10 Best & Worst Sites to Compare Life Insurance Quotes

Choosing and maintaining a life insurance policy is an essential part of financial planning, especially if you have loved ones depending on you for income.

Your life insurance cost depends heavily on the company you’re getting a quote from since different companies emphasize different factors when pricing your policy. This can make for a frustrating shopping experience, not to mention one that takes hours, if not days to complete.

In the end, you’ll have a list of companies and policies that are vastly different from one another in terms of coverage, death benefits, payouts, and pricing. Comparing these quotes is like comparing apples to oranges.

Comparison shopping, however, makes everything a lot easier — and faster. This is because life insurance comparison websites make you fill out a single form but give you quotes from multiple companies. Not to mention, these sites can sometimes churn out deals you wouldn’t find on company-specific websites.

The best comparison sites provide a variety of life insurance options with accurate and personalized rates, discounts, and coverage options all on one site.

These comparison sites ask you for necessary information such as your age, occupation, smoking history, and other health conditions to provide an accurate list of options. Such details allow the site to provide a realistic list of different rates, options, and insurers so that you can easily compare life insurance quotes. Typically, younger people, nonsmokers, and those in excellent health have cheaper monthly premiums.

Sadly, however, not all sites that claim to provide life insurance quotes are the real thing….

How Life Quote Comparison Sites Work

There are two types of life insurance comparison websites: quote comparison sites and lead generation sites. Life insurance quotes comparison websites present users with rates based on information submitted during the shopping experience. You can then decide which quote to pursue, and the data you entered is transferred to the agent or company website, significantly shortening the purchasing process. These sites do not sell your information to insurance companies or agencies.

Insurance comparison websites can be further broken down into sites that provide real-time insurance quotes versus those that provide estimated ones. The benefit of the former is that you get a more reliable quote; if you follow up on an estimated quote, you could discover that your real rate will be entirely different—potentially resulting in higher premiums.

Unlike authentic quote comparison sites, lead generation sites simply sell your information to their advertising partners—typically insurance companies. These sites are not built to provide you with personalized quotes and are not much help when trying to compare life insurance rates. Avoid these sites unless you’re eager to receive tons of cold calls from insurance robocalls and desperate agents.

Life Insurance Comparison Sites with Real Quotes

The following comparison websites offer real-time, accurate insurance quotes.

Insurify

Insurify is a free insurance comparison engine that provides real-time, accurate quotes from top insurance companies in the United States. The site offers free quotes from a wide variety of companies to choose from and a user-friendly interface that is accessible for all kinds of consumers. To date, it has delivered over 4 million insurance quotes from top providers such as The General, MetLife, and Liberty Mutual.

Insurify has been featured on Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and CNET, and is considered one of the best life insurance comparison sites. It also has comparison engines for auto and home insurance in addition to life insurance.

How it works: Insurify asks shoppers to answer a series of questions that it uses to produce accurate, real-time life insurance quotes.

I tested out the site to find term life insurance quotes. The site asked me simple questions about my age, smoking history, and general health status. It then prompted me to choose a coverage amount (between $5,000 and $3,000,000) and term length (between 10 to 30 years). I chose a 20-year term life insurance policy with a $500,000 coverage amount.

The questions were easy to answer, and the process was straightforward. I was able to submit my information and get personalized quotes in under five minutes through Insurify .

Results: Insurify produced 18 quotes, ranging from $18 per month to $66 per month, all based on the same coverage parameters (which is an excellent example of how widely rates can differ across companies).

Insurify marked some of the quotes with “no medical required,” making it easy to choose a life insurance policy that doesn’t require a medical exam. If you click on the button to the right of each quote, a pop-up window appears with options to apply for the policy online or call an agent from that life insurer.

The site also included ads for certain insurance companies, and clicking the “check rate” button for the ad connected me directly to the insurance provider’s website. It’s easy to tell the ads from the quotes; the ads all say “ad” next to the company name, and the button says “check rates” rather than “view deal,” so I didn’t feel duped into clicking on the ads.

Buttons at the top of the quotes page listed the 20-year term and coverage amount I had selected; clicking on one of those buttons let me change the parameters and produced a new basket of quotes immediately.

All in all, the experience was a breeze, Insurify’s form only took a couple of minutes, and I was quite happy with my quotes.

Policygenius

Policygenius is another online life insurance comparison tool that generates real-time quotes from multiple insurance providers. In addition to life insurance, Policygenius provides quotes for home, health, and disability insurance (among others), as well as blog posts with information on these various types of insurance. The site also has an Insurance Checkup tool that asks basic questions and recommends which kinds of insurance users should have.

How it works: Policygenius’ shopping process asked me for similar information as other life insurance comparison websites, mostly health-related. The site also asked if my driver’s license had been suspended or revoked in the last few years. Entering the information was fairly straightforward. The site preselected a coverage amount of $500,000 and a term of 20 years, but let me alter those selections if I chose.

Results: Policygenius produced 11 quotes for term life coverage, one quote for a term life insurance policy with the return of premium feature (meaning I’d get all my premium payments reimbursed if I outlived the policy), and one estimated whole life insurance policy quote. The quotes for term life insurance ranged from $17 a month to $27 a month; the policy with return of premium coverage was $88 a month, and the whole life insurance quote was an estimated $136 a month. The quotes came from a mix of insurance companies, both big and small.

Sliders on the side of the page let me change the policy term and amount of coverage to get a new set of quotes. I could select policies to compare and get more information about the companies and policies, including which riders were available on the policies I’d selected.

However, clicking on the Apply link next to a quote required me to provide my email address and phone number before I could proceed, instead of sending me right to the insurance company’s website to complete the application process. The fine print under the form informed me that providing my contact information gave Policygenius permission to call me for marketing purposes, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Life Insurance Comparison Sites with Estimated Quotes

Unlike Insurify and Policygenius, some comparison sites only provide estimated quotes, based on aggregate information from your local division of insurance. Rates from these websites are based on what other consumers in your ZIP code with similar histories are paying for insurance, rather than real-time quotes from the best life insurance companies.

The following site falls into the estimated quotes category.

NerdWallet

Nerdwallet is a popular personal finance website that offers free comparison tools for car, health, and life insurance quotes. The site also has reviews of different insurance providers and numerous tips for picking the best policy.

How it works: The main Nerdwallet site directed me to another site called Quotacy to get my quotes. During the quoting process, Quotacy asked just a few questions: my age, ZIP code, gender, and whether or not I smoked. It then gave me sliders to choose the coverage amount and term, pre-setting them to $500,000 and 20 years, respectively. Next, the site dove into my medical history with questions about what medication I take and whether any close family members had serious illnesses.

Results: Quotacy returned 11 quotes ranging from $17 a month to $27 a month, all for standard term life policies. I could also adjust the sliders for coverage amount and term on the right side of the page and get a new set of quotes.

Most of the quotes were from well-known insurance companies. Each quote included some information about the company, a company rating, and a summary of Quotacy’s review of that company (accessed by clicking on the “Ratings & Info” link). Clicking the Choose button gave me a chance to review my previous answers, and then the site asked me to sign up for a Quotacy account to proceed or sign in with my Google or Facebook credentials.

Lead Generation Sites

Unlike quote comparison sites, lead generation sites are paid when they send customers’ personal information to external agencies.

These sites often attract your interest with competitive rates, but then transfer you to a different site to continue shopping and complete your transaction, often at a far less attractive price. This is because lead generation sites are paid to sell your information to an agency, not to present you with the best rates on life insurance.

You can sometimes get life insurance quotes on lead generation sites, but you should expect them to be far less reliable than quotes from true comparison sites. Using lead generation sites most likely means that you’ll need to go to the various life insurance websites to find real rate information, which rather defeats the purpose of using a quote-generating site at all.

InsuranceQuotes

InsuranceQuotes is a free online comparison tool that offers quoting processes for auto, life, health, homeowners, and other types of insurance. The site also has articles on insurance-related subjects and provides information on insurance products by state, including average rates.

How it works: During the quoting process, I was asked for the usual information, although InsuranceQuotes also threw in a question asking if I had any dangerous hobbies such as rock climbing or skydiving. Clicking the Get Quotes button required me to consent to a somewhat unnerving declaration that I would be called by up to eight insurance or partner companies, potentially including robocalls.

Results: After answering the required questions, I ended up on a results page informing me that I did not match any participating agents, but that the site would keep trying to pair me up with someone. The page included a few links to life insurance company websites, with links to “Get Your Quote.” Oddly, one of the links connected me to yet another lead generation site: FirstQuoteLife.

Insure.com

Insure.com is a free, online insurance quote comparison tool that has quotes for life, auto, health, and homeowners insurance. There are also financial strength ratings for insurance companies, an insurance glossary, and informational articles.

How it works: The quoting tool asked for my gender, height, weight, and birth date, and then wanted to know which type of life insurance policy I was looking for ( term life insurance, universal life insurance, whole life insurance, final expense, etc.). It also asked some health history questions, including how much I exercise. Finally, it requested my contact information, informing me that I might be called or texted at the number I provided by various insurance agents.

Results: The quoting tool sent me to a page with a banner at the top stating that I’d soon be receiving calls from “representatives from top companies.” It then had a list of eight different quote comparison sites with links to get quotes. In short, all Insure.com did was give my phone number to insurance agents and then send me off to other websites to get some actual quotes, perhaps.

NetQuote

NetQuote is a free, online insurance comparison tool that provides leads to insurance agents.

In addition to life insurance, Netquote also offers quotes for health, home, renters, business, and auto insurance. The site has a few tools and calculators for various insurance-related tasks.

How it works: Once I entered my ZIP code, the site launched its quoting process, which was completely identical to that of InsuranceQuotes— leading me to suspect that the two sites belong to the same company.

NetQuote even asked me to agree to the same fine print agreement as InsuranceQuotes, which allowed eight or more insurance companies to contact me with offers and information.

Results: I was delivered to a results page that also looked identical to that of InsuranceQuotes, with the same message that I did not match any participating agents.

QuoteWizard

QuoteWizard is another insurance lead generation site that sells leads to insurance agents. In addition to life insurance, they also offer quotes for home, renters, health, and auto insurance. The site also has a blog with articles about various insurance-related topics.

How it works: The life insurance quoting tool asked me for just one piece of information: my ZIP code. While it was indeed a speedy quoting process, I wondered what good it could do me with so little information on which to base rates.

Results: QuoteWizard dropped me on a page with links to seven different websites, all of which were lead generation sites rather than actual insurance providers. Needless to say, using QuoteWizard is a waste of time.

SmartFinancial

SmartFinancial’s home page says it can get you rates from top-rated companies in less than 3 minutes. The quote processing tool provides quotes for life, auto, home, and health insurance, among others.

How it works: The quoting process did indeed move very quickly with the help of drop-down menus. After asking the usual questions, the tool asked for my email address while claiming “no spam, ever.”

But before I clicked to view my quotes, I noticed the fine print asking me to agree to allow “marketing partners to contact you for marketing/telemarketing purposes at the number and address provided above….” So much for no spam.

Results: After a short wait, the quoting tool produced three life insurance companies with buttons allowing me to “Check Price.” Clicking one of these links redirected me to the start of the life insurance company ’s own quoting process. T he page also offered me the option to speak with a licensed insurance agent.

ValuePenguin

Like Nerdwallet, ValuePenguin is a personal finance site dedicated to helping consumers make informed decisions about their credit cards, banking, investments, and insurance. The site offers quoting tools, in-depth financial product reviews, and analyses of industry trends.

How it works: ValuePenguin’s quoting tool asked me for my state of residence, gender, age, and smoking status. It then directed me to an informational page listing average term insurance rates by age, along with other basic information about life insurance. I also had the option to fill in a second quoting tool, which asked for just my ZIP code.

Results: Once I typed in the requested ZIP code, I was immediately taken to a page with links to one life insurance company (Progressive), one insurance agency, and three quote-generating sites. None of the results had actual quotes, just links to “check rates” on the various sites.

Conclusion: Compare quotes today!

Every time you have a significant life change—getting married, having kids, buying a home, getting a new job, and so on—it’s a good idea to reassess your life insurance policy needs. These policies could help your family with mortgage payments, college tuition, and retirement savings in case the worst happens.

Since term policies generally last for years, you don’t get the periodic reminder at renewal time to reconsider your needs that you’ll get with other types of insurance. That’s why it’s important to periodically revisit your policy and ask yourself if you need to make changes…or just look around to see if a better deal or type of policy is available elsewhere.

When you’ve worked out just how much life insurance coverage you need, a life insurance comparison site can help find the best price for the right policy. However, you’d be advised to stick to reputable comparison sites that give you real quotes rather than lead generation sites that will throw you on the mercy of cold-calling life insurance agents.

You may find that a few minutes spent on a site like Insurify could save you hundreds of dollars a year in your life insurance premium, and give you the peace of mind that you and your loved ones are covered. Good luck!