Earthquake Insurance Cost Calculator

How earthquake insurance is priced, and why the deductible works differently

Earthquake coverage is never included in a standard homeowners policy in the United States. It has to be purchased separately, and the market for it is concentrated in a handful of seismically active regions.

In California, the dominant provider is the California Earthquake Authority (CEA), a privately funded, publicly managed entity that most major California home insurers partner with to offer CEA-backed earthquake policies.

In the Pacific Northwest, Washington and Oregon sit on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, roughly 700 miles of fault line running offshore from northern California to Vancouver Island capable of producing a magnitude 8 to 9 "megathrust" earthquake, and researchers at Oregon State University estimate a 10% to 15% probability of a magnitude 9.0 Cascadia rupture in the next 50 years.

Both states have an active private earthquake insurance market as a result. Most of the rest of the country has little meaningful seismic risk and a correspondingly thin or nonexistent dedicated earthquake insurance market, which is why this calculator focuses on these three states rather than inventing coverage everywhere.

Pricing varies a lot by region. In California, earthquake insurance costs an average of roughly $3.54 per $1,000 of dwelling coverage, which works out to about $1,770 a year for $500,000 of coverage, consistent with ValuePenguin's reported statewide range of roughly $1,250 to $2,750 a year.

In Washington, a 2024 survey of eight major carriers found premiums running $1.50 to $3.25 per $1,000 of coverage, meaningfully higher than Oregon, where a wood-frame home in the Portland market can often be covered for as little as $200 to $300 a year on $300,000 of coverage, though premiums run higher in the state's higher-risk zones closer to the fault.

The deductible is the part that surprises people. Rather than a flat dollar figure like $500 or $1,000, earthquake policies use a percentage deductible, applied against your dwelling coverage amount, not your total claim.

CEA policies offer 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, or 25% deductibles (homes with more than $1,000,000 in coverage, or built before 1980 on a raised foundation without a verified retrofit, are limited to 15%, 20%, or 25%).

On a $400,000 policy with a 15% deductible, that is $60,000 you pay out of pocket before the policy pays a dollar, a genuinely different mechanic than the $1,000 or $2,500 flat deductible most people are used to from their regular homeowners policy.

Choosing a lower deductible raises your premium and lowers your out-of-pocket exposure, and the reverse is true moving toward 25%, CEA data indicates moving from a 5% to a 25% deductible typically cuts the premium by roughly a quarter to two-fifths.

No single public source publishes a combined region-by-coverage-by-deductible rate table, so this calculator blends a region-specific base rate per $1,000 of coverage with a deductible-tier adjustment derived from CEA's own disclosed premium-reduction range, the same disclosed-simplification approach this site uses for its flood and standard homeowners estimators.

Your actual CEA quote also depends on your home's construction type, year built, and foundation type, all of which require an address-level calculation you can only get from CEA's own premium calculator or a participating insurer.