How to choose pet insurance: price curves, reserves and a checklist

When you choose pet insurance, you choose how its price will grow. Coverage terms matter, but over a dog’s life the products differ mostly in how fast the premium climbs, not in service. Work in this order: decide what the policy is for, compare price curves, set money aside, ask your questions in writing and go through the checklist.

Start with the goal

Two different products are sold under the word “insurance”. The first is catastrophe cover: no annual limit, a $1,000 deductible, 80–90% reimbursement. You pay small bills yourself, but a $20,000 bill will not ruin you. The second is cost sharing: a $10,000 limit, a $250 deductible, and payment for exam fees and routine preventive care (wellness). It pays some money back every year, but it costs more for what it covers, and it lets you down in exactly the year of a catastrophe. A purebred dog with known breed risks needs only the first product. The terms are explained in what is in a policy.

Three kinds of price curve

Over a dog’s life the products differ mainly in how the price grows. How each factor works is in how pet insurance is priced.

• The price rises with age almost without a cap, plus a tenure charge. This is how Independence American’s V4 program works in Florida (brands Pumpkin, Spot, ASPCA; filing 26-024273). The price is multiplied by an age factor: 0.821 at age 4, 2.316 at 10, 3.329 at 15. On top comes a tenure factor, about 3% for every year with the company: 1.031 after one year, 1.354 after ten, 1.529 after fourteen. The policy is cheaper at the start and the most expensive of all by age 10–14.
• The price rises with age up to a cap. Pets Best in Florida (26-026451) stops raising the age factor at 12: for a French Bulldog it stays at 4.4799. There is no tenure charge. Lemonade’s Florida rate manual (26-034247) also stops at 12, at 5.0095. After that, the price moves only with general rate increases.
• Age is fixed on the day you enroll. Trupanion takes the age factor on the day you buy and never changes it. In California (25-2461) it is 0.817 for a puppy under one, 2.328 for a seven-year-old dog and 3.423 for a thirteen-year-old. The price does not rise with birthdays, but you get every general rate increase in full. In California, Trupanion raised rates 28.9% in 2024, 31.7% in 2025 and 19.0% in 2026.

Some insurers add a fourth multiplier, for claims. Fetch in California (25-2417) lowers the price at renewal if you made no claims (0.95, 0.90, then 0.85) and raises it to between 1.15 and 2.20 after paid claims. Embrace has proposed a new California rate manual (26-812, not yet approved). In it, a claim-history factor replaces the healthy-pet discount: up to 4.77 for an older dog with paid claims in each of the last three years.

Compare the total over the dog’s life, not the first year’s price. By age 10 your dog will most likely have a diagnosis. After that you cannot switch insurers and keep cover for it (see pre-existing conditions). Below is the same French Bulldog, insured as a puppy in Florida, at each brand whose rate pages we have read:

In the Florida filings, Pumpkin costs $164.01 a month in the first year and $1,006.84 at age 14. Pets Best costs $78.41 and $345.98. At Pumpkin the first nine years cost about $25,400 and the last six about $56,200. These are filed rates, with no general increases. What you pay as the dog ages decides which policy is the better deal. How general increases come on top is in why pet insurance prices rise.

Self-insurance and a reserve

Suppose you buy no policy and instead put the same amount into a savings account at 4% a year. That is a typical savings rate for 2025–2026, before tax on the interest. If you save what Pumpkin would cost for this dog at its filed Florida rates, the account holds $8,358 after four years and $99,932 after fifteen. Of that, $81,645 is your deposits and $18,287 is interest.

The interest adds little. What matters more is that an insurer pays back only part of each premium dollar in claims. At the rates charged in recent years, the filings show claims taking 61.7 cents of the dollar at Independence American’s V4 program in Florida (2025, 26-024273), 47.0 cents at Pets Best in Florida (26-026451), 70.8 cents at Lemonade in Florida (2023–2025, 26-034247) and 73.3 cents at Trupanion in California (25-2461; this figure does not yet include bills still to come for past claims). On average, self-insurance wins.

But an average does not help if trouble comes early. For the first four years the account holds less than $9,000, even if you deposit as much as the most expensive policy costs. Spinal surgery or a week in intensive care costs $10,000–20,000, and French Bulldogs need them at any age. Two such events in a row, or two years of cancer treatment with chemotherapy, empty the fund. Self-insurance wins when the dog is healthy and the owner is lucky. It loses in the one year you buy insurance for.

So for a healthy young dog, do not choose between a policy and savings; combine them. Buy the cheapest policy with no limit and a high deductible, and save the difference to an expensive one. If you pay for Pets Best and save the difference to Pumpkin at 4%, the account holds $58,911 after fifteen years at today’s filed rates. If both premiums rise 10% a year, it holds $152,078. The dog stays fully insured the whole time. The savings pay deductibles, your 10% share of each bill and whatever the policy excludes. Above all, they give you a choice at age 10–11. By then the expensive policy costs $640–723 a month (Pumpkin at ages 10 and 11), and a dog with a chronic condition can no longer move to another insurer.

What to look at besides price

• Whether there is a limit, and how it is counted: per year, per condition or for life.
• The deductible: per year or per condition.
• Whether the policy pays exam fees.
• The rule for curable conditions, and the list of conditions excluded forever.
• Waiting periods, and whether a vet exam can waive them.
• Direct payment: whether the insurer pays your clinic and the nearest emergency hospital directly.
• Complaints. The Better Business Bureau shows three years of complaints; Trustpilot shows the spread of ratings. Adjust for size: a company with a million insured pets will have more complaints than a small one. Read the topics, not the score. Every insurer has disputes over pre-existing conditions and over the size of increases.
• Your state’s policy form, not the “sample policy” on the website. Many brands post a countrywide template, while your state has its own version (laws by state).
• The rate filing: the latest approved increase, the gap between the indicated and the selected increase, and the age and tenure tables (how to read a rate filing). Our ratings score these per state; the methodology explains how.

Questions to ask in writing before you buy

1. Which policy form applies in my state (form number and edition)?
2. Which Insurer Disclosure of Important Policy Provisions applies to my state?
3. Which conditions do you treat as curable, and how long must a condition be free of symptoms?
4. Does the price rise with my pet’s age, and by which table?
5. Is there a tenure charge, a claims factor or a discount for no claims?
6. Which clinics near me accept direct payment?
7. If I move to you from another brand of the same insurer, does that count as a renewal? Will conditions that were already covered stay covered?

An answer on the phone is worth nothing. Get it as text: an email or a chat you can save.

Checklist before you buy

1. Decide what you need: catastrophe cover or help with routine costs. A purebred dog needs catastrophe cover.
2. Get two to three years of vet records and read them as the insurer will. Have mistakes corrected before you enroll.
3. Insure before the first entry in the record, ideally on the day the puppy comes home.
4. Choose no annual limit, a $500–1,000 deductible and 80–90% reimbursement.
5. Read the Insurer Disclosure and the policy form for your state.
6. Find the insurer’s rate filing in the regulator’s database: the increase, the date, the age table, the tenure factor.
7. Compare three or four products by the premiums to age 14, not by the first year’s price.
8. Check direct payment at your clinic and the nearest emergency hospital.
9. Get written answers to the questions above.
10. Once insured, never let the policy lapse for even a day, and do not change insurer after the first diagnosis.
11. Save the difference between an expensive policy and the one you chose. It is your reserve for the dog’s old age.
12. Once a year, two to three months before renewal, check the regulator’s database for new filings and decide in advance.

Sources

• Florida OIR (IRFS) files 26-024273 (Independence American V4: Pumpkin, Spot, ASPCA; approved manual FL_20260724), 26-026451 (Pets Best), 26-034247 (Lemonade).
• California Department of Insurance files 25-2461 (Trupanion), 25-2417 (Fetch), 26-812 (Embrace, not approved).
• We computed the lifetime totals and savings balances from those rate pages for the reference profile: French Bulldog, male, ZIP 33545, no annual limit, $1,000 deductible, 90% reimbursement, monthly payment. Savings grow at 4% a year, compounded monthly.