Rideshare Insurance: What Uber and Lyft Actually Cover, and When

This is general information, not insurance advice

Nothing in this guide is a substitute for a conversation with your own insurer, agent, or broker. Insurance requirements, minimum limits, and how a personal policy responds to rideshare driving vary by state and by insurer, and some of the exceptions below apply in specific states only. Read this as a map of how the coverage is structured, then confirm the details for your own policy and your own state before you drive a single paid mile.

Why “I have car insurance” is not the same question

A standard personal auto policy is written to cover personal use of a vehicle, and most personal insurers treat driving for a fare or a delivery fee as commercial use — something many personal policies exclude outright, or reserve the right to deny a claim over once they learn a car was being used that way at the time of an accident. That gap is not a hypothetical; it is the specific reason Uber and Lyft each maintain their own insurance policies that activate based on your app’s status, layered on top of whatever personal coverage you carry. Both companies’ own insurance pages describe the same three-phase structure, with nearly identical dollar figures, which is worth noticing on its own: this is not one company being generous and the other stingy, it is closer to an industry-standard structure that both platforms independently publish.

Phase one: app off

When your app is off, neither company provides any coverage at all. Uber’s own insurance page and Lyft’s own insurance coverage page agree on this point without qualification: Lyft states plainly that it “does not have a policy that applies when your app is off,” and directs the driver back to their personal insurer. This is the phase where your ordinary personal policy is the only coverage in force, which is exactly why the exclusion question above matters — if your personal insurer has excluded rideshare use from your policy, it can still exclude an accident that happens during this phase if it can show the vehicle is used for rideshare work at all, depending on how your specific policy is written.

Phase two: app on, waiting for a request

Once you go online and are waiting for a match, both companies step in with what each calls contingent liability coverage — coverage that applies only if your personal policy doesn’t respond or doesn’t fully cover the loss. Uber’s insurance page states this coverage is at least “$50,000 per person and $100,000 per accident for injuries” and “$25,000 in property damage per accident.” Lyft’s page states the identical figures: “$50,000/person for bodily injury,” “$100,000/accident for bodily injury,” and “$25,000/accident for property damage” — with a footnoted exception for Arizona and Nebraska, where the figures drop to $25,000/$50,000/$20,000 to match state minimums, and for Maryland, where the limit is $125,000 combined.

These limits are real, but they are also the lowest of the three phases, and they are contingent rather than guaranteed — meaning a driver whose personal insurer denies a claim during this phase because the policy excludes rideshare use entirely, rather than merely underpaying it, is the exact scenario this contingent coverage exists to catch. It is also the phase where a driver is most likely to be uninsured in practice if they assumed the platform’s $1,000,000 headline figure — the number from phase three, described next — applied the whole time the app was open.

Phase three: en route to a pickup, or a trip in progress

Once a ride is accepted, both companies’ own coverage steps up substantially. Uber’s page states its insurance “covers at least $1,000,000 for property damage and injuries to riders and third parties,” plus, if the driver carries comprehensive and collision on their own policy, contingent comprehensive and collision coverage for the vehicle itself “up to the actual cash value, with a $2,500 deductible.” Lyft’s page states the same structure almost word for word: “at least $1,000,000 for third-party auto liability coverage” in most markets, plus contingent comprehensive and collision “up to the actual cash value of the car ($2,500 deductible)” if the driver carries that coverage personally — with a stated exception in Maryland, where the en-route limit is $125,000 combined rather than $1,000,000. Both companies are explicit that the contingent comprehensive and collision piece only exists at all if the driver already carries comprehensive and collision on their personal policy; a driver who dropped that coverage to save money has no vehicle-damage protection to fall back on in this phase either, only the third-party liability piece.

What this means for a driver’s own policy

Because phase one leaves a driver on their personal policy alone, and phase two’s contingent coverage is a backstop rather than a primary policy, most drivers are better served carrying a rideshare or transportation-network-company endorsement on their personal auto policy — a rider many personal insurers sell specifically to close this gap, rather than relying on the platform’s contingent coverage as if it were primary insurance. What such an endorsement costs and which insurers offer it varies too much by state, driving record, and vehicle to state a single figure here responsibly; check with your own insurer rather than budgeting from a number in this guide. Both Uber’s and Lyft’s own pages are also explicit that these rideshare policies do not apply to livery, limo, or Taxi and Limousine Commission-permitted drivers, who are required to carry their own commercial auto insurance instead — a distinction that matters in cities, New York City chief among them, where TLC-permitted vehicles are common.

Where this connects to the rest of this site

This site’s calculators ask for an annual or monthly insurance figure as a plain input field — $2,000 a year in the cost-per-mile calculator, $180 a month in the rideshare profit calculator — and both of those are generic starting points meant to be overwritten, not researched averages for what rideshare insurance costs a given driver. Your own premium, including any rideshare endorsement, is the number that belongs in that field; a driver who leaves the default in place is modeling a hypothetical policy, not their own. The vehicle reviews on this site track fuel, maintenance, and depreciation cost per mile precisely because those figures are stable across drivers in a given vehicle, while insurance is not — it depends on where you live, your driving record, and the specific endorsement you carry, none of which a vehicle spec sheet can capture.