This is FurVerdict's tracking desk for US pet insurance cost and market data, and the data points one way: dog premiums are rising several times faster than general inflation, and a 2026 dog shopper should budget above the last published average, not at it. A US accident-and-illness policy averaged $749.29 a year for dogs and $386.47 a year for cats in 2024, up from $675.61 for dogs in 2023, while the North American market reached $5.2 billion in written premium [NAPHIA State of the Industry, Average Premiums, 2024] [NAPHIA: North American Pet Health Insurance Industry Market Reaches $5.2B in Written Premium, 2025-04]. The cat line, by contrast, has been flat for three years, so the cost story here is specifically a dog story. Each page below takes one trend apart with cited figures, and stays strictly on cost and market data, never veterinary advice.
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Five data pages, each answering one cost or market question a buyer asks before shopping, and each linking back to the providers FurVerdict reviews and the guides that turn the trend into a decision.
Pet insurance cost trends in 2026 reads the most recent NAPHIA premium series and the AVMA spending data to answer what is happening to the price this year, and what a 2026 shopper should expect to pay. The dog accident-and-illness average moved from $640.04 in 2022 to $675.61 in 2023 to $749.29 in 2024, a roughly 17% rise over two years that did not track headline inflation [NAPHIA State of the Industry, Average Premiums, 2024]. The AVMA spending side corroborates the pressure: the average cost of the last veterinary visit rose to $200 in 2025 from $147 in 2024, with total annual pet spending up about $200 to roughly $1,700 in 2025 [AVMA: Evolving pet owner economics: What data reveal for veterinary teams, 2025]. The budget takeaway: that premium curve is roughly 8% compounded a year and the leading cost indicators are still up, so the 2024 dog figure is a floor to budget above, not a target, while the flat cat line keeps $386 a usable cat anchor. The page also flags the largest single lever a price-pressed buyer has, the roughly $556-a-year gap between the accident-only dog tier at $193.29 and the accident-and-illness tier, which moves the monthly bill more than switching carriers does [NAPHIA State of the Industry, Average Premiums, 2024].
Average pet insurance premium by year is the year-over-year series itself, the dog and cat accident-and-illness averages from 2022 through 2024 with the growth rate for each step, so a switcher can see whether a renewal increase is in line with the market or ahead of it. The dog line stepped up 5.6% from 2022 to 2023 and then 10.9% from 2023 to 2024, an accelerating curve rather than a steady drift, while the cat average moved less than 1% in either direction and ended 2024 at $386.47, slightly below its 2022 $387.01 [NAPHIA State of the Industry, Average Premiums, 2024]. For a renewing buyer that converts to a concrete benchmark: a dog renewal in the roughly 8% to 11% band is the market move passing through, while a materially larger increase on a pet that has not aged into a new band or filed claims is the one worth challenging with the carrier. For a cat owner the flat three-year series flips the read, since a large cat increase is more likely carrier-specific or pet-specific than a market trend.
Pet insurance industry growth covers the US market size: $4.74 billion in US written premium and about 6.4 million US pets insured at the end of 2024, part of a $5.2 billion North American total that grew 20.8% in a single year, with penetration still near 5.46% of US dogs and 2.04% of cats [NAPHIA: North American Pet Health Insurance Industry Market Reaches $5.2B in Written Premium, 2025-04]. The buyer-relevant finding is in the decomposition: insured pets rose about 12% from 2023 to 2024 while premium rose about 21%, so roughly half of that revenue jump came from higher premium per pet rather than new enrollments. For budgeting that means the market's headline growth and your renewal increase are partly the same number, which reframes a hike as a market-wide trend rather than your carrier singling you out.
Why pet insurance premiums rise is the cost-driver explainer: veterinary procedure prices, claims frequency, and book aging, framed against cited cost data and the AVMA spending series, with no medical content. The point that changes how a buyer reads a renewal is that the increase is cost arithmetic, not carrier discretion, because a premium is priced to the expected payout on claims like a cruciate-ligament repair that averages $3,525 and reaches $6,417 by region, an intestinal-blockage surgery that averages $4,383, or a cancer course that runs $3,000 to $10,000 or more, so when those bills cost more the premium has to follow [CareCredit: How Much Does CCL (ACL) Surgery for Dogs Cost?, 2025] [CareCredit: Intestinal Blockage Surgery Cost for Dogs and Cats, 2025]. The budget consequence: most of a renewal increase sits outside both your control and your carrier's discretion, so the lever you do hold is the deductible and reimbursement structure, which matters more as premiums rise. It connects directly to is pet insurance worth it.
Pet insurance vs inflation sets the premium growth rate against the BLS all-items Consumer Price Index, which rose 2.9% over 2024 and 2.7% over 2025 [BLS: Consumer Price Index 2024 in review, 2025-01]. The conclusion a buyer should carry out: the 10.9% single-year dog premium increase in 2024 ran roughly four times the all-items CPI, so expecting a renewal to track inflation is the wrong anchor and an above-CPI dog renewal is the trend, not the carrier being unreasonable. The page also reframes the self-insurance math, since the bills a savings account would have to cover sit in the same fast-rising category, so a fixed savings target erodes against vet-cost growth the same way the premium rises against it; neither side of the worth-it decision is shielded from above-inflation cost growth.
Two observations that only show up across the pages
The single most useful cross-cutting finding is the dog-versus-cat divergence. The same NAPHIA series that has the dog accident-and-illness average climbing $640.04 to $749.29 over 2022 to 2024 has the cat average sitting in a $383 to $387 band the entire time, ending below where it started [NAPHIA State of the Industry, Average Premiums, 2024]. That makes the cat line a control case: if rising premiums were uniform carrier behavior, both lines would move, so the fact that only the line carrying the heavy orthopedic and large-breed claim exposure rose points the finger at claims cost, not pricing strategy. The practical effect is that "pet insurance is getting expensive" is specifically a dog statement, and the budgeting advice splits accordingly, a dog shopper should treat the published average as a floor and budget above it while a cat shopper can still plan against $386.
The second observation appears when the premium, inflation, and market-growth series are read together: the part of the premium that outpaces inflation, the part where the market's revenue grew faster than its pet count, and the part a renewing owner pays are the same arithmetic seen from three sides. The premium is indexed to a narrow, faster-rising slice of healthcare-style cost plus the aging of the insured book, not to the broad consumer basket the all-items CPI tracks, so a fast-growing book repricing as it ages shows up as both market growth and an individual renewal increase. For a buyer the synthesis is one rule: benchmark a renewal against the cited premium series, not against general inflation, and read the gap as the cost trend rather than carrier conduct.
These are analysis pages, not buying guides. Once a trend tells you what to expect to pay, the decision is which structure pays out for your pet's risk, and the term-by-term decision framework for that is in the guides hub. The review method is at /methodology/. FurVerdict is an independent editorial site and is not a licensed insurance agent; verify current terms with the provider before purchasing.