Kogan, AHM and Honey: The home insurers with the biggest annual price hikes

Opened up an email or letter from your home insurer recently to find an eye-watering increase to your annual premium? You’re not alone.

The rising cost of home insurance is increasing the financial pressure on Australian households. In fact, 80% of households are now worried about the cost of their home insurance. This is up from 75% in June 2024, and the highest level we’ve seen in our 10 years of tracking household budget concerns with our nationally representative Consumer Pulse surveys*.

Over the past year, quotes for new home and contents policies increased by 4.1%, or $153, on average. But which insurers have lumped their customers with the biggest price increases?

To assess how much prices have jumped in the last year, our experts compared thousands of quotes from 30 insurers collected in January 2025 to quotes collected for the same scenarios in January 2026. Then we calculated the average change for each brand.

CHOICE insurance expert Daniel Graham says: “The inflation spike that hit the economy after the COVID disruptions affected home insurance prices particularly hard. In 2024, we saw quotes for new business increase by 16% on average. The good news is that widespread price hikes have slowed down. The bad news is those high premiums are here to stay.”

*CHOICE Consumer Pulse June 2025 is an online survey of 1,008 Australian households that has been weighted to ensure it is representative of the Australian population based on the 2021 ABS Census data.

CHOICE tip: With a huge variety of policies out there that can vary in price by thousands of dollars, it’s important to ensure you’re getting the best deal possible on the coverage that suits you best. Compare home and contents policies.

The insurers with the biggest price increases

The insurers with the largest average price increases between January 2025 and January 2026 were:

• Kogan: 15.5%
• AHM: 13%
• Honey: 12.2%
• Apia: 11.2%

Kogan changed underwriters during 2025, meaning the quotes obtained in January 2026 are for a product with different conditions, exclusions and limits.

“Kogan took a policy that regularly ranked at the top of our comparison and swapped it for one that scores just average on cover,” Daniel says. “You might have expected the price to come down too, considering they also increased prices by 38% in 2024.”

Average price increases don’t tell the whole story

Daniel says that while insurers may boast low average price increases, this often doesn’t tell the whole story, as insurers don’t raise all their prices uniformly. 

“Insurers have many levers at their disposal to change the way their algorithm calculates your premium,” he says. “Sometimes this means an insurer will increase prices for some addresses, while keeping them the same or even dropping them for others.

“In 2025 insurers took a more targeted approach to their price changes. In 2024 almost all of the quotes we tracked changed, mostly upwards. This year insurers were less frantic. Only a third of the quotes we tracked went up, and half didn’t change at all.”

Although Kogan had the greatest average premium increase, the price hikes were limited to less than a quarter of the tracked addresses, with variations between states and territories.

“In NT, SA, northern Queensland and Tasmania the increases were well above that brand’s overall average,” says Daniel. “But in NSW and ACT they slashed prices for some new customers: more than a third of their quotes were lower, and barely any went up. Other insurers were doing a similar balancing act, but not to the same degree.” 

Daniel says this is a good reason to not write off an insurer you might previously have dismissed as too expensive. It’s possible they’ve changed their underwriting approach in a way that means it’s now cheaper to insure your home with them.

“We tracked quotes at 5,330 addresses around Australia,” he says. “For 40% of those homes, the cheapest quote in our dataset was actually lower in January 2026 than in 2025. So while premiums are going up in general, it’s possible to find competitive prices if you’re willing to shop around.”

The insurers with more reasonable price hikes

Even though CPI inflation was 3.5% in 2025, for insurance and financial services alone that figure is 2.5%. 

Here are the insurers whose prices went up by less than financial services inflation, on average:

• Bank of Melbourne, BankSA, St.George, Westpac: 2%
• Bupa: 1.9%
• RAA: 1.9%
• RACT: 1.6%
• TIO: 1%
• Everyday Insurance (Woolworths): 0.6%
• Guild: 0.3%

The insurers that dropped prices

Surprisingly, some insurers actually reduced their prices in 2025. They’re an odd mix: a major national insurer, a couple of small independents, and a supermarket:

• QBE: 2.1%
• Aldi: 5.7%
• Sure: 7.2%
• RAC: 8.9%

Daniel says: “Aldi is an interesting one. Even though their policy is a carbon copy of Honey’s, they spent 2025 getting as far as they could from each other on price. Everything about the policy is the same except for the logo. But Aldi is now about 25% cheaper than Honey.”

The biggest price cutter of 2025 was RAC, who reduced premiums at half the addresses we tracked, with quotes going down by 8.9% on average.

“This is quite the turnaround for the West Australian insurer,” says Daniel, who notes that in 2024 RAC actually had the second greatest average increase in our analysis (32.3%). “It’s good they’re walking back some of those price hikes, but it’s important to consider the big picture. Is this the start of a downward trend, or just a blip?”

The factors affecting price

CHOICE experts spend a lot of time analysing quotes and policies offered by various insurers, so we know there are many factors that influence the quote you get as a potential new customer.

These include where in Australia you are, the level of security you have, how much you’ve insured your property for and what excess amount you choose. 

It pays to shop around, because prices vary a lot from insurer to insurer. Instead of declining cover to high-risk properties they don’t want to insure, some insurers will offer ludicrously high quotes to see if you bite.

For nine addresses we looked at in January 2026, the most expensive quote was more than 20 times greater than the cheapest competitor’s. Read more about how to get the best value home insurance.

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Pru Engel

Pru Engel is the Audience and Engagement editor at CHOICE. Her job is to ensure as many Australians as possible know about the great work we do at CHOICE.  She works closely with our testers and experts to find the gems of information in our data and research that will resonate with Australian consumers and help them make the best decisions, whether they're purchasing an air fryer, looking for a new mattress or trying to find the cheapest car insurance. She also helps to drive meaningful change for consumers by collaborating with our Campaigns team on content covering issues such as grocery pricing, product safety and scams.  Prior to CHOICE, Pru worked as an editor at many of Australia's leading food and lifestyle titles.  Pru has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism) from the University of Technology, Sydney. Find Pru on LinkedIn.

Pru Engel is the Audience and Engagement editor at CHOICE. Her job is to ensure as many Australians as possible know about the great work we do at CHOICE.  She works closely with our testers and experts to find the gems of information in our data and research that will resonate with Australian consumers and help them make the best decisions, whether they're purchasing an air fryer, looking for a new mattress or trying to find the cheapest car insurance. She also helps to drive meaningful change for consumers by collaborating with our Campaigns team on content covering issues such as grocery pricing, product safety and scams.  Prior to CHOICE, Pru worked as an editor at many of Australia's leading food and lifestyle titles.  Pru has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism) from the University of Technology, Sydney. Find Pru on LinkedIn.

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Daniel Graham

Daniel Graham is a Senior data analyst in the Insurance and utilities team. He maintains the CHOICE database of general insurance products and is the resident expert in insurance pricing. He covers home, car, pet and health insurance. Previously, Daniel has worked as a finance journalist and data journalist in the investigations team, focusing on insurance stories and comparisons. Daniel has a Graduate Diploma of Journalism from UTS and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney. He is RG146 compliance certified to provide general advice in Tier 2 General Insurance and is a member of the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance. LinkedIn

Daniel Graham is a Senior data analyst in the Insurance and utilities team. He maintains the CHOICE database of general insurance products and is the resident expert in insurance pricing. He covers home, car, pet and health insurance. Previously, Daniel has worked as a finance journalist and data journalist in the investigations team, focusing on insurance stories and comparisons. Daniel has a Graduate Diploma of Journalism from UTS and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney. He is RG146 compliance certified to provide general advice in Tier 2 General Insurance and is a member of the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance. LinkedIn