If you rely on your car, like many Australians, you should consider insuring it with a comprehensive policy. Unlike CTP or basic insurance, comprehensive car insurance will cover repairs to your own car if it's damaged in a car accident, by fire, flood, thieves or even a rogue shopping trolley. This cover doesn't come cheap, however, with premiums having risen 42% since 2019.
With so many factors affecting the cost of your policy – like mileage, postcode, age of drivers, and driving history – it's difficult to know whether you're being offered a good deal.
We include a national price rating in our car insurance analysis to assess value for money but, in this article, we analyse prices state by state to find the cheapest car insurance in each location, then use this information to reveal the best value insurance policies across the country.
On this page:
- How does car insurance work?
- How much does car insurance cost?
- How to choose the right car insurance policy
- Best value comprehensive car insurance by state
- Which car insurance policies are available in your state?
How does car insurance work?
There are three types of car insurance. Comprehensive insurance is the most extensive cover. In addition to paying for damage you may cause to other cars or property, it covers your car for theft and damage caused by accidents, natural disasters and vandalism. It may also cover things like personal property inside the vehicle and trailers, as well as providing payments towards accommodation if you have an accident during a road trip and covering the cost of replacing your keys after theft. Comprehensive insurance is the type of policy we've analysed prices for here.
CTP stands for compulsory third party and is often included with your registration. It covers injuries to people if you have an accident. How you buy CTP insurance and what it covers varies from state to state.
There's also third party property or basic insurance, which covers damage to other people's vehicles or property if you're involved in an accident. Sometimes this is referred to as bomb insurance, because it's the type of cover you'd buy if you're driving a an old run-down car but want insurance in case you hit someone else's Porsche. Third party, fire and theft policies cover a bit more.
How much does car insurance cost?
With the cost of insurance continuing to increase, it's important to make sure you're only insured for what you need, and for the best price possible. And comprehensive car insurance is no exception. We crunched the numbers to see how much Australians are paying for home and contents insurance across the country.
Cheapest insurers by state
In the current economic climate, price is a big consideration when choosing anything, that's why we've revealed the cheapest insurers in each state.
You can read about the cover details of these policies in our car insurance comparison and see whether any of these policies are right for you. These policies don't necessarily provide the best cover, however, so it's important to also read the product disclosure statement (PDS) before making the switch.
We used the same method to calculate price scores we use in our comparison, but limited the quotes by state. We looked at over 56 products, with the number of quotes per product ranging from up to 37 in ACT to over 1500 in Queensland.
We reveal the best value policies further down, exclusively for CHOICE members. If you'd like to make sure you're getting the best value for your dollar, sign up to Join CHOICE, or if you're already a member log in to see the full results.
How to choose the right car insurance policy
It's good to know which policy is the cheapest, but if you want real value for money, you also need to look at what's covered by each policy. To do this yourself, you'll need to go through the policy documents for each product and compare the points of coverage that are important to you. Or you could use our Cover score.
We look at how insurers cover 74 different things, and allocate points for everything, from whether the policy allows your choice of repairer and how much they provide for legal liability to whether they'll pay to replace child seats or for a hire car after an at-fault accident. We then convert this to a percentage so you can easily compare the level of cover between one policy and another.
To find out which is the best value comprehensive car insurance in your state, log in to keep reading below, or consider becoming a CHOICE member and get access to all our reviews.
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Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.
