapshot taken July 26, 2026 (tools/serff_study_8_analysis.py). “Times cheapest” and “times priciest” count the 35 states where three or more of the six brands filed.

A single national answer to the carrier price gap doesn’t exist. Allstate’s own range is the widest of the six. Its Delaware book averages $509 and its Nevada book averages $5,353, a factor of ten inside one brand. Advice that names a single cheapest insurer nationally can’t survive numbers like these.

Price Level and Rate Direction Move Independently

A reasonable guess would be that expensive carriers are the ones cutting and cheap carriers are the ones catching up. The data says no. The correlation between a book’s price level and its rate change is 0.070, which is close enough to zero to ignore.

Split every carrier-state book into thirds by price. The cheapest third filed hikes 49.1% of the time. The priciest third filed hikes 59.3% of the time, a small tilt that nowhere near closes a gap measured in thousands of dollars.

Direction tells you nothing useful about level. A cut from an expensive book usually leaves a driver paying more than a hike from a cheap one.

That independence is what makes the carrier price gap durable. If cheap carriers were systematically hiking to catch up, the field would compress over a few years and shopping would stop paying. Our filings show no such compression.

What the Six Biggest Brands Charge Nationally

Weighting every state book by its policyholder count gives a national average for each brand. These cover only the books that filed a rate change in the window, so treat them as a read on filed business rather than a full national portfolio.

BRAND	AVG. ANNUAL PREMIUM	STATES	POLICYHOLDERS IN DATA	AVG. DOLLAR CHANGE FILED
State Farm	$1,358	16	7,601,202	-$86
Progressive	$1,911	24	15,381,793	-$32
Allstate	$2,348	38	2,575,225	+$19
GEICO	$2,843	19	1,756,927	-$16
Liberty Mutual	$2,886	28	808,686	+$86
Farmers	$3,158	31	1,875,875	+$15

Source: InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of the proprietary SERFF filing corpus, snapshot taken July 26, 2026 (tools/serff_study_8_analysis.py). Policyholder-weighted across each brand’s 2026 filings.

The average dollar change column is the point of the whole study. Every one of those numbers sits under $90. The distance between the top and bottom rows is $1,800.

The Method Behind These Numbers

Every rate filing in our corpus reports the percentage change, the dollar change in written premium, and the number of policyholders affected. Carriers submit these through SERFF, the electronic filing system the National Association of Insurance Commissioners runs for state regulators. Divide the dollar change by the policyholders and you get the annual dollar move per driver. Divide that by the percentage and you recover the average premium the book was charging before the change.

We tested that derivation against filings where the carrier’s own exhibit states current written premium and policyholder count directly, with a cited page number. Across 135 filings that appear in both, the median error is 0.04%, and 115 of them land within 1%. The arithmetic holds.

We kept filings with a 2026 effective date, a non-zero rate change, and a usable dollar and policyholder pair, leaving 917 filings across 44 states and 137 consumer brands. We dropped 42 filings whose derived premium fell outside $300 to $10,000, since those describe companion filings or book transfers rather than one coherent book. State-level results use only brands with 100,000 or more policyholders nationally in the corpus.

One limit matters. These are average premiums across each carrier’s actual book, so coverage limits, vehicle mix, and driver profile all sit inside the number. They aren’t quotes for one identical driver, and a gap of this size partly reflects who each carrier sells to. Even so, the size of the spread is far too large to be explained by book mix alone, and it’s the same spread a shopper walks into when they collect quotes.

What This Means for Your Renewal

A rate increase is a prompt, not a verdict. The letter tells you your carrier moved by some percentage, and our data says that percentage is worth about $75 a year at the median.

The number worth acting on is the one your renewal letter never mentions: where your carrier sits against the others selling in your state. Our rate tracker follows filings as they’re approved, and our state guides for Georgia and Colorado cover the local rules that shape those books.

Drivers who’ve held the same policy for years are the most exposed. Nothing in the filing data suggests a carrier that was expensive three years ago has since become cheap.

The carrier price gap also reframes what a good renewal looks like. A flat renewal from an expensive book isn’t good news, it’s an expensive price held steady. Only a comparison against the rest of the field tells you which one you’re getting.

How to Save on Insurance

Five steps turn the carrier price gap into money you keep:

1. Get quotes from at least four carriers, not two. The gap is measured across a field, and two quotes can easily land next to each other in the middle of it.
2. Re-shop every 12 months even without a rate increase. Price levels drift while your loyalty does nothing for you.
3. Quote the same limits and deductibles at every carrier. Otherwise you’re comparing coverage, not price.
4. Check GEICO and other direct writers alongside agent-sold brands. Our data shows both models landing at the cheap end in different states.
5. Ask your current carrier what it would charge a new customer for your exact policy. A gap there is worth a switch, and it costs one phone call to find out.

Those five steps all point the same direction. The renewal percentage is the number your carrier hands you, and the carrier price gap is the number it has no reason to mention. One is worth about $75 a year and the other is worth $1,628 at the median, so the hour you spend collecting four quotes is the best-paid hour in your insurance year.

Sources Used

• InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of our proprietary SERFF filing corpus, snapshot taken July 26, 2026. 917 auto rate filings with a 2026 effective date, a non-zero rate change, and a usable dollar-and-policyholder pair, covering 50,576,693 policyholders across 44 states and 137 consumer brands.
• System for Electronic Rates & Forms Filing (SERFF), operated by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Every premium level in this study is derived from carrier-filed rate changes submitted through SERFF to state regulators.
• Derivation check: 135 filings in the corpus also state current written premium and policyholder count directly in a carrier exhibit with a cited page number. The median absolute error between the derived and the stated premium is 0.04%, and 115 of the 135 fall within 1%.
• Exclusions: 42 filings whose derived premium fell outside $300 to $10,000 were dropped as companion filings or book transfers rather than one coherent book. State-level results use only brands with 100,000 or more policyholders nationally in the corpus.