Travelers auto insurance review 2026
The second-cheapest insurer in this review and one of only four holding AM Best's top rating — with a claims score that does not match either.
- Market share
- 2.0% of U.S. auto
- AM Best rating
- A++
- Availability
- 42 states and D.C., mostly through independent agents — not available in Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia or Wyoming
A national average is not a quote. Compare Travelers against 50+ insurers on your own ZIP, vehicle, and record.
How Travelers 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 Travelers does well
- Cheapest insurer in this review that anyone can buy — $1,634 a year on our benchmark
- AM Best A++, the top financial strength rating
- Fewer complaints than its size predicts
- Premier New Car Replacement covers a total loss in the first five years, not the usual one or two
- IntelliDrive publishes up to 30% at renewal and 10% just for signing up
Where it falls short
- Claims satisfaction is nine points below the segment average
- Nine of the eleven published discounts are unavailable in California
- Sold mostly through independent agents, so no simple direct-purchase path
- IntelliDrive can raise your rate in most states — though not in D.C., Montana, North Carolina or Virginia
The full review
Travelers is a 170-year-old commercial insurer that also writes personal auto, mostly through independent agents. It is not a household name in car insurance the way Geico or Progressive are, and its market share — 2.0% on 2024 premiums — reflects that. On the numbers, that obscurity looks like an opportunity.
What it costs
$1,634 a year for full coverage on our benchmark profile: 31% below the national average, and the lowest figure of any carrier in this review that the general public can actually buy. Only USAA, which most people cannot join, comes in lower. Against Geico that is a saving of nearly $400 a year; against Allstate, more than $1,500.
Financial strength
Travelers holds AM Best's A++ rating, which only three other carriers in this review manage — State Farm, Geico and USAA, all far larger in personal auto. For a company writing a fraction of their volume, that is a genuinely strong signal about the balance sheet behind the policy.
Travelers states plainly that its Early Quote, EFT, New Car, Safe Driver, Continuous Insurance, Paid in Full, Good Payer, Home Ownership and Multicar discounts are all unavailable in California.
That is nine of the eleven discounts it publishes. The value case for Travelers in California is a very different, and much thinner, proposition.
How claims go
691 out of 1,000 in the J.D. Power 2025 study, nine points below the 700-point segment average. That is the one figure working against Travelers, and it should be weighed honestly rather than discounted because the price is attractive. The complaint record pulls the other way — fewer complaints than its size predicts — which suggests dissatisfaction rather than systematic disputes.
Coverage worth noting
Premier New Car Replacement is the standout: if your new car is totaled in the first five years, Travelers pays to replace it with the same make and model. Most competitors cap that at one or two years. IntelliDrive publishes up to 30% at renewal, up to 40% in Nevada, plus 10% for signing up as a new customer — and unusually, Travelers names the four jurisdictions where risky driving cannot raise your rate: D.C., Montana, North Carolina and Virginia.
Travelers is the value pick of this review for drivers outside the military: nobody else combines a sub-$1,700 average with an A++ rating and a better-than-expected complaint record. The 691 claims score is the caveat and it is a real one. If price and solvency are your top two criteria, this is the strongest available answer.
Compare Travelers head-to-head
Every pairing gets its own side-by-side breakdown across the same six categories.
Travelers questions, answered
The things people actually ask before switching.
Where Travelers 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.
Travelers by state
Travelers writes in 42 states. If yours is not listed, it is not an option there at any price.
More insurer reviews
We review 28 U.S. auto insurers on the same six categories.
Related reading: Travelers IntelliDrive review: how it works, discounts and how it compares · Every car insurance discount worth asking for · How to compare car insurance quotes: 10-step guide
A review tells you who they are. A quote tells you what you’d pay.
50+ insurers, about four minutes, free either way.