Kathrin gotthold has a degree in law. She completed her traineeship as a business editor in frankfurt am main and then spent six years covering consumer finance for a major daily and weekly newspaper in berlin. she also gained experience working for the magazines "betriebs-berater" and "der steuerberater". In the finanztip editorial department, she is primarily concerned with insurance topics.
- The cut-off date for cancelling vehicle insurance is usually the 30th day after the accident. November.
- When you register a new car, you can start right away with a new, cheap insurance policy.
- An accident in the current year can have a major impact on your premium.
- Finanztip recommends: first calculate the cheapest car insurance on verivox or check24. then do a cross-check with huk24.
- then choose the insurance policy that offers the minimum protection we recommend at the best price.
In this guide
The search for cheap car insurance can be exhausting. We know that – but we still advise you to put your contract to the test every fall. Because this way you can really save. To save you money, time and nerves, we support you: we analyze every year for you in a big survey, how to get the best car insurance.
where to find the cheapest car insurance?
our answer to the question of how you can find the cheapest car insurance is clear according to our current test kfz-versicherungsvergleich 2021: go through an comparison portal, get an additional offer at a direct insurer a.
Specifically we recommend: first enter all the necessary data at verivox or at check24. In the large finanztip survey on car insurance, the two insurers came out on top among the comparison portals. And then, if you have all the information at hand anyway, enter it on the huk24 website and ask for a quote. huk24 often had favorable offers in our survey – nevertheless, you should first check offers via a comparison portal – check24 or verivox. The two comparison portals offer the best overview of the prices and conditions of different insurers.
You should never look for an offer directly from just one insurance company. And even if you only use a comparison portal, you won’t automatically find the cheapest rate. because no portal lists all insurances. The exact figures from our big comparison and how we come to our recommendation, you can read further down in the text.
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What kind of car insurance do you need for your car??
Now it’s time to think about the specific tariff you need. Third party liability, partially comprehensive or fully comprehensive insurance? If you are on the road with your car, you need at least a motor liability insurance. It pays for damage you cause to others in traffic – regardless of whether it’s property damage or personal injury. Damage to your own car is not covered by liability insurance. To secure the with, you can get a comprehensive insurance increase.
However, both partially comprehensive and fully comprehensive insurance usually cost considerably more than pure liability insurance. So think about whether you need this additional protection. Or if this is already the first point where you can save money.
Check comprehensive cover every year
Whether a partially comprehensive or fully comprehensive insurance makes sense for you depends mainly on the age and value of your car. For one new car is fully comprehensive usually the right protection. With leasing agreements, fully comprehensive insurance may even be compulsory. If you have your own, very old car, you usually don’t even need a partially comprehensive insurance. We have summarized the exact differences between the comprehensive insurance rates and which cover is worthwhile for whom in our guide on partial or fully comprehensive cover.
If you have decided to take out comprehensive insurance, you should check every year, whether the coverage still fits your car. Because a new vehicle does not stay new. That’s why it usually makes sense to switch from fully comprehensive to partially comprehensive insurance after a few years – and thus save a lot of money.
You want to buy a car and you can’t make up your mind? Then use our car cost calculator.
How you can save on car insurance?
How much your car insurance costs depends primarily on how high insurers assess the risk that you will settle a claim. They create a risk profile based on a lot of information you have to provide. Some of these points you can influence a little bit. Of course, without giving false information. You may be subject to contractual penalties for deliberate misrepresentation.
Here come the six quickest and best tips for you:
1. Deductibles reduce the premium
If you decide on comprehensive insurance, whether partial or fully comprehensive, you have the option of agreeing on a deductible. This means that you pay for minor damage to the car yourself. But your annual premium will be cheaper. In the latest finanztip study on tariff features, we were able to save almost 20 percent by agreeing a 150-euro deductible for partial cover. With a 300 euro deductible, the average is as much as 25 percent. In fully comprehensive insurance, a 300-euro deductible is recommended.
2. premium annually
If you pay your premium annually instead of monthly, you can save a lot of money. So switch to a yearly payment. If you pay your insurance premium in one go instead of every six months, you can save almost 4 percent. If you pay quarterly so far, you can save 8%. And compared to monthly repaying almost 10 percent.
There are also some insurers who do not offer their plans with monthly payment at all. Among them are also some favorable providers. If you narrow down your search because you want to pay monthly, you will have fewer providers to choose from.
3. Keep the number of drivers as small as possible
Your spouse or partner is usually also insured as a driver, without increasing the premium. Our study from august 2020 confirmed this. Beyond that, however, the larger you choose your driver coverage, the more expensive it will be. New drivers have the highest surcharges. Our latest finanztip study showed an average surcharge of over 100 percent.
4. Estimate annual mileage realistically
How many kilometers you are likely to drive – insurers call this mileage – you should always estimate rather defensively. The more kilometers you cover, the more expensive your insurance premium will be. And you can always add kilometers to your mileage. the finanztip study of august 2020 revealed the following average values:
- 5.000 kilometers cost on average 8 percent more than 2.000 kilometers per year
- 10.000 kilometers cost 13 percent more than 5.000 kilometers
- 15.000 kilometers cost 9 percent more than 10.000 kilometers
- 20.000 kilometers cost 12 percent more than 15.000 kilometers
- 25.000 kilometers cost 13 percent more than 20.000 kilometers
5. Agree on a workshop commitment
A workshop commitment brings an average discount of almost 10 percent on the premium for a comprehensive insurance policy. In return, you have to have your car repaired in a workshop prescribed by the insurer after a collision damage. But before you agree to this, you should check where the next partner workshop of your insurance is.
Be careful with new vehicles: if the repair shop does not use original spare parts during the repair, the manufacturer’s warranty may be voided. That’s why you should forego the repair shop commitment for new cars if necessary. If your vehicle is leased or financed by a third party, e.g. through a car bank, a garage agreement is usually out of the question anyway. Leasing or financing contracts usually stipulate that repairs may only be carried out at workshops authorized by the manufacturer.
6. Save especially as a young driver
Car insurance is often particularly expensive for young drivers. To find out how you can still save money as a young person, read our guides on new drivers and transferring the no-claims bonus class. In addition, a telematics tariff can be worthwhile for you.
What damage does a good car insurance policy pay for??
There are minimum standards below which you should not go in the motor insurance. When looking for the best rate, we recommend that you select the following rate features. Then your car insurance meets the five minimum criteria.
Important for liability and comprehensive insurance rates
Increased coverage amounts: this will only get you rates that have 50 million or 100 million euros as the sum insured. In this context, the insurer also speaks of coverage amounts and thus means the value up to which he will pay for damages. With a contract that meets this standard, you are also covered against the financial consequences of serious accidents. a finanztip study shows that most tariffs offer this feature at no extra charge.
Majorca policy: this option increases the sum insured for rental cars in other european countries to the german level. This means you have good liability insurance even when you’re on vacation. According to our study, it often no longer costs a premium today. Only a few plans do without this coverage – but in one of our studies from previous years, these plans were not automatically the cheapest offers. It is therefore seldom worthwhile to forego this.
Relevant for hull rates
No defense of gross negligence: if your comprehensive insurance contains this clause, the insurer will pay in full even if you cause damage to your car through gross negligence. waives its right to plead gross negligence. This becomes relevant if you have caused damage because you were driving on a red light, were speeding or because you were typing a message on your cell phone. Not insured are cases in which you were driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or if you enabled the theft of your car through gross negligence.
marten bites and consequential damages: martens may be cute. But they also like to nibble on hoses and cables. And if things go badly, on those in your car. This can lead to expensive damages. To ensure that your comprehensive insurer not only covers damage to hoses, brake lines and the wiring itself, but also pays for consequential damage, you must agree that.
Extended wild damage coverage: this extension is now standard, you should hardly come across tariffs that do without it. Without it, the comprehensive insurance only pays for accidents with deer or wild boars. With the clause, you are also insured if you collide with other animals – for example, with cows or horses.
What is less important in motor vehicle insurance??
The following tariff features can be a useful addition, depending on your individual situation, but may cost a significant surcharge:
In order to maintain your no-claims class (SF class) after an accident, it sometimes pays off to have a discount protection to agree. However, this clause makes it difficult to switch to another provider. For the new provider, the discount protection does not apply and the accident in the past also counts in the classification.
With a car insurance you get help after a car breakdown. The provider pays for towing and overnight costs, for example, if you can’t use the car after an accident. Some cover policies also pay for a rental car and offer personal benefits such as repatriation, medical care abroad and, in the event of death, payment of funeral or repatriation costs.
You can also pay for breakdown service or towing assistance yourself if necessary. If you still want to insure yourself against this, you have to choose between a motor insurance policy and a car club. According to the finanztip study, the insurance policy is comparably inexpensive.
In the case of new cars, you can do without a car insurance policy or the automobile club, because then the manufacturer’s mobility guarantee usually applies.
For insured persons who do not have occupational disability or accident insurance and who are frequent drivers, a driver protection insurance in question. It compensates for loss of earnings and pays compensation for pain and suffering in the event of an accident for which the driver was at fault or partly at fault. It is not to be confused with driver accident insurance, which we do not recommend.
Here’s what you can do without when it comes to car insurance
The passenger accident insurance covers the costs if one of your passengers is injured or killed. But such damages are covered anyway either by the motor vehicle liability insurance of the person who caused the accident or by your own motor vehicle liability insurance, if you cause the accident. In practice, passenger accident insurance only covers you if the insurance company of the person who caused the accident does not cover the damage, for example because of a hit-and-run driver. In such cases, however, the traffic victim assistance also helps.
The driver accident insurance includes similar benefits as driver protection insurance. How much money you receive after an accident depends on the amount of coverage you choose and the degree of possible disability – and not on the actual damage. if you want to make sure that you are fully covered in the event of a car accident, you should therefore take out driver’s protection insurance. private accident insurance offers better protection against accidents, not only in the car. But even this is not suitable for everyone.
Why use comparison portals and direct insurers??
We recommend a double comparison to find the cheapest car insurance. Why, you will learn in this section.
Never look at just one insurance company
if you ask individual insurers for quotes, each will give you a different price. It’s hard to tell whether an individual offer is particularly favorable for you. Because the car insurance market is a heated one. So there are always price fluctuations. Every autumn, for example, is the season when many insurers new, partly cheaper rates ready.
But price differences are not only caused by special offers or new tariffs. also in relation to your person or your car something changes every year. You are getting older, maybe you had damages (or exceptionally not). or you slip into a new regional or type class. all this can cause an insurer to charge you more or even less.
Even if you check with an insurer that tends to be very cheap, you may still end up paying too much. In our investigation, we found that even with low-cost direct insurers, there were always outliers with higher prices. huk24, for example, very often showed the cheapest rates in our queries from september and october 2021. The highest deviation from the lowest price, however, was around 20 percent – in this case, our test customer would have paid significantly too much.
Never go through just one comparison portal
The car insurance calculator of the comparison portals promise to help you offset the risk of price gouging. On them you enter your data once and then get offers of many insurances in direct comparison. And you can also take out your new contract directly through them.
Sounds great, but these portals all have a problem: no portal compares all insurers. Because some insurances have a contract only with one of the many portals, others do not appear at all. This means for you: if you rely only on one comparison portal, you cannot be sure to find a really favorable rate.
The solution for you: the double comparison
Therefore, always make the double comparison: always go first via verivox or check 24 and then get another offer from the huk24. By combining the comparison portal and the direct insurer, you can compensate for the blind spots of the providers. This way you can be sure that you are at least very close to the cheapest tariff.
portals and direct insurers: price deviations
From the lowest price
From the cheapest price
Number of best price
(out of 64 queries)
Source: data query on the portals, finanztip calculations (as at: 8. November 2021)
In our current major car insurance comparison, we found the following through the combination of check24 and huk24 in most cases the best price. In an overall analysis of both test series, the combination led to the cheapest rate in 46 of 64 queries. The average deviation from the best price was the lowest in the survey (1.4 percent). Also the maximum price outliers were lowest in this combination (13.6 percent).
The combination of verivox and huk24 but only slightly worse. We found the cheapest rate 43 times. The average deviation was 1.9 percent, and the maximum deviation was 14.2 percent.
Which of the two combinations you choose is up to you. we recommend the two ways (combination verivox and huk24, combination check24 and huk24) expressly equivalent. not only because of the small differences in the results of our query. But also because this query can only be a sample and a reflection of the moment.
Smaller deviation due to two comparisons
Check24&
Huk24 1
Verivox&
Huk24 1
Check24&
Verivox
From the best price
From the lowest price
number lowest price
(out of 64 queries)
1 this combination is part of the finanztip recommendation to compare twice.
Source: data query on the portals, finanztip calculations (as at: 8. November 2021)
We attribute verivox’s lead in the first test on the one hand to the fact that verivox currently lists favorable providers that do not appear on check24.
On the other hand, however, check24’s default settings for individual tariff features (especially for coverage amounts and for marten bites with consequential damages) partly higher than we require to meet our minimum criteria. Therefore, check24 shows more expensive tariffs in some places – which also have somewhat more performance – in an identical query.
In the second test, there were inconsistencies in the price display at verivox. In addition, check24 scored points with exclusive tariffs, which often stood out as being good value for money in the second round of surveys.
In the current study, the combination of the two comparison portals verivox and check24 resulted in a deviation of 4.2 percent from the cheapest rate. We therefore do not currently recommend this combination.
- Finanztip survey 2021: cheapest rate displayed in 21 of 64 queries (october 2021)
- Low surcharges compared to favorable prices of other providers
- Possibility to conclude directly on the portal
- Does not cover the entire market
- Price comparison for claims in the current year not possible without problems
- Finanztip survey 2021: cheapest rate displayed in 24 of 64 queries (october 2021)
- Low surcharges compared to favorable prices from other providers
- conclusion possible directly on the portal
- Price comparison also possible with damage in the current year
- Does not cover the entire market
- Finanztip survey 2021: cheapest rate displayed in 22 out of 64 queries (october 2021)
- Possibility of taking out insurance directly with the provider
- Not represented on the usual comparison portals
- Risk of high surcharges due to query with individual provider: additional price comparison on comparison portal is necessary
What to do if you don’t get car insurance?
Drivers for whom insurance companies expect high costs or frequent claims are sometimes unable to obtain comprehensive cover via comparison portals and direct insurers, even for a high premium. This can also happen to you if you try to insure a particularly expensive car.
The most difficult vehicles to insure are those with frequent damage, such as sports cars. It can also be problematic if the insurance company has cancelled your policy because of frequent damage or incorrect information. Sometimes an insurance broker can help you in such cases. He may find a provider who nevertheless assumes the risk – but often only for a very high premium. the association of german insurance brokers (VDVM) can help find such an intermediary.
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How we tested
car insurance comparison 2021
We have 32 sample profiles created according to the following criteria:
- Germany-wide distribution and thus large coverage of regional classes
- Consideration of statistics from the Federal Motor Transport Authority and destatis on the distribution of manufacturers, vehicle age, car classes and age of car owners
- Examples from the German Actuarial Association (DAV), the association of actuaries
We have selected the following in the comparison portals selectable or fixed preset minimum criteria set for motor vehicle tariffs:
- Increased coverage
- Majorca policy included
- No defense of gross negligence
- Coverage for marten bites and consequential damage
- Wildlife damage coverage extended to all animals
You should also set these minimum criteria when comparing to achieve consumer-friendly results.
We first created a basic population. With the search terms "car insurance", "car insurance comparison", "car insurance", "car insurance comparison" we have the first three to five google pages searched and checked all 40 comparison sites found.
We weeded out pure clones and comparison sites that had too little market coverage. In addition, it had to be possible to conclude tariffs on the portal and our minimum criteria had to be bindingly defined in the search mask.
The portals verivox and check24 appeared in google search and also fulfilled all requirements. The comparison calculator nafi car is a special case. The portal offers the largest overview of the market, even if not all insurers are listed there. However, it is mainly aimed at brokers. The consequences: no possibility to conclude a contract; the price comparison is also complicated due to the comprehensive data query. We ran the results of this calculator, but out of competition.
Copies from the original nafi car calculatornafi’s comparative calculator is used by many brokerage firms. the portals offer only a part of the providers listed on nafi. However, these tariffs can then be concluded online in this way. As pure copies of the original calculator, some of the portals do not meet our formal requirements for large, independent comparison calculators. Partly, your market overview is not big enough for us.
in 2021, we included two portals in the nafi copy category: car insurance.De and G&P insurance brokers. We selected these based on market coverage, i.e. the number of insurance companies listed: G&P versicherungsmakler had included most providers, auto insuran.De again the most, which were not listed at G&P versicherungsmakler. Both comparison calculators make relatively many insurance tariffs for consumers online comparable and also concludable.
However, in our research, both the average and the maximum deviation from the lowest price for car insurance were.De as well as at G&P versicherungsmakler higher than on the large portals check24 and verivox and also higher than on the calculator of nafi itself.
Direct provider: as in previous years, we have also charged prices with the direct provider huk24. this low-cost insurer has a high market share, but is not available on the usual comparison portals. You can therefore not conclude it through any comparison portal. on the other hand, huk24 does not offer the lowest price for all sample profiles. In our two test series 2021, the outliers at huk24 were less clear than in previous years. The maximum deviation was lower, but the number of higher deviations was slightly higher.
We also initially requested prices from the allianz subsidiary allianzdirect. However, the deviations were so high again this year that we did not investigate the insurer further (average over the first ten queries in September: 45.2 percent, maximum 93.7 percent).
To ensure that we did not overlook any other low-cost provider, we also compared a complete list from the German office of the green card (a facility of the motor vehicle liability insurers in Germany) with the participants of the comparison portals. In our opinion all providers recorded can be taken out online are and a high market relevance have.
an overview of the portals and direct insurers studied
Difference
from the cheapest
price
1 providers are part of the finanztip recommendation to compare twice.
Source: data query on the portals, finanztip calculations (as of 8. November 2021)