Two owners can get quotes hundreds of dollars apart for what looks like the same coverage. The brand is rarely the reason. One pet is a four year old cat in Arkansas on a $500 deductible, and the other is a seven year old French Bulldog in New York on a $100 deductible at 90 percent reimbursement. Rating factors explain that gap. The useful part is knowing which of them you can still change.
What actually sets the price of a pet insurance policy?
Seven inputs set the price, and four of them are facts you cannot change: species, breed, age, and the zip code where the pet lives. The other three are policy settings you pick at purchase and can revisit at renewal: the annual deductible, the reimbursement percentage, and the annual payout limit.
Insurers combine those seven into a rate that must be filed with your state before anyone can be charged it. That filing step is why the same policy costs the same whether you buy direct or through a comparison site, and it gets its own section further down.
Why do dogs cost more to insure than cats?
Dogs cost more because they claim more often and their care bills higher, and the gap is wide: cat premiums run roughly 35 to 40 percent below dog premiums for the same coverage. NAPHIA's 2026 State of the Industry report puts the 2025 US average annual accident and illness premium at around $836 for dogs and around $435 for cats.
Veterinary economics explain the split. AVMA data reported by Insurance Journal attributes approximately 81 percent of veterinary practice revenue to dogs. Dogs are larger, so drug and anesthesia doses cost more; they swallow foreign objects more often; and orthopedic injury is far more common. Cat owners buy the cheapest real coverage in the market, and the price-led shortlist is in cheapest pet insurance.
How much does breed change the premium?
Breed changes the premium because it predicts hereditary disease, and hereditary disease is where the four-figure claims live. French Bulldogs, German Shepherds, and Golden Retrievers are three breeds with well-documented hereditary risks: airway disease, hip and elbow dysplasia, and cancer.
The costs behind those risks are real. CareCredit puts TPLO knee surgery at around $3,525 per knee. Sustainable Vet Group reports that surgeons in California and New York charge 30 to 40 percent above its national figures for the cheaper lateral suture repair. Billed costs vary widely by region and clinic. Not every insurer treats breed the same way, and some do not restrict by breed at all: Pumpkin applies no breed restrictions and no upper age limit. If you own one of the high-risk breeds, start with pet insurance for French Bulldogs.
Why does your zip code change the premium?
Your zip code changes the premium because veterinary prices are local and insurers file rates state by state. The same surgery does not cost the same in Little Rock and Manhattan, so the rate cannot be the same either.
The spread is measurable. Insurify's June 2025 analysis puts the national average annual dog premium at $516, ranging from $348 in Arkansas to $696 in Alaska. It puts the cat average at $276, ranging from $156 in Arkansas to $384 in New Hampshire. Those are quoted prices from one comparison site rather than industry in-force premiums, so they sit below NAPHIA's figures. Use them for the shape of the spread, not the level. On the billing side, CareCredit's state-by-state figures for a simple dog tooth extraction run from $63 to $140, and billed costs vary widely by region and clinic. State-level detail lives in our state pet insurance guides.
How do the deductible, reimbursement rate, and annual limit change your price?
These three levers change your price because they decide how much of each claim the insurer pays. The claim math runs in a fixed order: the bill, minus your deductible, times your reimbursement percentage, capped by your annual limit.
- Deductible. Common options run $100 to $750 a year, with $250 and $500 the usual picks. Raising it lowers the premium and raises your first bill of the year. Two variants exist: Trupanion charges a per-condition deductible rather than an annual one, and Embrace drops your deductible $50 for each claim-free year.
- Reimbursement rate. The standard tiers are 70, 80, and 90 percent, with Figo offering a 100 percent option. Moving from 90 down to 70 percent cuts the premium and hands you nearly a third of every bill.
- Annual limit. Common caps are $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, and unlimited. This lever decides whether a catastrophic year is fully covered or partly covered. Insurers with no cap are listed in unlimited pet insurance plans.
Our own lever-by-lever price deltas come from the same dated quote run as our price cards, and until it lands they are lever pricing pending first quote run. Discounts sit alongside the levers: a multi-pet discount of 5 to 10 percent is standard across the market, and multi-pet pet insurance is where it shows up.
What is a state rate filing, and why does it matter to you?
A state rate filing is the document an insurer submits to your state insurance department showing the rates it intends to charge, and it matters because the filed rate is the price wherever you buy. There is no broker markup and no direct-purchase discount in US pet insurance.
Two consequences follow. Rate increases go through the same filing process, so your renewal reflects a change the insurer justified to a regulator rather than a decision about you. And the rules governing those filings differ by state. Fourteen states have enacted pet insurance laws modeled on the NAIC's 2022 Pet Insurance Model Act, according to Insurify's June 2025 tally. The NAIC's own state adoption chart, updated in Summer 2025, does not list any state as having adopted the model in a substantially similar form. What those rules do and do not require is set out in pet insurance regulation.
Can you predict your premium from these seven factors?
No, and this is the honest limit of every rating-factor guide including this one: insurers do not publish their rating tables. Every percentage you read about what breed or age does to a premium is reverse-engineered from quotes, ours included.
Two further gaps are worth naming. Insurers weight the same factor differently, so the cheapest brand for a young cat is often not the cheapest for a senior dog, and no general rule replaces quoting your actual pet. And rating factors set the starting price only. The trajectory afterward belongs to your pet's age and to veterinary inflation, covered in why premiums go up every year and pet insurance cost by age.