Boat Insurance Cost Calculator
Progressive's own published averages: ~$301/yr across its 17 lowest-cost states, $400/yr medium, $657/yr across its 17 highest — about $25–$55/month. Your premium depends on coverage structure, cruising waters, boat type and deductible, not on your boat's value.
There is no single national boat insurance price. The clearest published figures come from one insurer: Progressive's own book averages run about $301/yr across its 17 lowest-cost states, $400/yr across its medium-cost states and $657/yr across its 17 highest-cost states — roughly $25 to $55 a month. Your boat's value is NOT what moves that number; coverage structure, cruising waters, boat type and deductible are. Adjust the scenario below to see each lever priced separately, then get a real quote.
Enter Your Details
Adjust values to see instant results
Pre-filled: Progressive low-cost-state average
Pre-filled: Progressive high-cost-state average
Additional Details
Additional Details
Estimated Annual Premium Range
Estimated • Based on your inputs
Estimated Monthly Premium Range
$27 – $58
Detailed Breakdown
Disclaimer: This calculator provides estimates for informational purposes only. Results should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional for your specific situation.
How This Calculator Works
Calculation methodology and assumptions
Marine insurers do not publish an industry-wide pricing formula, and no independent public dataset ties an exact premium to a specific boat's value — so this tool is illustrative, NOT a quote. The default $301–$657 baseline is Progressive's own published average annual premium by state cost-tier for its book of business (low-cost states ≈$301/yr, high-cost states ≈$657/yr) — one insurer's averages, not a universal number. Replace it with your own quote for an accurate estimate. The scenario selectors apply transparent, illustrative percentage adjustments to that baseline. Boat type/horsepower class, boat age, boating experience, completing a safety course, primary boating area, coverage structure, and deductible are rating factors Progressive publicly lists as affecting real-world premiums, so their DIRECTION is sourced. Storage method is not documented in that published list — its inclusion here reflects generalized, illustrative reasoning (a boat exposed to weather or kept in the water year-round has more ongoing physical-damage exposure than one stored covered/indoors), not a cited insurer figure. For every factor, insurers combine many additional proprietary underwriting variables (claims history, specific marina, hull material, engine count, prior lapses, and more) that are not publicly documented, so the exact size of each adjustment here is illustrative, not an insurer's actual math. Boat insurance is legally required in only a few states — lenders and marinas commonly require it regardless. Check your state boating agency or NASBLA for current state-specific rules, and get real quotes from licensed marine insurers before buying.
Key State Information
Legal boat insurance requirements vary by state — a handful of states mandate minimum liability coverage while most do not, though your lender (if financed) or marina (if docked) may still require it. Confirm current requirements with your state's boating law administrator or department of natural resources/motor vehicles before assuming you are (or aren't) required to carry coverage.
How to Use This Boat Calculator
- 1
Start from the published baseline, not from your boat's price
The two baseline fields are prefilled with Progressive's own published state cost-tier averages — about $301/yr across its lowest-cost states and about $657/yr across its highest. That published pair, not your hull value, is what every adjustment below is applied to. If you already hold a real quote, overwrite both fields with your quote's low and high estimates and the whole page re-prices around your numbers instead of one insurer's book average.
- 2
Enter the insured value for coverage, not for premium
The boat-value field sets the Hull Coverage basis the result reports, and nothing else. It is deliberately excluded from the premium arithmetic: no insurer publishes a premium-per-dollar-of-hull-value rate, and the widely repeated "1-2% of boat value" shortcut is not published by any carrier or regulator we could verify. A calculator that multiplied your value by a percentage would look more precise and be less true.
- 3
Describe the boat: type, age and how it is stored
Boat type carries the largest single adjustment on this page — a yacht or cruiser prices well above a fishing boat or runabout, and a sailboat or pontoon below it — because type stands in for horsepower, speed and repair cost. Age runs the other way: a current-model-year boat costs more to insure than a 16-year-old one. Storage is the one selector Progressive does not publish as a rating factor; it is included as transparent illustrative reasoning and labelled as such in the methodology.
- 4
Describe the operator and the water
Years of experience and completion of a boating safety course both reduce the estimate, and both are factors Progressive publicly lists. Primary boating area matters more than most owners expect: the same boat rated for an inland lake, a coastal bay, open ocean and tournament racing produces four materially different numbers, because salt, distance from assistance and sea state all change the claim severity being priced.
- 5
Choose the coverage structure and deductible you would actually buy
Agreed Value pays the figure written into the policy with no depreciation applied; Actual Cash Value pays the depreciated value at the time of loss and prices below it; liability-only carries no hull coverage at all and is cheapest by a wide margin, because the insurer is no longer covering your boat. The deductible moves the premium in the opposite direction to your own exposure — read the two together, never the premium alone.
- 6
Read the range as a range, then go get a real quote
The output is a low-to-high band plus a net scenario adjustment percentage, deliberately not a single number, because the variables a calculator cannot see — claims history, your specific marina, hull material, engine count, prior lapses — are the ones that decide where inside the band you land. Use the band to sanity-check quotes and to price one decision against another; use a licensed marine insurer to buy.
Example Calculation
How much is boat insurance on a $20,000 boat? (A real, MEASURED search query on this page — and the honest answer is not the one most cost articles print.)
Start from Progressive's published state cost-tier averages: $301/yr for its low-cost tier and $657/yr for its high-cost tier. Now take this page's own default scenario — a 6-15 year old fishing boat or runabout, an owner with 5-9 years of experience and no safety course, kept in a year-round marina slip, run on an inland lake, on Agreed Value hull coverage with a $500 deductible. Those choices produce a net scenario adjustment of 5% against the published baseline.
Result: About $320 – $690 a year, or $27 – $58 a month. Now notice what did not happen: the $20,000 value never entered the premium arithmetic at all. It set the hull coverage basis ($20,000) and stopped there, because no public source ties premium linearly to hull value — the "1-2% of boat value" figure repeated across the web is not published by any carrier we could verify. Moving one lever at a time from the same scenario: completing a boating safety course gives $290 – $630; running offshore instead of inland gives $400 – $860; dropping to liability-only, with no hull coverage at all, gives $130 – $280. Those four numbers, not the boat's price tag, are what actually move a marine premium.
What Affects Your Results
Agreed Value vs Actual Cash Value
This is the largest structural choice on the page. Agreed Value settles a total loss at the figure written into the policy with no depreciation applied, and prices highest. Actual Cash Value settles at the depreciated value on the day of the loss and prices below it. Liability-only carries no hull coverage whatsoever and is dramatically cheaper, because the insurer is no longer insuring your boat at all — only the harm you cause someone else.
Cruising Waters
Where the boat is operated changes claim severity, not merely claim frequency. Inland lakes and rivers price lowest; coastal and bay operation adds salt exposure and weather; open-ocean or offshore use adds distance from assistance and sea state; tournament or racing use prices highest. Policies encode this as navigational limits, so a boat rated for a lake and then run offshore may not simply cost more — it may not be covered.
Storage, Lay-Up and Named-Storm Exposure
A boat kept in a year-round in-water slip carries continuous physical-damage exposure; a trailered boat stored covered or indoors carries the least. Progressive does not publish storage as a rating factor, so the adjustment applied here is transparent illustrative reasoning rather than a cited insurer figure — but the underlying exposure is real, and in hurricane-exposed regions it appears contractually as haul-out and named-storm obligations you are required to meet.
Boat Type, Age and Horsepower Class
Type is the strongest single selector here because it stands in for speed, horsepower, hull repair cost and typical claim size. Yachts and cruisers price well above fishing boats and runabouts; sailboats and pontoons price below. Age runs the opposite direction from what many owners expect — a current-model-year boat costs more to insure than a 16-year-old one, because the amount at risk is higher, even though the older boat is likelier to need repair.
Operator Experience and Safety Training
Years of boating experience and completion of a safety course are both factors Progressive publicly lists, and both move the estimate down. An operator with a decade on the water and a NASBLA-approved certificate is a materially different risk from a first-season owner with a new boat. Claims history sits alongside these in real underwriting but is not modelled here, because no public dataset prices it.
Deductible and Liability Limits
The deductible moves the premium in the opposite direction to your own exposure — every dollar shaved off the annual cost by raising it is a dollar you have agreed to pay yourself at claim time. Liability limits behave the same way at the catastrophic end. Neither number means anything read alone: compare quotes at the same deductible and the same limits, or you are comparing two different products and calling it a price difference.
Tips & Best Practices
- Quote Agreed Value and Actual Cash Value side by side before deciding on price alone. ACV is cheaper every month and settles a total loss at the depreciated value at the time of the claim; Agreed Value settles at the number written into the policy with no depreciation applied. On an older boat the gap between those two settlements can exceed several years of the premium difference.
- Get quotes from marine specialists as well as from your auto or home carrier. Marine underwriting is a distinct discipline — specialist markets rate boat type, horsepower and cruising waters directly, while a bundled add-on from a general carrier may price off far cruder buckets.
- Complete a NASBLA-approved boating safety course before you buy the policy, not after. Progressive publicly lists safety-course completion among the factors that affect a boat premium, many states accept the same certificate toward an operator card, and the course is typically free or under $50.
- Read the navigational limits and the lay-up clause, not just the price. A policy that is cheap because it confines you to inland waters, or that suspends physical-damage coverage during a winter lay-up period, is not comparable to one that does not — and named-storm haul-out obligations in hurricane-exposed regions carry real out-of-pocket costs at the exact moment you are least able to plan.
- Price the deductible as a decision rather than accepting a default. Raising it lowers the premium every year and transfers real exposure to you on the day of a claim. The honest test: could you write the deductible cheque tomorrow without financing it? If not, the cheaper premium is not actually cheaper.
- Check whether your state legally requires coverage instead of assuming it does not. Most states do not mandate it, a few do, and lenders and marinas routinely require proof regardless of state law. Confirm current rules with your state boating law administrator rather than with a cost article, because these statutes do change.
Whose average is $301–$657? Naming the provenance
Almost every "average cost of boat insurance" figure on the web traces back to a single insurer's published book averages, and is then reprinted without saying so. Here is the actual source, in full, with the population each number describes. These are Progressive's own averages across its own customers — not an industry survey, not a regulator filing, and not a national average across all carriers.
| Cost tier | Average annual policy | Per month | States in tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low-cost states | $301 | about $25 | 17 — Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin |
| Medium-cost states | $400 | about $33 | 17 — Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming |
| High-cost states | $657 | about $55 | 17 — Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas |
Source: Progressive, "How Much Is Boat Insurance?", accessed 2026-08-25. Two things worth stating plainly. First, the tiers total 51 state slots for 50 states because Nevada is listed by Progressive in both the medium-cost and the high-cost group; that inconsistency is in the published source, so we print it rather than quietly picking one. Second, the monthly figures are simply the annual average divided by twelve — marine policies are usually billed annually, and instalment plans often add a fee.
- These are one carrier's averages. A different insurer's book, with a different mix of boat sizes and states, would produce different numbers — which is exactly why this page lets you overwrite both baseline fields with your own quote.
- An average across a whole state tier tells you almost nothing about a specific boat. The scenario selectors above exist to move that published starting point toward your actual boat, and the result deliberately stays a range.
- We do not publish a per-state dollar average on this page. We could not verify one against a primary source, and inventing fifty numbers to fill a table is how the "1-2% of boat value" myth got started.
What each coverage structure actually pays when you claim
Price is downstream of structure. Before comparing two quotes on cost, check that they are the same product — these three are not, and the difference only becomes visible on the worst day of your boating life.
| Structure | What a total loss pays | Relative cost | Typically suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agreed Value | The figure written into the policy, with no depreciation applied | Highest | Newer boats, financed boats, and any owner who cannot absorb the gap between purchase price and depreciated value |
| Actual Cash Value (ACV) | The boat's depreciated market value on the day of the loss | Lower than Agreed Value | Older boats where the premium saving is large relative to the remaining value at risk |
| Liability only | Nothing for your boat — only damage or injury you cause others | Lowest by a wide margin | Low-value boats owned outright, where you are self-insuring the hull by choice |
Agreed Value and Actual Cash Value are standard industry terms defined in the NAIC insurance glossary. Which one a policy uses is decided when the policy is written and cannot be changed at claim time. Lenders generally require hull coverage on a financed boat, which rules out liability-only until the loan is paid.
Where boat insurance is legally required
Boat insurance is not mandated in most of the United States, which is the opposite of the situation with cars and surprises many first-time owners. Two states impose a clear statutory requirement, and both write it around engine power rather than boat value.
| State | Who must carry it | Minimum limits | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arkansas | Owner of any motorboat over 50 horsepower, and every personal watercraft. Government-owned vessels exempt. | $50,000 liability per occurrence | Ark. Code § 27-101-207 (statutory text read 2026-08-25) |
| Utah | Motorboats and PWC operated on Utah waters. Engines under 50 hp and all airboats exempt. Non-residents get 90 days unless their home state also requires it. | $25,000/$50,000 bodily injury and $15,000 property damage, or $65,000 combined per incident | Utah's state-approved boating safety course guide (read 2026-08-25) |
Not legally required is not the same as not required. If the boat is financed, the lender will require hull coverage; if it lives in a slip, the marina will almost certainly require proof of liability. Requirements change, so confirm current rules with your state boating law administrator or NASBLA before relying on this table.
Newsletter Signups Are Paused
We're building the email delivery behind our newsletter so we can do it properly — signups aren't open yet. Check back soon.
No form here and nothing is collected. Read our privacy policy.
StateCalc Team
Editorial Team
The StateCalc team builds free financial calculators using data from official government sources including the IRS, U.S. Census Bureau, BLS, and state revenue departments. All formulas are validated by an automated test suite and cross-referenced against published data.
Our editorial standardsFrequently Asked Questions
How much does boat insurance cost?
There's no single industry-wide number — Progressive's own published data shows its state averages range from about $301/year in its lowest-cost states to about $657/year in its highest-cost states, and that's just one insurer. This calculator shows an illustrative low–high range built from that baseline plus the scenario choices you make, not a quote. Get actual quotes from licensed marine insurers for a real number.
Is boat insurance required?
Boat insurance is legally mandated in only a few states — most states don't require it by law. However, your lender will typically require comprehensive and collision coverage if you financed the boat, and many marinas require proof of liability coverage before granting a slip. Check your state's current boating law requirements (NASBLA or your state boating agency) since rules do vary and change.
What does boat insurance cover?
Boat insurance policies typically offer hull/physical damage coverage (theft, sinking, fire, storm damage — either Actual Cash Value or Agreed Value, a standard distinction defined in NAIC's insurance glossary), liability coverage (injury or damage you cause to others), and optional add-ons like towing assistance. Exact coverages, limits, and optional add-ons vary by insurer and policy — read your specific policy documents.
Why does this show a range instead of an exact quote?
Because no public, verifiable formula exists that computes an exact boat insurance premium from a boat's characteristics. Real insurers underwrite using proprietary models, claims data, and dozens of variables (including some, like your specific marina or claims history, that a calculator simply doesn't have). This tool is built to be transparent about that limitation rather than presenting a fake precise number.
How much is boat insurance per month?
Dividing Progressive's published annual tier averages by twelve gives roughly $25/month in its lowest-cost states, about $33/month at the medium-cost average, and roughly $55/month in its highest-cost states. Two cautions: most marine policies are billed annually or in a few instalments rather than monthly, and instalment plans often carry a fee, so twelve monthly payments may total more than the annual figure. Use the monthly number to compare against other ownership costs, not as a payment plan you can assume exists.
How much is insurance on a $20,000 boat?
Less directly related to the $20,000 than almost every article on this topic implies. Boat value sets your hull coverage limit, but it is not what marine insurers rate the premium from — no carrier publishes a premium-per-dollar-of-hull-value rate, and the widely repeated '1-2% of boat value' shortcut is not published by any carrier or regulator we could verify. On this page's default scenario the entered value is deliberately excluded from the premium arithmetic and shown only as the Hull Coverage basis. What actually moves the number: whether you buy Agreed Value, Actual Cash Value or liability-only coverage, where you boat, the boat's type and age, your experience, and the deductible.
Which states require boat insurance?
Only a small number of states mandate it, and the rules are specific rather than blanket. Arkansas requires liability coverage for any motorboat over 50 horsepower and for every personal watercraft, with a minimum of $50,000 per occurrence (Ark. Code 27-101-207). Utah requires motorboats and PWC on its waters to carry $25,000/$50,000 bodily injury and $15,000 property damage, or $65,000 combined per incident, exempting engines under 50 hp and all airboats. Most other states do not require it by statute — but if you financed the boat your lender will require hull coverage, and most marinas require proof of liability before granting a slip. Confirm current rules with your state boating law administrator, because these statutes change.
What is the difference between Agreed Value and Actual Cash Value?
It is the single most consequential choice on a marine policy and it is decided when you buy, not at claim time. Agreed Value settles a total loss at the figure written into the policy, with no depreciation applied. Actual Cash Value settles at the boat's depreciated market value on the day of the loss, which on an older boat can be a small fraction of what you paid — boats depreciate on a front-loaded curve, roughly 15% in year one and about 7% a year after. ACV costs less every year; the gap between the two settlements on an older boat can exceed several years of that premium difference.
Does a boating safety course actually lower the premium?
Progressive publicly lists safety measures, including completing a boating safety course, among the factors that affect a boat insurance rate. This calculator models that as a discount you can switch on and off to see priced separately. A NASBLA-approved course is typically free or under $50, many states accept the same certificate toward a required boater education card, and it is the cheapest lever on this page — worth completing before you buy the policy rather than after.
People Also Calculate
Frequently used together with this calculator