8 Best Car Insurance Companies in Massachusetts of 2023

Car insurance in Massachusetts protects you from unforeseen car events like car accidents, injured drivers, and theft.

These days, roads are busier in Massachusetts, and police authorities have seen a spike in drivers who drive recklessly, such as speeding.

Even if you don’t drive a lot, you are more likely to get into a car accident that’s either your fault or the fault of another driver, given that there are so many drivers on the road.

As such, purchasing car insurance is a good idea, as it will protect you and your car. Plus, it’s mandatory to have it in Massachusetts.

Also, if you cause an accident that injures the other driver, your car policy will cover that driver’s medical expenses.

Medical payments are very high in cost. You’d have to pay for them out-of-pocket if you didn't have insurance. Do you have enough money to pay them? Most don’t.

There are so many car insurance companies out there, and it can be hard to choose the one that best suits your needs.

So, if you are looking for affordable car insurance or with the right coverages, we’ve gathered a list of the best car insurance companies ranked by category to give you an idea of what’s out there. We’ve even given you a guide about car insurance to help you make an informed decision.

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Liberty Mutual: Best Car Insurance for Teachers

Liberty Mutual has been around for years and offers many insurance products. The insurer is known for its optional coverages that you can buy to customize your policy or make it comprehensive.

One unique coverage you can get is the teacher’s car insurance, which is rarely seen in other comparable insurers.

To get coverage, you have to be a teacher.

The teacher’s car coverage includes:

Vandalism Loss Protection

There's no deductible if your car was broken into and your personal items were stolen during a school-related event or on school property.

Collision Coverage

There’s also no deductible if your car is damaged in an accident while driving it for school-based or school-related businesses.

Personal Property Coverage

If your teaching materials are stolen or damaged while in your car,

you can get reimbursed up to $2,500 per incident.

The best thing is that if you are a teacher, these policies come with no extra charge.

Read a full Liberty Mutual car insurance review.

Progressive: Best Car Insurance for Usage-Based Insurance

Car premiums can be expensive if you are an at-risk driver, have a blemished driving history, or have a low credit score, for example.

Insurers typically use the above and more to determine your rate.

However, with Progressive’s Snapshot, you get personalized rates that are based on your good driving habits.

So, the better you drive, the more you can save.

Snapshot measures your driving, such as the time of day you drive, the amount you drive, and how many times you hard braked and increased your acceleration.

So, if you refrain from driving during a hailstorm or keep at a distance from the car in front of you just in case that car brakes hard, you’ll get that discount.

Snapshot is easy to use. You can use your mobile app or a plug-in device that you put in your car. Then, you can check to see how well you drive using your mobile app or the insurer’s website.

Read a full Progressive car insurance review.

State Farm: Best Car Insurance for Bundling

State Farm is known for its bundling discount.

If you have multiple insurance policies and are looking to consolidate, State Farm is the carrier for you.

If you purchase life, home, condo, or renters insurance with your car policy with State Farm and bundle them, you can see significant savings on your policy rate.

When you purchase multiple policies, this is called bundling.

Bundling each insurance with State Farm also allows you to keep money in your pocket.

Here are some multi-policies that you should take advantage of.

Why Bundling?

Buying multiple policies and bundling them is a really easy way to simplify your insurance needs and make your premium more affordable.

You’ll get one bill for all your insurance products.

And by using State Farm’s website, you have access to all your insurances in one location.

Farmers: Best Car Insurance for the Most Discounts

Farmers car insurance may not be the cheapest. But the insurer has the most discounts compared to other insurers on our list. These will help you lower your premium.

For example, if you bundle your car and home with Farmers, you can save around 20%.

Here are some car insurance discounts from Farmers.

GEICO: Best Car Insurance Generally Known to Offer Some of the Lowest Rates

GEICO car insurance is generally known to offer some of the lowest rates in the industry.

However, your rate depends on a lot of factors. These include:

• Driving experience.
• Whether or not there are blemishes on your driving record.
• Accidents that result in a claim can impact your rates.
• Speeding tickets may increase your rates.
• Your qualification for discounts may also change based on your record.
• If you have safety features in your car.
• If you live in a safe area with a low crime rate, your rate will go down.
• The more time you drive (such as to and from work), the higher the chance you may get into an accident.
• If you’ve filed a claim.

In addition, your car's make and model help determine the following:

• Expected repair costs
• If theft rates are higher for your car.
• Types of safety features installed.

Read a full GEICO auto insurance review.

Travelers: Best Car Insurance for Coverages You Need

Travelers is known for its car insurance coverage options that can make your policy more comprehensive.

The options you can include in your car coverage are:

Gap Insurance

This is coverage you need if your car is financed or leased. If your car is totaled, gap insurance will pay the difference between the actual cash value of the car and the unpaid balance of the car loan or lease.

Rental Coverage

Rental reimbursement can help pay for a rental car if your car is damaged and can’t be driven for more than 24 hours.

Roadside Assistance

This coverage is for you if you are left stranded in a place you don’t know due to unexpected car trouble like a flat tire or dead battery.

New Car Replacement

If you total your new car in the first five years, this coverage will replace your car with a brand new one of the same make and model.

Accident Forgiveness

You’ll be forgiven if you have one covered accident within a specified time period. As such, accident forgiveness protects your rate from increasing because of that one accident.

Amica: Best Car Insurance for Coverage Package

Amica offers many insurance products that make bundling easy. As such, the insurer allows you to take a good percentage off your premium.

Amica also has a wide range of coverage options. But do you want to waste your time picking and choosing coverages and having to research them?

Well, then, this is a policy you need. It bundles together the most useful features you may need.

It’s called Platinum Choice, where you can get your premium coverage in one convenient package.

Platinum Choice includes:

Glass Repair

Glass repair or replacement comes without a deductible

Credit Monitoring

Protects your valuable personal information. And if your bank accounts and credit cards were used fraudulently, you can get credit monitoring or an identity-theft add-on.

New Car Replacement

This feature replaces your totaled new car with a new one. Your car must be under one year old and have fewer than 15,000 miles to qualify.

Rental Car

Unlike other insurers that put a cap on your rental usage, Amica’s rental coverage has no daily limit and a $5,000 max that allows you to rent a car that is similar to the one you own if your car is damaged or totaled.

You don’t necessarily have to buy the complete package. You can also add these features individually.

Also, it’s good to know that Amica offers the following for free:

• Free lock replacement if you lose your car keys.
• Free repair if your airbag deploys in an accident.

Nationwide: Best Car Insurance for Accident Forgiveness

In the US, there are well over 50,000 car accidents each year.

Accidents can happen to anyone, even the safest drivers on the road.

You want to be a safe driver because your rates will rise if you cause an accident. Many car owners don’t have extra money reserved for this rise.

Nationwide has your back with Accident Forgiveness.

Accident Forgiveness is a car insurance coverage option that can help you avoid a rate increase after your first at-fault accident.

You have to buy this coverage as an addition to your standard car insurance.

If you have other people on your policy, like family and friends, these drivers can also benefit from Accident Forgiveness.

However, it can only be used once per policy.

How We Picked and Ranked the Best Car Insurance Companies

Here are some of the factors we took into consideration when picking the best insurers on our list.

Discounts

Your car insurance shouldn’t break your bank. So, we looked at affordable car insurance companies that had the most discounts to lower your premium.

Coverage

We looked at an insurer’s coverages to see if they were useful enough to buy. If an insurer has a good number of useful coverages, we put that company on our list.

In particular, we tried to find insurers that offered the most important coverages, including:

• Gap Insurance.
• Rental Reimbursement.
• Roadside Assistance.
• New Car Replacement.
• Accident Forgiveness.

Technology

If a company had a website and mobile app, and both could simplify your life by allowing you to do several things related to your policy online or on the app, then that’s an insurer we put on our list.

For a company’s website or mobile app, it was important that they had the following:

Getting a quote and then buying a policy electronically without having to talk to an agent.

And being able to file a claim, track it, and have useful tools on the website such as comparison shopping.

Price

An insurer with a low premium and the ability to lower it more by using discounts ranked higher on our list than others.

Is Car Insurance Mandatory in Massachusetts?

Massachusetts law requires all car drivers to be covered by car insurance.

However, to drive legally, you only have to carry liability insurance and PIP (personal injury protection).

This means purchasing additional car insurance, such as uninsured/underinsured motorist, and comprehensive and collision coverage is optional.

What is Car Insurance?

Car insurance covers the costs if you hurt someone after an accident, destroy a car after an accident, and cause damage to a person’s property with your car.

What Does Car Insurance Cover?

Your coverage will vary by state. However, to drive your car,

there are two main components of a car insurance policy: bodily injury liability and property damage liability.

Liability

Liability insurance covers property damage or injuries you may have caused to others in an accident.

Liability also includes medical payments if you or your passengers were injured in a car accident.

Bodily Injury

If you injure another driver and it was your fault, a bodily injury will cover a person’s medical expenses and lost wages if the person can’t work due to bodily injuries. It also covers funeral costs.

Property Damage

If you damage someone else’s property that has structures such as a fence or a detached garage, this liability will cover any expenses related to repairs or replacements.

Is That All I Need for Car Insurance Coverage?

No, a basic policy will not have these coverages below. If you add them to your policy, you’ll have the right amount of coverage that best suits your needs.

Physical Damage

Physical damage is optional. Below are the coverages that make physical damage necessary.

Comprehensive / Collison Coverage

Comprehensive

Comprehensive collision pays for your car when you cause physical damage due to a non-collision-related incident. These include theft, fire, hail damage, falling objects, contact with animals such as deer, vandalism, glass breakage, and storm damage.

Collision Coverage

If you want coverage for your car, you need to purchase collision coverage.

Collision coverage protects your car against accidents.

Collision covers named perils in your car policy, such as fire, theft, vandalism, and hail.

Collision coverage is what pays for the repairs to your car if you come into contact with another car or inanimate object.

However, a collision won’t cover you if you hit an animal.

So, if you hit a deer, repairs to your car will be paid by comprehensive coverage.

Comprehensive and collision insurance are usually optional and are not required in the state of Massachusetts.

But if your car is financed, the lender may require both comprehensive and collision.

Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist

This protects you when you have an accident where the motorist is at-fault, and either doesn’t carry insurance or else has insurance limits that are not enough to reimburse you for damages the motorist caused.

Uninsured/Underinsured motorists will pay you the difference between your expenses and the policy limit of the other motorist.

Personal Injury Protection (PIP)

If you are injured in a car accident, regardless of who caused the accident, PIP will cover any medical treatments you need.

Massachusetts requires PIP coverage so some bodily injury expenses can be covered.

In no-fault states, PIP coverage is mandatory.

Is Massachusetts a No-Fault State?

Massachusetts is a no-fault state.

A no-fault state means drivers are required to carry their own protection.

This means if you have a car accident, regardless of who caused it, each driver will file a claim with their own car insurer.

In Massachusetts, no-fault reduces the number of extraneous lawsuits in the court system by preventing them.

No-Fault also guarantees drivers and any passengers in the car to receive immediate medical attention in the event of an accident without having to wait for the at-fault driver’s insurance to pay.

What are the Minimum Amounts of Liability Insurance Required by the State of Massachusetts?

The minimum liability coverage is as follows:

• Bodily injury liability: $20,000 per person and $40,000 per accident.
• Property damage liability: $5,000 per accident.
• Personal injury protection: $8,000.

Massachusetts limits are quite low.

PIP can help pay bodily injury expenses.

But if you cause serious injuries to one or more parties, expenses could very quickly exhaust PIP limits as well as your bodily injury liability.

In addition, the property damage liability required by Massachusetts is among the lowest in the nation, at $5,000. In all likelihood, this will not be sufficient coverage, even for a minor accident.

Should I Increase My Limits?

The minimum level of a basic insurance policy will not give drivers enough protection and they may want to insure themselves for other types of losses that may result from car accidents.  

As such, potential policyholders choose to buy higher limits of property damage and bodily injury coverage.

If you have bodily injuries after crashing your car, or your car is totaled and you need medical attention, you may need more liability insurance so you don’t end up paying out-of-pocket.

And if you’ve reached your policy limits or your accident limits, you will be held responsible for any remaining out-of-pocket costs.

As such, it is strongly suggested to increase your liability limits beyond the required amount so you don’t end up paying a portion.

What Does Car Insurance Not Cover?

• Contents in Car: If your car was broken into and a thief stole your laptop or any personal items in your car.
• Damage: Any damage you cause to your car intentionally.
• Normal Wear and Tear
• Mechanical Failure: If you have mechanical failure unrelated to a covered peril.

What Factors Determine Your Premium?

Insurance premiums vary a lot by insurers because each considers certain factors while offering policies to potential policyholders. This means no two comparable insurers will have identical prices for the same policy.

To determine your rate, the following are the most important factors that can impact your car premium.

Your Age

If you have a teenager or young adult on your policy, expect your rate to increase because the insurer will assume that your young ones tend to drive more recklessly and get into many accidents since they haven’t been driving for long.

Even older people will see their rates increase due to the assumption that they have vision problems or limited bodily movement.

Credit Score

To an insurer, if you have a good to great credit score, you will be less likely to cause an accident or skip your monthly rates. As a result, your premium will be lowered.

But if you have poor credit, the insurer will assume that you will be more likely to file claims or skip payments. So, your premium will rise.

Driving History

The insurer will increase your premium if your driving record has too many derogatory remarks.

Location

If your neighborhood is safe, then there’s less risk of having your car stolen or broken into.

Gender

Statistically, women tend to drive more safely than men, which means their rate will be low.

As for men, they are often risk-takers on the road and, as such, their rate will be higher.

How Can I Get a Lower Premium?

There are several factors that can lower your rate that you should look into to get the most affordable coverage you need.

Shop Around

The best way to get a rate that fits your budget is to shop around and get quotes from several insurers.

Then compare your multiple quotes for the same coverage from different companies.

Discounts

Car insurers usually have discounts for policyholders. Discounts can lower your premium significantly. These include:

Multi-Policy/Multi-Car

Multi-Policy

If you bundle your car with home or renters insurance from the same company.

Multi-Car

If you insure one or more cars with the same insurer.

Note that the multi-policy/multi-car discount is the one you should take advantage of because it takes the largest percentage off your premium.

Safe Driver

If you drive carefully, don’t get into accidents, and don’t make any claims, you’ll get a discount.

Raise Your Deductible

Raising your deductible means you’ll have a lower premium.

However, lowering your deductible will increase the amount you pay if you file a claim.

How Much Does Car Insurance Cost in Massachusetts?

The cost of your car policy varies depending on different factors.

Here are some of the factors.

• Your insurance history.
• Your driving experience.
• How many miles do you drive.
• Where you live, work, or park your car.
• Your past violations and accident history.
• Your age, gender, and marital status.
• Your vehicle's make, model, and year.