Auto-Owners auto insurance review 2026
A quiet, agent-only Midwestern insurer with an above-average claims record, a top-tier financial rating, and the best Google Play rating of anyone here.
- Market share
- 1.4% of U.S. auto
- AM Best rating
- A+
- Availability
- 26 states, through independent agents — no California, New York or Texas
A national average is not a quote. Compare Auto-Owners against 50+ insurers on your own ZIP, vehicle, and record.
How Auto-Owners scores
Each category is scored against a published figure, then weighted into the overall score. Where a figure is not published, we say so rather than estimate one.
Sources: average premiums from NerdWallet's August 2026 rate analysis (Quadrant Information Services), for a 35-year-old driver with a clean record and good credit in a 2023 Toyota Camry LE at 12,000 miles a year, 100/300/50 limits with $1,000 deductibles — national average $2,356. Claims satisfaction from the J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Auto Claims Satisfaction Study (segment average 700). Complaint record from NerdWallet's analysis of NAIC complaint data, 2022–2024. Financial strength from AM Best. Discounts and app data from each carrier's published pages and the Apple App Store / Google Play, retrieved August 2026. Updated August 2026.
Strengths and trade-offs
What Auto-Owners does well
- Claims score above the segment average and ahead of most national carriers
- AM Best A+ financial strength
- Fewer complaints than its size predicts
- Best Google Play rating in this review, and the only carrier rated higher on Android than iOS
- Good-student discount published at up to 20%
Where it falls short
- Available in only 26 states — no California, New York or Texas
- No online quotes at all; you have to talk to an independent agent
- No branded telematics program, so no usage-based discount route
- Auto-Owners blocks automated access to its own discount pages, so its published lineup is harder to verify than competitors'
The full review
Auto-Owners has been writing insurance since 1916 and sells exclusively through independent agents in 26 states — notably not California, New York or Texas. It does not advertise nationally and does not offer online quotes, which is why most drivers have never considered it despite it being the eleventh-largest auto insurer in the country.
How claims go
711 out of 1,000 in the J.D. Power 2025 claims study, eleven points above the segment average. That puts Auto-Owners ahead of Geico, Allstate, Travelers, Farmers and Progressive, and behind only State Farm among the very large carriers. Its complaint record is better than its size would predict.
What it costs
$2,094 a year for full coverage on our benchmark profile, about 11% below the national average. That is close to State Farm's $2,065 and Progressive's $2,062 — mid-pack, and not the reason to choose it. The reason is the combination of that ordinary price with an above-average claims record.
The distribution model is the trade-off
There is no online quote. Auto-Owners requires you to contact an independent agent, which means the comparison you can run in ten minutes with Geico takes a phone call here. For some drivers the independent agent is a feature — they can quote several carriers at once and advocate at claim time. For anyone who wants to buy insurance at 11pm without speaking to a person, it is a hard stop.
Auto-Owners blocks automated access to its own discount and coverage pages, so the discount count above comes from secondary sources rather than the carrier's site.
The list is directionally right but should not be treated with the same confidence as carriers whose pages we read directly. Ask an agent for the current list in your state.
One genuinely unusual signal
Auto-Owners is the only carrier in this review rated higher on Google Play (4.8) than on the App Store (4.72), and its Play rating is the best here. Given that several much larger insurers post Play ratings in the 3s and 4.1–4.2 range, that is a real, if small, indicator of a company that has not treated Android as an afterthought.
Auto-Owners is the least famous strong insurer in this review. It beats most national carriers on claims satisfaction, draws fewer complaints than expected, holds an A+ rating, and prices in the same range as State Farm. The catches are structural rather than qualitative: 26 states, agents only, no online quote, and no telematics program if you drive well and want credit for it.
Compare Auto-Owners head-to-head
Every pairing gets its own side-by-side breakdown across the same six categories.
Auto-Owners questions, answered
The things people actually ask before switching.
Where Auto-Owners sits in the market
No published rate data, so no honest position on the horizontal axis: Liberty Mutual, NJM, Clearcover, Elephant, Lemonade, Root, Texas Farm Bureau. Below the J.D. Power study’s size threshold, so no position on the vertical axis: Kemper, Shelter, Chubb, COUNTRY Financial, MAPFRE, Plymouth Rock, The Hanover. That study samples only the largest insurers, so these carriers will not appear in a future wave either. Premiums from NerdWallet’s August 2026 analysis; claims scores from the J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Auto Claims Satisfaction Study. USAA is scored but not ranked in that study because it serves the military community only.
Not plotted, because no public rate data exists for them: Liberty Mutual, NJM, Clearcover, Elephant, Lemonade, Root, Texas Farm Bureau. Complaint bands from NerdWallet’s analysis of NAIC complaint data, 2022–2024 (2021–2023 for Liberty Mutual and Mercury). We show the band rather than a numeric complaint index on purpose — the per-carrier indexes published by different compilers contradict each other badly enough to be unusable, because the index is reported per underwriting subsidiary and most sources do not say which one they used.
Auto-Owners by state
Auto-Owners writes in 26 states. If yours is not listed, it is not an option there at any price.
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