Pet insurance

Pet insurance is a reimbursement contract, not a health plan.

You pay the vet, then the insurer pays you back a share of what's covered. Knowing that one sentence before you buy is worth more than any comparison chart.

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Free while in beta · An estimate, never a quote

What Koala prices this from

How this is calculated

Data source: NAPHIANAPHIA State of the Industry national average annual pet premium
As of: 2023The year the underlying figures describe
Estimate band: ±25%Around the midpoint, per pet
Coverage levels priced: Accident onlyAccident & illness

What it covers

The policy, in plain English.

Pet policies come in two shapes. Accident-only covers injuries: a broken leg, a swallowed sock, a car strike. Accident-and-illness adds the expensive half (cancer, diabetes, chronic conditions) and costs meaningfully more because that's where the claims are.

Accidents: fractures, ingestion, lacerations, and emergency care
Illness, on accident-and-illness plans: cancer, infections, chronic disease
Diagnostics: imaging, bloodwork, and lab fees
Surgery, hospitalization, and prescription medication

What moves the price

The levers, and the ones Koala can't see.

An estimate is only as honest as the list of things it ignores. Here is both halves.

Koala models these

Accident-only versus accident-and-illness
The largest single lever, and the one most worth understanding before you compare prices. Koala prices both.
Species
Dogs cost more to insure than cats in the published averages, consistently.

Koala does not model these

Breed and age at enrollment
Both move real pricing sharply: some breeds are underwritten far more expensively, and premiums climb as a pet ages. Koala models neither.
Your reimbursement rate, deductible, and annual limit
The three dials that decide what you actually get back. A cheap policy is often a 70% reimbursement with a low annual cap, and that is a different product from an expensive one.

Estimated range based on published state/national rate data for similar profiles. This is not a quote and not an offer of insurance. Actual pricing depends on the specific insurer's underwriting and may differ from this estimate.

Worked example

The same model, running.

Not a mock-up. This is a live pet estimate for a sample household, computed by the engine that will run on yours, with every step it took printed underneath.

Accident & illness

Sample household · one dog, one cat · NAPHIA reports nationally, so this line is not state-adjusted

$794 to $1,324

per year · ≈$88/mo at the midpoint

What this assumed

Pets: 2 (1 cat, 1 dog / other)
Plan type: Accident & illness
Region: national average (NAPHIA does not publish state-level figures)

The arithmetic

1Accident & illness national average per pet, summed: 1 × $383 (cat) + 1 × $676 (dog / other)
2= estimated annual mid-point $1,059, shown as a ±25% range

The range shown is the midpoint ±25%. That band is not a confidence interval; it is the spread published rate data implies, and a real quote can land outside it.

Coverage-to-price metric

coverage-to-price = $15,000 (assumed annual reimbursement limit, $) ÷ $1,059 (estimated annual price) = 14.2

Higher means more assumed coverage per dollar. Comparable only within this line: a computed metric, never a recommendation.

Source: NAPHIA State of the Industry national average annual pet premium · data as of 2023

An estimate, never a quote

That is the whole calculation. There is no second model behind it. Build your profile to run it on your own household, or see the worked sample estimate.

FAQ

Pet questions

The things worth knowing before you compare a single price.

Are pre-existing conditions covered?

No. Essentially never, at any insurer. This is the defining rule of pet insurance and the reason the advice is always to enroll while the animal is young and healthy. A condition your pet showed signs of before coverage started will be excluded, and insurers do read the vet records.

Does it cover routine care and vaccinations?

Usually not by default. Wellness coverage is typically a separate add-on, and because routine care is predictable, it functions closer to a payment plan than to insurance.

How does reimbursement actually work?

You pay the vet in full at the time of treatment, submit the invoice, and the insurer pays you back the covered share after your deductible. That means you still need the cash on hand the day it happens, which surprises a lot of first-time policyholders.

Want to go deeper? Read the guides or see how Koala works.

The Koala advisor

Have a question about any of this?

Ask the advisor. It's an AI that teaches you how insurance actually works in plain English: what a coverage does, what a word on your policy means, and what happens next. Nobody is trying to sell you a policy at the end of it.

Every account gets 10 questions a month, free. They come back on the 1st.

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