The 20 cheapest cars to insure in 2024

There’s no getting around it, car insurance is a legal requirement – and it continues to get more expensive. Indeed, according to official figures by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), premiums were 21% higher between April and June 2024 compared with the same period in 2023.

Despite a reprieve this August, it means that motorists are, on average, paying £622 a year to insure their car.

Costs to the motorist are eye-watering, but according to the ABI, for every £1 collected in insurance premiums, the industry paid out £1.13. In the 12 months to August 2024, insurers paid out £2.9 billion, driven in part by a 28% increase in repair costs.

That’s the background, but how can you choose a car that’s cheap to insure?

The key thing is – especially for young drivers – to start by checking its insurance group, because that will give you a good indication of how pricey the premiums will be. 

All cars are assigned a group ranging from 1 to 50, taking into account the car’s price when new, what safety systems are fitted and what security features it has, plus how susceptible it is to accident damage, how much it is likely to cost to repair and how long that work will take.

Theoretically, a car in a low insurance group should be cheap to insure. However, as our analysis shows, this isn't always the case, and prices vary significantly among the different engine and trim options of specific models.

If you're a young driver, you'll find that your car insurance can be more expensive than most – that's because young drivers, and especially young male drivers, are  involved in a disproportionately number of accidents. However, there are ways you can keep your insurance premiums as low as possible, such as by taking out a black box telematics policy which rewards smooth driving.

The annual premiums we’ve quoted here are for a 23-year-old male, living in Bromley, Kent, with a clean licence, six years’ no-claims bonus, parking on the street and covering 8000 miles per year. While these are higher than they’d be for an older person with more of a no-claims discount and living in a less risky part of the country, they show that plenty of new cars are still affordable to insure for younger drivers.

Below we count down the 20 cheapest new cars to insure, revealing how much they will cost for our average driver. If you want to find out more about any of the cars listed below, simply click the links through to the reviews of each car, and we’ll point you in the right direction if you want to buy a new or used model.

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