Nobody will tell you what small business insurance costs, and the reason is not that they are hiding it. It is that insurance does not have a price. It has a rate applied to your specific exposure, and until an underwriter has your revenue, your payroll, your state and your class code, there is no number to publish.
What does exist is a stack of published averages from carriers and brokers who sell thousands of these policies a year. Those numbers are real, they are on the record, and they disagree with each other by a factor of four. This post collects every one we could verify against a live page, tells you who published it and on what basis, and explains why they disagree, because the disagreement is the useful part.
What this post will not do is tell you what you will pay. Anyone who does that on the internet is guessing.
Disclosure: some links in this post are affiliate links that pay us, and some are not. The Hiscox link is a monetised affiliate link and we earn a commission if you buy through it. The links to Insureon, Progressive, The Hartford, Next Insurance, Thimble, biBERK and Simply Business run through our own click trackers to those companies’ own websites with no affiliate tracking attached, so none of those companies pay us anything. Several of them publish lower numbers than Hiscox does, and we have left those numbers in. The Shopify and Bizee links in the closing section are affiliate links too and they pay us.
This is general information rather than insurance advice. What your business needs depends on what you sell, where you sell it and what your contracts require you to carry.
Why Nobody Can Tell You Your Price
A general liability premium is built from a rate per unit of exposure, and the unit changes by class. For a retailer it may be revenue. For a contractor it may be payroll. For a landlord it may be square footage. The rate is then modified for your state, your limits, your deductible, your claims history and how long you have been trading.
That is five or six variables before anyone looks at what you actually sell. Two ecommerce businesses with the same revenue can be quoted three times apart because one sells phone cases and the other sells ladders.
So when a website says “small business insurance costs $X”, the honest translation is “here is the middle of a distribution we happen to have data on”. Which is genuinely useful, as long as you know whose distribution it is.
What the Published Averages Actually Say
Every figure in this table was read from the publisher’s own live page. The column that matters most is the last one, because it tells you which population the number describes.
| Publisher | Line | Figure published | Basis given |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insureon | General liability | Average $45 per month | Median of policies sold to 100,000 Insureon small business customers, updated March 30 2026 |
| Insureon | Business owner’s policy | Average $83 per month | Same customer base, updated April 17 2026 |
| Progressive Commercial | General liability | Median $55, average $79 per month | Its own 2025 national book |
| The Hartford | General liability | About $810 a year, about $68 a month | Its own customers, page updated May 20 2026 |
| Thimble | General liability | Around $42 per month or $504 a year | Stated as a small business owner average |
| Hiscox | General liability | Starts at $30 per month | Explicitly illustrative, not an average |
| biBERK | General liability | As low as $27.50 per month | A floor, not an average |
| Simply Business | General liability | From $20.75 per month | Lowest figure across a sixteen carrier panel |
| Next Insurance | General liability | Starts at $19 per month | A floor for some low risk businesses |
Read down the middle column and the range for one single coverage line runs from $19 a month to $79 a month. That is not sloppy reporting by any of them. It is four different questions being answered as though they were one.
Why These Numbers Disagree
Three separate things are being published under the same heading, and mixing them is how people end up with the wrong expectation.
A floor is the cheapest policy anybody has ever bought. Hiscox at $30, biBERK at $27.50, Simply Business at $20.75 and Next Insurance at $19 are all floors. Hiscox is the only one of the four that labels the number as illustrative in plain sight, stating that “Costs shown are illustrative. Your premium may vary based on your business profile” (hiscox.com/small-business-insurance/cost). A floor tells you the shape of the cheapest possible risk on that carrier’s books. It does not tell you about your risk.
Simply Business is similarly explicit that the displayed price is a monthly estimate and that the final price depends on your state, your selected insurance provider and your specific business details (simplybusiness.com). That is the right disclaimer and more sites should carry it.
An average is pulled upward by large policies. Progressive Commercial publishes both numbers for the same book and the gap is instructive: “In 2025, the national median cost of general liability insurance through Progressive Commercial was $55 a month, with the average monthly price of $79” (progressivecommercial.com). It adds that most customers sit closer to the median because expensive outliers drag the average up. A $24 a month gap between the average and the median in one company’s own book is the clearest illustration of the problem you will find anywhere.
A book of business is not a market. The Hartford reports that “on average, our customers pay about $810 a year, or about $68 a month” (thehartford.com/general-liability-insurance/cost). Insureon reports $45 a month for general liability, and describes its customer base precisely: mostly fewer than five employees, revenue from around $50,000 to more than $200,000, and five years or less in business (insureon.com/small-business-insurance/general-liability/cost).
That description is the answer to why the two figures differ by $23 a month. They are not measuring the same businesses. Insureon’s book skews tiny and new. The Hartford’s does not.
Stop Reading Averages, Get Your Number
Published figures for the same coverage run from $19 to $79 a month depending on who is counting. Hiscox publishes a general liability starting figure of $30 and calls it illustrative. The only number that describes your business is the one a quote form gives you.
The Spread Matters More Than the Average
The single most useful thing any of these publishers put out is not the headline figure. It is the distribution behind it, and Insureon is the only one that publishes it in detail.
On general liability, Insureon reports that 22 percent of its customers pay less than $30 each month and 41 percent pay between $30 and $60 per month, with annual premiums running from a low of $265 to a high of $3,030.
On a business owner’s policy, which bundles general liability with commercial property, it reports an average of $83 a month, annual premiums from around $400 to over $6,000, with 25 percent paying under $50 a month and 33 percent paying between $50 and $100 (insureon.com/small-business-insurance/business-owners-policy/cost).
Look at what those distributions actually say. On general liability, roughly six in ten of a broker’s small business customers pay under $60 a month, and the top of the range is more than eleven times the bottom. If someone quotes you $140 a month, that is not evidence of a rip off. It is evidence that you sit in the upper part of a very wide distribution, and the honest next question is which of your inputs put you there.
Cost by Coverage Line
Most people asking what business insurance costs are really asking about one line without knowing which. Here is what each line is for and what the published figures say.
| Line | What it is for | Published figures we verified |
|---|---|---|
| General liability | Third party bodily injury, property damage, product liability, advertising injury | Insureon average $45 per month; Progressive median $55, average $79; The Hartford about $68 |
| Business owner’s policy | General liability bundled with commercial property, usually cheaper than buying both | Insureon average $83 per month; Hiscox from $42; Simply Business from $33.75 |
| Professional liability and errors and omissions | Claims that your advice or work caused a client financial loss | Hiscox from $23 per month; Simply Business from $25.83 |
| Cyber | Breach response, notification costs, liability after a data incident | Hiscox from $30 per month |
| Workers’ compensation | Employee injury, mandatory in most states once you have payroll | Simply Business from $38.91 per month; biBERK cites an industry range of $0.75 per $100 of wages in Texas to $2.74 in Alaska |
The workers’ compensation row is the one worth studying, because biBERK publishes the rating basis rather than a price (biberk.com/workers-compensation-insurance). Rate per $100 of payroll multiplied by your payroll is how that premium is actually calculated, so you can estimate your own within a wide band before you ever open a form. No other line gives you that.
The Nine Inputs That Move Your Premium
These are the fields on every quote form, roughly in order of how much they move the number.
Class code. What you sell, expressed as an industry classification. This is the biggest single lever and you do not control it, though you should make sure it is accurate rather than approximate.
Revenue. For most retail and ecommerce classes, exposure scales with sales. A revenue figure you guessed high will be a premium you overpaid.
Payroll. Drives workers’ compensation directly, and sometimes general liability. Include owner draws only where the form asks for them.
State. Both regulation and litigation environment. The biBERK workers’ compensation figures show a spread of more than three times between two states for the identical coverage.
Limits. Usually quoted per occurrence and in aggregate. Hiscox displays example limits of $500,000 and $1,000,000 per occurrence against a $2,000,000 aggregate on its general liability page, and notes they are illustrative (hiscox.com/small-business-insurance/general-liability-insurance).
Deductible. Thimble states that deductibles on its commercial general liability policies range from $1,000 down to zero (thimble.com/general-liability-insurance). A higher deductible lowers premium and raises the cash you need on the day something happens.
Claims history. Prior losses raise the rate. Nothing you can do about it now except tell the truth on the form.
Years trading. New businesses generally rate worse, which is part of why Insureon’s very young customer base does not read cheaper than everyone else despite being tiny.
Distribution channel. Buying direct removes agent commission from the premium. biBERK claims that “By removing the middleman, we’re able to offer policies that can cost up to 20% less than traditional providers” (biberk.com/general-liability-insurance), which is a claim about distribution cost rather than underwriting.
Four Lines, One Company, One Renewal
Hiscox publishes illustrative starting figures for general liability at $30, professional liability at $23, cyber at $30 and a business owner’s policy at $42 a month, and states coverage in 49 states. Those are floors rather than quotes, so treat the form output as the only real number.
What Buying Wrong Costs
The interesting number in this category is not the premium. It is the gap.
If your largest supplier agreement requires a $2,000,000 aggregate limit and you bought $1,000,000 to save money, you have not saved money. You have created a certificate that will be rejected at exactly the moment you need it accepted, and the deal you were opening the account for does not happen.
Worse is the limit that gets accepted but turns out to be too small. The difference between the limit you bought and the claim you receive is not written off by anyone. It is a number you pay from your own accounts, and at the premium levels in this category the saving that created it was measured in tens of dollars a month.
Which is the honest argument against optimising hard on price here. The whole visible spread across every publisher above is roughly $60 a month. That is not where the money in this decision is.
How to Get a Real Number in Under an Hour
Assemble your inputs once and reuse them without variation, or your quotes will not be comparable: legal entity name, entity type, state, industry description, annual revenue, payroll, years trading, prior claims, and the exact limits your contracts demand.
Then run three quotes, not one. A marketplace to find the range, a direct writer to see the floor, and a specialist to see what a real underwriter thinks of your class. Put the three declaration pages side by side and compare exclusions before you compare premiums.
If the entity work is not finished, none of these forms will produce a bindable number, because a policy cannot be issued to a business that does not legally exist. The full sequence is in our guide to getting business insurance for your ecommerce store in the right order.
If your quote comes back well above the published averages, do not assume you are being gouged. Check your revenue and payroll entries first, then your class code, then your limits. Then compare a specialist against a direct writer using our head to head on the Berkshire direct price against the online specialist.
After that, compare a single carrier against a whole panel using our breakdown of buying from a carrier or buying from a marketplace.
Running the Business Behind the Store
Your premium is mostly a function of what you sell, which means the cheapest insurance decision you will ever make is the niche decision you made months earlier. If it is still open, work from the list of high ticket niches worth building a store around.
Why the paperwork in this model is heavier than in low ticket dropshipping is explained in our primer on what high ticket dropshipping is and how the economics work.
The supplier relationships that trigger the insurance requirement in the first place are covered in the complete step by step guide to finding suppliers for high ticket products.
All of it depends on having an entity first, because no carrier will price a policy for a name that does not exist on a state register. That order is documented in business formation for high ticket dropshipping.
The stack behind all of this stays small on purpose. The storefront runs on Shopify. Entity filing and registered agent service goes through Bizee.
The policy goes to Hiscox when the appetite and the lines fit, and elsewhere when they do not.
If you want the entity, the store and the supplier applications handled as a single job, that is what our done for you high ticket dropshipping build and launch service does.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average cost of small business insurance? There is no single figure. Insureon publishes $45 a month for general liability across its own customers, Progressive publishes a $55 median and a $79 average across its 2025 book, and The Hartford publishes about $68 a month across its customers. They are all correct about different populations.
Why is the number on carrier websites so much lower? Because those are floors rather than averages. Next Insurance at $19, Simply Business at $20.75, biBERK at $27.50 and Hiscox at $30 are all the cheapest thing on the shelf, not the middle of it.
How much is a business owner’s policy? Insureon publishes an average of $83 a month with annual premiums from around $400 to over $6,000. Hiscox publishes an illustrative starting figure of $42 a month.
Is a business owner’s policy cheaper than buying the parts separately? Usually, which is the point of bundling general liability with commercial property. Whether it is cheaper for you depends on whether you actually need the property coverage.
How much does workers’ compensation cost? It is rated per $100 of payroll, and biBERK cites an industry range from $0.75 in Texas to $2.74 in Alaska. Multiply the rate by your payroll to get a rough band before you quote.
Can I lower my premium by raising my deductible? Yes, and Thimble publishes a deductible range from $1,000 down to zero on its commercial general liability policies. You are trading premium for cash exposure on the day of a loss.
Should I just buy the cheapest quote? Only after you have checked that the limits meet every contract you have signed. A rejected certificate costs more than the premium you saved.
The Only Number That Describes Your Business
Published averages for general liability run from $45 to $79 a month depending on whose customers are being counted, and published floors run from $19 to $30. Hiscox says its own figures are illustrative, which is the right way to describe every number on this page.
Bottom Line
The published data is consistent enough to be useful once you sort it into the right buckets. Floors sit between $19 and $30 a month. Broker and carrier averages for general liability sit between $45 and $79 a month. A bundled business owner’s policy averages $83 a month on the one dataset that publishes it. The full spread on general liability, from the same source that publishes the average, runs from $265 to $3,030 a year.
If your quote lands inside those bands, it is normal. If it lands well above, the cause is almost always your class code, your revenue entry or your limits, and all three are worth checking before you go shopping for a cheaper carrier.
And treat every number on this page, including the ones we verified line by line, as background rather than as your price. The publishers say the same thing about their own figures, which is the most honest thing in the entire category.
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Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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