Data study · filed with regulators

How Much Does Mileage Really Affect Your Car Insurance?

Updated July 2026

Drive less, pay less — but how much less? The filings show it depends enormously on your state. In Mercury's California filing, a high-mileage driver's bodily-injury factor is 3.6× a low-mileage driver's; in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Virginia the same swing is under 1.4×. That's regulation: California (Prop 103) makes annual mileage a mandatory primary factor. Every figure below is filed and verified.

3.6× high vs low mileage — Mercury (CA)

1.4× high vs low mileage — Progressive (IL)

1.2× high vs low mileage — GEICO (PA)

1.2× high vs low mileage — State Farm (VA)

High-mileage vs. low-mileage — the filed multiple

State Farm (VA) 1.2×

GEICO (PA) 1.2×

Progressive (IL) 1.4×

Mercury (CA) 3.6×

Each bar is that carrier's own highest-mileage bodily-injury factor divided by its lowest.

Lowest and highest mileage bands, by carrier (SERFF-cited)

Carrier / State	Low mileage	High mileage	Spread	SERFF
Mercury — CA	≤3,000 mi (0.58×)	≥35,001 mi (2.10×)	3.6×	MERY-134091688
Progressive — IL	0–3,999 mi (0.89×)	30,000–99,999 mi (1.22×)	1.4×	PRGS-134785395
GEICO — PA	0–999 mi (0.95×)	25,000+ mi (1.14×)	1.2×	GECC-134881413
State Farm — VA	0–7,500 mi (0.84×)	7,501+ mi (1.00×)	1.2×	SFMA-134688491

All figures are bodily-injury factors within a single carrier-state filing.

Does “business, commute, or pleasure” actually change your rate?

Every application asks how you use the car — business, commuting, or pleasure — and most people assume “pleasure” is always cheapest. The filings tell a more careful story. Clearcover doesn't price use as a clean standalone lever at all: it files a single combined “Annual Mileage / Vehicle Use” table, so the use class only moves your rate a few points, and it's entangled with how far you drive. Holding mileage fixed, here is the actual filed bodily-injury factor for each use class:

Annual mileage (held fixed)	Business	Commuting	Pleasure
0–2,999 mi	1.00×	0.84×	0.80×
12,000–12,999 mi	1.00×	0.94×	1.00×
20,000–20,999 mi	1.08×	0.99×	1.06×

Clearcover (AL) · Bodily Injury · CLEA-134278484. Factors are relative to the 1.00 reference and were read at a fixed mileage band so the use class is the only thing changing.

The takeaway: business use is the most expensive class at almost every mileage, and commuting is frequently the cheapest — the reverse of the usual belief that pleasure use always wins. But the whole spread is only a few percent, because the real lever in this table is the mileage, not the label. Answer the use question honestly; it's a small factor, and misstating it to chase a discount is the kind of thing an insurer can correct at renewal.

What this means for your rate

In California, driving less is a huge lever. The filed mileage factor more than triples from the lowest band to the highest — so a low-mileage or pay-per-mile program can save a lot.
Elsewhere it's a modest nudge. In most states the mileage swing is 15–40%, meaningful but not dominant.
Estimate honestly. Carriers increasingly verify mileage (telematics, odometer) — a low estimate that doesn't hold up can be corrected at renewal.

See how your actual mileage prices out across carriers.

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Cite this data

Free to cite and reference with attribution. Every figure is a public SERFF filing you can independently verify.

Suggested citation:

FastAutoQuote, “How Much Mileage Moves Your Car-Insurance Rate,” an analysis of filed SERFF annual-mileage factors. https://fastautoquote.org/how-much-mileage-affects-car-insurance

Machine-readable data: /api/v1/mileage-factors.json · Media & data inquiries: press@fastautoquote.org

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