Best Cheap Auto Insurance in Spartanburg, South Carolina (2024)

Getting the right car insurance often seems more like a road full of speed bumps than an easy ride. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be. Taking a few minutes to plan out your approach can help ensure a smooth ride later, like when you need to file a claim or pay your premium.

Car insurance in Spartanburg isn’t cheap, costing an average of $224 per month for a minimum-coverage policy. Here’s how to find the best car insurance in Spartanburg depending on your personal situation.

Best car insurance companies in Spartanburg

Averages are useful for broad comparisons, but finding a company that offers the best support and pricing for your individual situation is more helpful. Although many great insurers are available, here are some of the top recommendations for the best car insurance in Spartanburg, based on Insurify data.

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Best car insurance overall: State Auto

It’s easy to get analysis paralysis when looking at the number of options offered by most insurers, but State Auto makes it easy by offering three base plans to choose from: Standard (minimum coverage), Protection Plus, and AutoXtended Premier. You can add other endorsements if you want, but the three base plans make it easy to quickly pick an affordable option.

Among the companies that Insurify reviewed, State Auto offers the second-cheapest premiums on a full-coverage policy in Spartanburg, and it has a decent IQ Score of 3.8.

Best cheap car insurance in Spartanburg: Progressive

Progressive is the second-largest insurer in the U.S., but that’s not what makes it one of the top options for cheap car insurance in Spartanburg. It’s one of the few companies to offer a vanishing deductible program with no limits. This means for every year you go without an accident, your deductible drops by $50 to $100 and will even go down as far as $0 (instead of $500 like with some other insurers).

Although Progressive charges slightly higher premiums for Spartanburg drivers, it’s still well worth the price, given that Insurify data scientists gave it a relatively high IQ Score of 4.0.

Most affordable car insurance in Spartanburg: Travelers

Travelers ranked as the cheapest option for full coverage in Insurify’s survey of Spartanburg premiums. Travelers offers many types of insurance to choose from and lots of coverage options and discounts. However, the company did fare rather poorly in J.D. Power’s annual survey of overall customer satisfaction.^[1]

In addition to offering the lowest rates, Travelers was also the highest-rated company for Spartanburg drivers, with an IQ Score of 4.3.

Best car insurance in Spartanburg for homeowners: Safeco

Lots of companies offer discounts for bundling homeowner and car coverage together, and Safeco offers a 15% discount. Plus, Safeco also offers a single-loss deductible, so if you need to file a claim for both your car and your home at the same time, you’ll only pay for one deductible. This could be a huge savings if you ever need it.

Plus, you’ll get a check for 2.5% to 5% of your premium for each policy period you go without filing a claim. Safeco also has a fairly good IQ Score of 3.7.

Best car insurance in Spartanburg for families: Liberty Mutual

Families take many forms, and Liberty Mutual is one of the best insurers to cover them all. The company offers lots of ways to save, with discounts for being a good student, attending school away from home (while leaving the car), completing a teen driver course, and even just for adding your teen driver to your policy.

Unlike many insurers, Liberty Mutual also offers insurance coverage if you take a family road trip to Mexico. Liberty Mutual received an IQ Score of 3.8.

Best car insurance in Spartanburg for high-risk drivers: The General

Getting car insurance can be tough if you have dents and dings in your driving record, like speeding tickets or DUIs — but The General can help. In addition to offering better-than-average coverage for high-risk drivers, The General also offers a highly rated mobile app.

The General received the lowest IQ Score in Insurify’s list of best options for Spartanburg drivers, at 3.8. That’s fairly typical of high-risk insurers, though.

How to shop for the best car insurance in Spartanburg

Shopping for the best car insurance policy requires a bit of planning, says Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders in San Francisco, California. “You’ve got to ask a couple of questions, and you’ve got to make some decisions. If you just go for the cheapest option, chances are you’re going to have a hole [in your coverage].”

In particular, Bach recommends tallying up the combined value of all your assets, such as your car, home, bank accounts, and more. This is what you stand to lose if someone sues you because you cause a bad car accident. It’s also how much you need to protect, and thus a good basis to figure out how much coverage you actually need.

“If you only shop for the cheapest policy, chances are you’re going to come up short,” says Bach. “If you have a serious event, if you want to take that risk — that’s fine, but just take the risk with your eyes open.” Aside from carefully considering your personal situation, here are a few other tips Bach recommends:

• Shop around for rates as much as you can.

• Look up insurer ratings from independent organizations, like J.D. Power.

• Consider purchasing additional uninsured and underinsured driver coverage.

• Use a car insurance calculator to figure out how much coverage you need.

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How to get the cheapest car insurance in Spartanburg

“You hear these ads that say, ‘15 minutes will save you 15%.’ Well, that may be — but when it comes to insurance, we strongly encourage people to shop for the quality as much as the price,” says Bach. Going for the absolute rock-bottom cheapest option may save you money right now, but it could be far more expensive in the long run if you ever need to file a claim.

“The good news for consumers is that you’ve got lots of options in most places,” says Bach. “If you have a decent driving record and decent credit, shopping for car insurance should be a breeze.” Aside from shopping around, here are a few things to consider to find the best coverage for the best price:

• Check your credit and fix any errors before you start shopping around since many insurers use this to help price your policy.

• If you can afford to replace your car once it’s fully paid off, consider dropping collision and comprehensive coverage.

• High-deductible policies have lower premiums, so choose the policy with the highest deductible you can afford to pay if you need to file a claim.

• Discounts can help lower the cost, but they don’t tell the full story. A company with no discounts may still be cheaper overall than a company offering several.
  

Liability-only vs. full-coverage insurance in Spartanburg

If you’re leasing your car or paying off an auto loan, chances are your lender will require you to carry full-coverage insurance, meaning that your car is covered against damage as well. That’s either because your car doesn’t belong to you (if you’re leasing) or because it’s valuable to your lender in case it needs to repossess it if you default on your auto loan.

But once you own your car free and clear, it’s your choice if you want to continue that coverage. Bach recommends continuing to pay for full-coverage insurance unless you can afford to replace your car. 

“We remind people that if your car gets damaged in a hurricane or a flood or a tornado, your car insurance isn’t going to pay for that weather damage” if you only have minimum coverage.

Full coverage isn’t always the same everywhere, but it generally means having liability coverage along with collision coverage and comprehensive coverage. Collision insurance pays to repair your car if it’s damaged in an accident (regardless of who caused it), and comprehensive pays for noncollision damage as well as incidents involving animals.

On the other hand, everyone with a car needs to purchase a minimum amount of liability insurance coverage to pay for any damage they cause to someone else’s vehicle or person. Liability-only coverage varies by state, and in South Carolina, you need to purchase coverage meeting at least the following:

• Uninsured motorist coverage

• $25,000 for property damage

• $25,000 for bodily injury per person

• $50,000 for bodily injury per accident

The difference in cost between these two policy decisions can be pretty big, especially among more expensive insurers. Progressive is the cheapest insurer in Spartanburg, where full coverage costs $163 per month. But for Dairyland, the most expensive insurer, you’ll pay $444 per month for full coverage.

South Carolina car insurance rates by driving and accident history

One of the biggest determiners of how much you’ll pay for car insurance in Spartanburg or anywhere else is your driving history. Past performance is a good indicator of future behavior, after all. The more speeding tickets, driving under the influence citations, and at-fault accidents you have under your belt, the harder it’ll be to find coverage at all, let alone for an affordable price.

You can see this in Insurify data for Spartanburg as well. Drivers with a DUI pay an astronomically high rate of $883 per month with Dairyland, while drivers with a clean record pay a mere $133 per month with Travelers.

Spartanburg car insurance quotes by credit tier

Insurance companies in Spartanburg are allowed to use your credit score when setting your insurance rates, unlike in some areas of the U.S. that have outlawed this practice. This means Spartanburg drivers with excellent or good credit scores often pay a lot less than drivers with poor credit scores.

“We consumer advocates have said that it’s not fair that what you pay for insurance is somewhat tied to your credit score,” says Bach. “But insurance companies insist that it’s very predictive” of how likely you are to file a claim and how expensive that claim might be. That’s why it continues to be a factor, and that’s why it’s important to build a good credit score.

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Spartanburg car insurance rates by driver age

Another big factor affecting your car insurance costs is something you don’t have quite as much control over — your age. Younger drivers are likely to cause more accidents, statistically speaking, even if your teen is a better driver than most middle-aged folks.

Insurify’s data shows how this affects the rates you’ll pay. It shows Spartanburg teens pay more than three times what a driver in their 60s pays on average.

Is car insurance more expensive in Spartanburg?

Yes, car insurance is more expensive for Spartanburg drivers when compared to the national average. The nationwide average cost is $253 for a full-coverage policy and $170 for a liability-only policy. Spartanburg drivers, on the other hand, pay $294 for a full-coverage policy and $224 for a liability-only policy on average. That’s 16% and 32% higher, respectively.

Now, the good news. Within South Carolina itself, Spartanburg is near the middle of the pack when it comes to car insurance costs. Towns like Myrtle Beach and Rock Hill are cheaper, while larger cities, like Charleston and Columbia, are more expensive.

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