Pet Insurance Statistics (2026): Premiums, Claims, and How Many Pets Are Insured
Most pet insurance statistics floating around the web are either years old or quoted secondhand without a source. This page collects the current numbers from the one body that actually has them, the North American Pet Health Insurance Association (NAPHIA), whose members write roughly 99% of the premium in the US and Canada. The 2026 State of the Industry report came out in June 2026 and covers calendar year 2025. Where a figure below is an estimate or a derived number, it says so.
Average premiums
NAPHIA reports annual averages per insured pet. Monthly figures here are simply the annual number divided by twelve.
| Plan type (US) | Dog | Cat |
|---|---|---|
| Accident and illness | $836 a year, about $70 a month | $435 a year, about $36 a month |
| Accident only | $190 a year, about $16 a month | $112 a year, about $9 a month |
| Insurance with embedded wellness | $1,414 a year, about $118 a month | $859 a year, about $72 a month |
A few things worth drawing out of that table:
- Accident-and-illness is the product almost everyone buys, and it’s the number to use as a baseline. The cost guide shows how far breed, age, and settings push it in either direction.
- Accident-only is cheap because it skips illness, which is where most big bills come from. The trade-off is laid out in accident-only vs accident-and-illness.
- The “embedded wellness” row is for plans that bundle routine care into the base premium. The gap between it and plain accident-and-illness ($578 a year for dogs) is roughly what you’re prepaying for check-ups and vaccines.
How premiums have moved
This is the part that surprises people. For years, pet insurance premiums crept up a few percent at a time. In 2024 and 2025 they jumped.
| Year | Dog, accident and illness | Change | Cat, accident and illness | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $625 | +2.0% | $370 | +0.8% |
| 2022 | $640 | +2.4% | $387 | +4.7% |
| 2023 | $675 | +5.5% | $383 | -1.1% |
| 2024 | $749 | +11.0% | $386 | +0.9% |
| 2025 | $836 | +11.5% | $435 | +12.6% |
Dog premiums are up a third since 2021. Cat premiums barely moved for three years and then rose 12.6% in a single year. Veterinary prices have been climbing faster than general inflation, and insurers price off what they pay out, so this tracks. If your renewal notice went up by double digits, it wasn’t just you.
Accident-only premiums went the other way: dog accident-only cover actually fell 1.6% in 2025, to $190 a year.
How many pets are insured
| US | Canada | |
|---|---|---|
| Insured pets, end of 2025 | about 7.0 million | about 0.65 million |
| Insured dogs | 5.23 million | |
| Insured cats | 1.75 million | |
| Dogs insured (penetration) | 5.99% | 5.64% |
| Cats insured (penetration) | 2.29% | 1.91% |
| All pets insured | 4.27% | 3.72% |
NAPHIA puts the North American total at 7.6 million insured pets, up 8.5% from 7.03 million a year earlier. The US count grew 9.0% in 2025, slower than the 12.7% of 2024 and the 17.2% of 2023, so the market is still expanding but the pace is cooling.
Cats are the growth story. Insured cats rose 16.3% in 2025 against 6.8% for dogs, and cats now make up 25.1% of insured US pets, up from 18.3% in 2021. Even so, more than 97% of US cats have no cover. Pet insurance for cats explains why that gap is probably a mistake.
For context, the American Veterinary Medical Association’s 2025 owner survey, which NAPHIA uses as its denominator, counts about 87.3 million owned dogs and 76.3 million owned cats in the US.
Market size
Total gross written premium across the US and Canada reached about $6.2 billion in 2025, up 19.4% from $5.15 billion in 2024. The US share was about $5.7 billion. The five-year trend:
| Year | North America written premium | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $2.84 billion | |
| 2022 | $3.51 billion | +23.5% |
| 2023 | $4.26 billion | +21.7% |
| 2024 | $5.15 billion | +20.8% |
| 2025 | $6.15 billion | +19.4% |
Premium is growing faster than the number of insured pets, which is just another way of saying the average policy costs more every year. Dogs account for 84.5% of US premium volume and cats 15.5%.
Where the insured pets are
NAPHIA also breaks down insured pets and written premium by state. Ten states account for more than half of all insured US pets, and California alone holds nearly a fifth. The last column compares each state’s share of premium with its share of pets: a state collecting a bigger share of premium than of pets has pricier policies on average, usually because its vet costs run higher.
| State | Share of US insured pets | Share of US premium | Average premium vs US |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 18.1% | 19.9% | above |
| New York | 7.4% | 8.1% | above |
| Florida | 6.2% | 6.5% | above |
| Texas | 6.1% | 5.6% | below |
| Pennsylvania | 4.5% | 4.6% | above |
| Illinois | 3.3% | 3.5% | above |
| North Carolina | 2.7% | 2.5% | below |
| Ohio | 2.6% | 2.2% | below |
| Georgia | 2.3% | 2.0% | below |
| Michigan | 2.0% | 1.7% | below |
Each state link above goes to a guide covering that state’s cost picture, its pet insurance law (four of these ten have adopted the NAIC model act, the rest have no pet-specific statute), and what to check before buying there.
What pets actually claim for
NAPHIA ranks the most common medical conditions on claims across North America. These are frequency rankings, not cost rankings, so they tell you what a typical year of claims looks like rather than what the worst year looks like.
| Rank | Dogs | Cats |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gastrointestinal issues | Gastrointestinal issues |
| 2 | Ear infections (otitis) | Dental disease |
| 3 | Skin conditions (infections, masses, dermatitis) | Urinary tract infections |
| 4 | Anxiety, behavioral and neurological issues | Anxiety, behavioral and neurological issues |
| 5 | Allergies | Respiratory conditions |
| 6 | Growths and masses | Kidney disease |
| 7 | Eye and vision disorders | Ear infections |
| 8 | Diarrhea | Hyperthyroidism |
| 9 | Urinary tract infections | Vomiting |
| 10 | Musculoskeletal problems | Arthritis |
Two observations. First, the everyday stuff dominates: stomach upsets, ears, skin, and allergies are what most dog owners claim for, not cruciate surgery or cancer. Second, dental disease is the second most common feline claim, which makes the dental coverage wording in a cat policy more important than most owners realize. Behavioral conditions appearing in the top five for both species is also notable, because plenty of policies still exclude them.
The biggest claims
NAPHIA also publishes the largest individual claims paid during the year. The top dog claims of 2025 ran from about $42,000 to $66,600, for a 3-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog with a chronic undiagnosed illness, a 10-year-old mixed breed with liver disease, a 4-year-old Toy Poodle mix with bite wounds, and a 6-year-old mixed breed with acute kidney failure, among others. Several were mixed-breed dogs, and several were over ten years old.
Those are outliers, obviously. But they’re the reason an annual limit matters. A $5,000 cap would have left every one of those owners paying the vast majority of the bill themselves. The cancer and surgery guides go into how the limit setting interacts with big bills, and the reimbursement calculator shows what any given bill would pay back.
How to use these numbers
If you’re shopping, the $836 and $435 averages are a sanity check, not a target. A young, mixed-breed dog on a sensible deductible should quote below the average; a senior French Bulldog in a big city will quote well above it. The cost-by-breed checker narrows the range for popular breeds.
If you already have a policy and the renewal jumped, the 11.5% industry-wide increase tells you it’s partly the market, not just your pet’s age. Before switching, read what pet insurance doesn’t cover on how a new insurer treats conditions your current one already covers. Switching resets the clock on pre-existing conditions, and that can cost far more than a premium increase.
And if you’re deciding whether to insure at all, the honest reading of these statistics is that most insured pets claim for small, frequent things and a few claim for enormous ones. Is pet insurance worth it walks through that decision without the sales pitch.
Source: NAPHIA State of the Industry Report 2026 (published June 2026, data through December 31, 2025), available at naphia.org/industry-data. Monthly figures are derived from NAPHIA’s annual averages.
Several of the largest 2025 claims above were mixed-breed dogs, which is the point of pet insurance for mixed breed dogs: a mutt’s bills are not smaller.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of pets in the US have insurance?
About 4.3% of owned dogs and cats combined at the end of 2025, per NAPHIA: roughly 6% of dogs and 2.3% of cats. That's low next to the UK or Sweden, but it has grown every year for a decade.
How fast are pet insurance premiums rising?
Fast. NAPHIA's data shows the average accident-and-illness premium rose 11.5% for dogs and 12.6% for cats in 2025, the biggest single-year jump the association has recorded. Accident-only premiums were nearly flat.
What are the most common pet insurance claims?
For dogs: gastrointestinal problems, ear infections, skin conditions, anxiety and behavioral issues, and allergies. For cats: gastrointestinal problems, dental disease, urinary tract infections, behavioral issues, and respiratory conditions.
Where do these statistics come from?
The North American Pet Health Insurance Association (NAPHIA), whose annual State of the Industry report covers an estimated 99% of written pet insurance premium in the US and Canada. The 2026 edition, published in June 2026, reports on calendar year 2025.
This article is general information, not insurance or veterinary advice. Coverage, prices, and terms vary by insurer, pet, and location. Always read the policy and confirm details with the provider before buying.