Average Car Insurance Rates by Credit Score Tier

What's Behind This Number

A headline "rate by credit score" figure is a modelled average, not a quote. Most of the widely cited versions trace back to the same rate database: Quadrant Information Services, which holds carriers' filed rates and can be run across ZIP codes and companies.

What goes into each published figure:

• Coverage tier. Insurance.com publishes a national average for a state-minimum policy and a separate one for full coverage at 100/300/100 limits with $500 comprehensive and collision deductibles (Insurance.com, undated). MoneyGeek's credit-tier table uses 100/300/100 with a $1,000 deductible (MoneyGeek, undated). Compare.com and Insurify publish liability-only and full-coverage monthly figures side by side by credit tier (Compare.com and Insurify, undated). Three different products, three different numbers.
• Credit tier definition. MoneyGeek uses Quadrant's credit alignment buckets — excellent, good, fair, below fair and poor — averaged at ZIP-code level across available providers (MoneyGeek, undated). Bankrate assigns four tiers, poor, average, good and excellent, with good as the base profile (Bankrate, January 2025). Insurance Navy publishes score ranges: Poor 300–579, Average 670–739, Excellent 740+ (Insurance Navy, undated). A "fair" tier in one table is not the "average" bucket in another.
• Driver profile. Bankrate's figures are built on a 40-year-old male and female driver with a clean record and good credit at set full coverage limits (Bankrate, January 2025). Your age band, record and vehicle are not in that figure.
• Territory. Bankrate's national full coverage average draws on Quadrant rates for all ZIP codes and carriers across all 50 states and D.C. (Bankrate, undated), blending high-rate and low-rate territories — Bankrate notes drivers with poor credit in New York pay one of the highest average full coverage rates in the country (Bankrate, undated).

Your renewal uses your limits, your record, your ZIP code and your insurer's own filed credit model, so the gap on your bill may be wider or narrower than the gap in any table.

Average Rates by Category

This maps credit tier against coverage tier and names the dataset behind each row. Pull the current dollar figure for your tier from the named table; the cells tell you which comparison you are actually making.

Two rules for reading it. Never compare a full-coverage figure with a minimum-liability figure — Insurance.com publishes those as separate national averages (Insurance.com, undated). And check the deductible: $500 and $1,000 comprehensive and collision deductibles produce different full-coverage averages in the same dataset.

What Pushes You Above or Below Average

Each of these is a rating factor insurers file and use where permitted. Direction is reliable; size is not, because it depends on your state, limits and carrier.

• Credit tier. Moving down the published tiers raises full coverage premiums on average; drivers with poor credit pay more than those with excellent credit nationally, and the gap versus good credit is published as an annual dollar figure (Bankrate, January 2025).
• No credit factor at all. In California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Michigan, credit is prohibited or limited, so your score moves nothing there and other factors absorb the weight (Bankrate, undated). MoneyGeek publishes a separate "None" row for this (MoneyGeek, undated).
• At-fault accident. Premiums rise nationwide at renewal after an at-fault accident causing at least $2,000 in property damage, with California showing the largest percentage jump of any state (LendingTree, undated). Insurance.com and Insurify each publish an average renewal increase and the resulting full-coverage cost after one at-fault accident (Insurance.com and Insurify, undated).
• Driving-record category. Compare.com publishes separate monthly averages for a clean record, a recent ticket, a recent accident and a DUI conviction; a single ticket sits closest to the clean-record figure, a DUI furthest (Compare.com, undated).
• Coverage tier chosen. Dropping from full coverage at 100/300/100 with $500 deductibles to a state-minimum policy is the largest single swing in these tables (Insurance.com, undated) — and it removes collision and comprehensive entirely.
• Garaging ZIP code. Credit-tier averages are built from ZIP-code-level rates across all 50 states and D.C., so territory can outweigh a one-tier credit move: poor-credit drivers in New York sit among the highest full-coverage averages nationally (MoneyGeek and Bankrate, undated).
• Market direction. Bankrate's national full coverage average rose from the prior year on Quadrant data (Bankrate, undated), so a renewal increase is not automatically a credit event.

How to Lower Your Rate Without Cutting Coverage

1. Confirm credit is even in your rate. If the car is garaged in California, Hawaii, Massachusetts or Michigan, credit is prohibited or limited and chasing your score will not move the premium (Bankrate, undated). No coverage trade-off.
2. Get your reason codes and correct errors. Where credit is used, ask the insurer for the adverse-action reason codes behind your tier, dispute inaccurate items with the bureau, and ask for a mid-term re-rate if a correction moves you a tier. No coverage trade-off.
3. Ask your state Department of Insurance about an extraordinary-life-circumstances provision. Several states require insurers to re-rate without the credit factor after specific documented events — that is MoneyGeek's "None" row, priced without any credit bucket (MoneyGeek, undated). No coverage trade-off.
4. Raise comprehensive and collision deductibles from $500 to $1,000. Insurance.com's benchmark uses $500, MoneyGeek's $1,000 (Insurance.com and MoneyGeek, undated). Liability limits stay untouched, but you carry the extra $500 per claim.
5. Keep coverage continuous. A lapse puts you into a higher-rated profile at the next quote in most states; if you sell a car, replace the policy with a non-owner liability policy. No coverage trade-off.
6. Ask for your insurer's filed telematics or usage-based program by name in your state, then ask the enrollment discount and whether hard braking, night driving or mileage can raise your renewal. Coverage is unchanged; the risk is a rate increase.
7. Bundle home or renters with auto and request the paid-in-full and paperless discounts by name, confirming each appears as a line item on the declarations page. No coverage trade-off.
8. Compare at least three quotes every 12 months at identical limits — 100/300/100 with the same comprehensive and collision deductible across all three, since published averages move with both (Insurance.com and MoneyGeek, undated). A quote estimate is not the bound premium.