Car insurance group checker

How do car insurance groups work?

All cars fall into 1 of 50 insurance groups.

Generally the higher the group your car sits in, the more you pay for your insurance. This is because cars in higher groups are seen as ‘riskier’ to insure.

What group your car sits in depends on things like:

• Its overall value: More expensive cars sit in higher groups.
• Any security features it has: Cars with anti-theft features usually sit in lower groups.
• How much it costs to repair: The more it costs to fix your car, the higher the group your car is likely to sit in.
• Its top speed and acceleration: Faster cars run a higher risk of being involved in a collision, and sit in higher groups as a result.
• What safety features it has: Things like ABS brakes lower a car’s chances of being involved in a crash. The safer the car, the lower the group it sits in.

Examples of cars that fall into groups 1 - 50 include:

These are just examples of cars in different insurance groups. Even different versions of the same model can sit in different groups, depending on things like the year, trim, engine size, performance, and repair costs.

Our group checker tool makes it super simple to find out exactly which group a car is in, just enter the registration number.

What’s the average insurance cost for each group?

Generally, the higher your car’s group, the more you pay to insure it. But there are exceptions.

Our data show that the average price for groups 1-5 is actually higher than groups further up the scale.

There may be reasons for this though, such as the fact that younger drivers tend to buy cheaper cars. These cars sit in lower insurance groups and should be cheaper to insure. But as young drivers tend to own them they tend to pay above the average for their insurance. This means the ‘average’ cost to insure them appears higher than groups further up the scale.

Despite this, being aware of how your car insurance is calculated, and how your car’s group fits into that, is still worthwhile.

With this in mind, here’s the average costs of car insurance for each group*:

*Confused.com data, August to October 2024.

Are there groups for vans and motorbikes too?

Yes, but they work a little differently.

Pre-2016, there were only 20 groups for vans. This means that vans produced before 2017 fall into one of these 20 groups.

In 2017, a further 30 groups were added. Vans produced after this are split into groups 1-50.

Despite this, van groups work in a similar way to their car counterparts: the lower the group, the lower your insurance costs tend to be.

For bikes, the groups aren’t so well defined, and different insurers use different group definitions. Some split bikes into 17 groups, for example, while others split them into up to 22.