How We Make Money
Advertising Disclosure: InsuranceCostIn is a free resource supported by advertising revenue and affiliate partnerships. We may receive compensation when you click on links to our advertising partners. Our editorial content, including all insurance cost data and analysis, is independent of these partnerships and is never influenced by compensation.
We believe in complete transparency about how our business operates. InsuranceCostIn provides free insurance cost data and comparisons for over 5,000 cities across the United States, and we want you to understand exactly how we fund this service. This page explains our revenue sources, how they work, and how we ensure they never compromise the integrity of our content.
Why We Publish This Page
Trust is the foundation of everything we do. If you are using our data to make decisions about your insurance coverage, you deserve to know whether financial relationships could influence what we publish. The short answer is: they do not. But rather than simply asking you to take our word for it, we want to explain our business model openly so you can judge for yourself.
This disclosure is also consistent with guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which requires websites to clearly and conspicuously disclose material connections between publishers and the companies whose products they discuss or recommend.
Our Revenue Sources
1. Display Advertising (Google AdSense)
The primary way we generate revenue is through display advertisements served by Google AdSense. These are the banner ads and text ads you may see on our pages. Here is how this works:
- Google places ads on our pages based on the content of the page and your browsing interests.
- We earn a small amount of revenue each time an ad is displayed (impression-based) or when a visitor clicks on an ad (click-based).
- We do not control which specific ads appear on our pages. Google's automated systems determine ad placement and content.
- The presence of an ad from a particular insurance company on our site does not indicate an endorsement, and it has no influence on the data or analysis we publish.
2. Affiliate Partnerships
We participate in affiliate programs with select insurance comparison platforms and financial services companies. When we link to these partners and you click through to their website, we may earn a referral fee or commission. Our current affiliate partners include:
- Policygenius — An independent insurance marketplace that allows consumers to compare quotes from multiple carriers.
- The Zebra — An insurance comparison platform specializing in auto and home insurance quotes.
- NerdWallet — A personal finance platform that provides insurance comparisons and educational content.
When a link on our site directs you to one of these partners, we may receive compensation if you request a quote, sign up for a service, or complete a transaction. This compensation comes from the partner, not from you. You will never pay more for a product or service because you reached it through a link on InsuranceCostIn.
What This Means for You
We want to be clear about what our advertising relationships do and do not affect:
- Our data is independent. The insurance cost estimates on our city and state pages are calculated using our published methodology, which relies on government and industry data sources. No advertiser or affiliate partner has input into these calculations, and no amount of compensation would cause us to alter our data.
- Our editorial decisions are our own. We decide what topics to cover, how to present information, and which comparisons to highlight based solely on what is most useful to our readers. Our editorial policy governs all content decisions, and it operates independently of our business relationships.
- We may receive compensation when you click on links to our partners. Affiliate links on our site are included because we believe the partner offers a genuinely useful service to consumers looking for insurance quotes. However, clicking these links is entirely optional, and our cost data and analysis are available regardless of whether you engage with any partner offers.
- Not all companies are represented. The fact that a particular insurance company or comparison platform is not listed as a partner does not reflect a negative assessment. Our affiliate relationships represent only a small subset of the insurance marketplace.
How We Choose Partners
We are selective about the companies we partner with. Before entering into any affiliate or advertising relationship, we evaluate potential partners based on the following criteria:
- Consumer value: Does the partner offer a legitimate, useful service to people shopping for insurance?
- Reputation: Is the company well-regarded in the industry, with a track record of fair dealing with consumers?
- Transparency: Does the partner clearly disclose their own terms, fees, and business practices?
- No editorial strings: We only work with partners who respect our editorial independence and do not request or require favorable coverage as a condition of the relationship.
Questions?
If you have questions about our advertising practices, our relationships with partners, or any other aspect of how we operate, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are committed to being as open and transparent as possible about every aspect of our business.
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Last updated: March 2026