Our methodology

Where our data comes from

We build our auto-insurance data from primary, authoritative sources only:

• State rate filings (SERFF). Carriers are legally required to file their rates and rules with each state's insurance department. We read those filings directly.
• Federal safety data (NHTSA). Crash-test and safety ratings come straight from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
• Regulator publications. State minimum-coverage requirements and the NAIC complaint index come from the regulators themselves.

How we read a rate filing

The hard part of auto-insurance data isn't finding numbers — it's reading the primary documents carriers file with regulators and transcribing them faithfully. We do that by hand, one filing at a time, and it's the experience that separates our pages from generic, rewritten content.

When we built our Clearcover page, we pulled the company's Arizona personal-auto rate manual on file with the state — SERFF tracking CLEA-134142856, effective July 15, 2024 — and read it directly. We transcribed the factors cell by cell: the distribution-channel offsets (a lead-channel factor of 2.0441 versus 1.8044 for buying direct), the household factors (0.9608 for a single male, rising to 1.1335 when a second driver is added), the new-vehicle discount (0.97), and the continuous-coverage factor (0.8493 for unbroken coverage versus 1.0000 after a lapse). Every one of those numbers came off the filed page — none of it is estimated.

The rules for that work are strict, and they're the same on every filing:

• Read the clean filing, never a redline. We transcribe from the final, approved rate pages — never a tracked-changes draft that may not reflect what is actually in force.
• No automated scraping of filed values. Filed manuals are dense and easy for a machine to misread, so a person transcribes each figure and a second pass eyeball-checks a sample of cells against the source before anything is published.
• Every figure keeps its origin. Each number stores its carrier, state, SERFF tracking number, effective date, and the date we captured it, so any reader — or our reviewer — can trace it straight back to the filing.
• One carrier's cell is never the market. A factor from one company in one state is labeled as exactly that; we don't dress a single filed number up as a nationwide average.

How we keep figures honest

Integrity isn't a promise here — it's built into how the site is constructed. A figure can only be published if it carries a real source, a source URL, and a capture date; anything without that provenance is shown as "Pending" rather than guessed. Pages that fall short of our quality bar — too few distinct sources, missing a licensed-agent review, or any unsourced number — are automatically held back from search engines until the gaps are closed. That check runs in code, not from anyone's memory, so a page that falls short literally cannot enter our sitemap.

What we won't do

A few lines we don't cross — they're what separate sourced data from marketing copy:

• We don't fabricate a number. If we don't have a sourced value, the page shows "Pending" and stays out of search until it's filled in.
• We don't copy figures from other comparison sites. Every number comes from the regulator filing or dataset itself, never from a competitor's page.
• We don't publish internal or trade-secret material. Underwriting guidelines and any non-public document stay internal; only publicly filed rate pages and public datasets are cited.
• We don't let an unreviewed rate, coverage, or compliance claim go live — a licensed agent signs off first.

The Fast Auto Score™

Where we rank carriers, we use the Fast Auto Score — a transparent 0–100 number built only from data we can show our work for: a carrier's own filed rates and the public NAIC complaint record. It uses no purchased third-party ratings, so it can't be copied from anyone else. We publish every input and its weight so you can see exactly what the score reflects:

• Rate competitiveness (35 %). Based on the carrier's filed base rate compared with its peers.
• NAIC complaint index (30 %). Based on the carrier's complaint ratio from the NAIC, inverted so fewer complaints score higher.
• 12-month rate stability (20 %). Based on how much the carrier's filed rates have moved over the past year.
• Coverage breadth (15 %). Based on the coverages and options available in the carrier's filed policy.

The score is informational and is not a recommendation to buy any specific policy. A carrier is scored only once each input is backed by a real, dated source; any input we don't yet have is shown as "Pending," never estimated.

Review and corrections

A licensed Property & Casualty agent reviews our rate, coverage, and compliance content before it publishes — see our reviewer. Each page shows when it was last reviewed. If you spot something that looks wrong, tell us and we'll verify it against the source and correct it.