Best AI-Powered Insurance Shopping Tools

As an insurance reporter, I’ve long been a proponent of shopping for car insurance.

Insurance prices can vary between companies, even for the same person, and comparing quotes is the best way to get strong coverage for your money. And, it’s getting even more important as auto insurance prices rise — The average annual premium rose 18% between January and a year prior, according to data from insurance comparison site The Zebra, now sitting at $1,084 every six months.

Comparison shopping, maintaining a safe driving record and raising your credit score are the best ways to save.

I’ve saved money by doing this for my own home and auto insurance policies, but it’s a time-consuming task. DIY-insurance shopping — that is, browsing without enlisting the help of a broker or agent — has involved spending hours entering the same information into multiple insurers’ websites, getting quotes sent by email, and comparing them side by side.

Now, new AI-powered insurance shopping tools can reduce that process to minutes. While they can’t do everything, and they’re not flawless, these sites and apps can give your insurance research a good starting point.

To this end, I tried three AI auto insurance shopping tools and found two that stood out.

Jerry reduced an hours-long task to 15 minutes, and I was impressed. It’s not only fast, but it’s also comprehensive.

The platform gathers your personal information — including how much you drive, your credit score, and details about your vehicle — then searches at least a dozen insurers for you. Once you get a quote, you can easily compare and review.

When I tried Jerry, I liked how tailored the options were. For example, it showed me several pay-per-mile options, like Mile Auto, likely because my total annual mileage is low due to working from home. This is something I often recommend to readers in similar situations who want to save.

There were two places where the tool fell short, however. I found that the options were sorted by the lowest premium. While that sounds ideal, the cheapest options were state minimum car insurance policies, which is the minimum amount of liability coverage you need to drive legally, based on your state laws. While it’s inexpensive, it could provide less coverage than you need to adequately protect yourself. After all, state laws don’t take into account your net worth or minimum underlying insurance requirements for an umbrella policy, or other nuances of your situation that should factor into how much car insurance you need.

Additionally, it didn’t show me policies from smaller, more local insurers available in my area, such as Erie or NJM. Most of the options Jerry suggested were national brands.

I wondered if smaller companies would be even cheaper if they were included on the platform. Jerry didn’t respond to several requests for information on which companies appeared on the platform.

While it had a steeper learning curve than Jerry, I did like the experience I had with Insurify.

To get started, you need to have an account with ChatGPT. But installing the app on the AI platform took just a click.

As I started chatting with the AI tool, I found it very open-ended. It didn’t tell me exactly what information I needed to put in and how to do it. At first, I floundered, unsure what it knew about me and what it still needed to know. In my initial trial, I only got a few bits of information that I already knew.

But I returned to it later and just tried giving it more information. It worked. The more it learned about me, the more useful its estimates and tips were. Finally, it started to prompt me to give me some ideas of what to tell it next, and my experience really took off.

While Jerry felt like getting any other online quote, I needed to treat Insurify’s prompt system more like talking to a real person. I had to keep giving details to keep getting information in return.

The more I kept chatting, the better the results. I liked that it explained the complicated jargon of car insurance in plain language — a huge plus for anyone who doesn’t write about auto insurance every day like I do.

In the end, I did end up receiving some estimates for monthly costs as well as what it suggested as a ranking of the best insurance companies for me based on all the information I’d shared. Insurify, too, suggested Mile Auto as a top pick for my situation.

I also liked its explanations on the various options I had. When I asked it to give me a price estimate for state minimum car insurance, it explained what that meant. Ultimately, it pointed me towards higher coverage limits, along with a rough estimate of how much that would cost.

Overall, Insurify’s ChatGPT app proved itself be a great way to learn about car insurance, and could certainly help you make more informed decisions, and ultimately, save money.

However, don’t expect that it replaces the entire shopping process for you — the tool felt very limited to ChatGPT. To get actual prices, I’d still need to complete the process of getting quotes from the insurers, or go back onto Insurify’s website to buy.

As I dove into the landscape of AI–powered insurance comparison shopping tools, I was surprised by how few were available. Jerry and Insurify gave the most comprehensive shopping experience. One other platform I tried — Experian’s insurance marketplace app on ChatGPT — was good for getting a general sense of how much I would pay, as it provided a rate range from a few insurers. But when I asked to dig deeper into other options, like reviewing pay-per-mile options, it wasn’t as helpful and directed me to Experian’s site.

“We see ChatGPT as a new interface for financial decisioning, and we’re actively looking to evolve the experience to better bridge discovery and personalization,” an Experian spokesperson told CNBC Select by email.

Additionally, all the AI shopping platforms I tried would still require me to fill out the same information again on insurers’ websites. While they gave me a very good range of what I could expect to pay, I’d still have to do some legwork to get exact quotes.

There’s still room for more innovation in the space — I’ve yet to see an option for gathering homeowners and renters insurance quotes. But what’s available right now can already save you time and potentially money.

At CNBC Select, our mission is to provide our readers with high-quality service journalism and comprehensive consumer advice so they can make informed decisions with their money. Every insurance review is based on rigorous reporting by our team of expert writers and editors with extensive knowledge of insurance products. While CNBC Select earns a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links, we create all our content without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties, and we pride ourselves on our journalistic standards and ethics.

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