Root auto insurance review 2026
Prices almost entirely on a monitored test drive rather than your record. Carries no AM Best rating, and draws far more complaints than its size predicts.
- Market share
- Outside NAIC top 25
- AM Best rating
- Not published
- Availability
- 37 states
A national average is not a quote. Compare Root against 50+ insurers on your own ZIP, vehicle, and record.
How Root 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 Root does well
- Pricing rewards demonstrably safe driving rather than demographics
- 37 states, a wide footprint for a digital-native insurer
- Fully app-based quote and claims experience
Where it falls short
- No AM Best rating and no Demotech rating — no independent financial strength assessment at all
- Far more complaints than expected for its size
- You must complete a monitored test drive before you get a final price
- Excluded from standard rate studies, so it cannot be price-compared in advance
The full review
Root writes in 37 states and prices differently from every other carrier in this review. Rather than quoting from your record, vehicle and credit, it asks you to complete a monitored "Test Drive" through its app, then prices on what it observed. Telematics is not an optional discount here; it is the underwriting.
Why there is no price on this page
The rate study behind every other premium in this review generates quotes for a fixed benchmark driver from public rate filings. Root's model does not produce a comparable number, because there is no quote until someone has driven. That is a legitimate consequence of how it works rather than an omission — but it does mean you cannot compare Root against anyone until you have already given it several weeks of driving data.
Root carries no AM Best financial strength rating. Demotech, the alternative agency that rates many smaller insurers, lists it as not rated.
So there is currently no independent published assessment of Root's ability to pay claims. Every other carrier in this review has one, or had one we could not verify. This is a different situation, and it is the thing to weigh hardest.
The complaint record
Root draws far more complaints than a company its size would be expected to — the weakest band we assign. It is worth noting that every digital-native insurer we reviewed lands in the same band, which suggests something structural about the model rather than about Root specifically. That context explains the pattern; it does not make the experience better for the person complaining.
Root's premise is genuinely attractive: be judged on how you actually drive rather than your age and postcode. Two things sit against it. It draws far more complaints than its size predicts, and no rating agency currently publishes an assessment of whether it can pay claims. The second is not a small gap — it is the one question insurance exists to answer.
We only publish a composite score when enough of it rests on published figures — at least 70% of the scoring weight, including price. Root falls below that: 5 of our six categories have no published figure (price, claims satisfaction, financial strength, discounts, digital experience). Averaging whatever is left would produce a confident-looking number built mostly on the categories that need no third-party study, and a carrier scored that way can easily outrank one we actually measured. The individual categories above are real; the missing ones are simply missing.
Compare Root head-to-head
Every pairing gets its own side-by-side breakdown across the same six categories.
Root questions, answered
The things people actually ask before switching.
Root by state
Root writes in 37 states. If yours is not listed, it is not an option there at any price.
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