Cheapest car insurance in Ontario, by city

The cheapest published average in this set is Kingston at $1,738 a year, about $145 a month. The dearest is Brampton at $3,341 to $3,802. Same driver, same car, same clean record: the only thing that changed between those rows is where the car sleeps at night.

Two honesty rules govern this table. First, every figure is a published city average across all drivers, never a quote: your age, record and postal code move your own price a long way in both directions, and only an insurer can quote you. Second, where our two sources disagree about a city, the table shows the whole range rather than picking a side, which is why some rows carry two numbers.

Ontario city insurance averages, cheapest first
Rank	City	Published average, a year	About a month
1	Kingston	$1,738	$145
2	Peterborough	$1,739	$145
3	Burlington	$1,806	$151
4	Kitchener	$1,810	$151
5	Guelph	$1,846	$154
6	Waterloo	$1,853	$154
7	Hamilton	$1,870 to $2,396	$156 to $200
8	St. Catharines	$1,877	$156
9	Ottawa	$1,886	$157
10	Brantford	$1,902	$159
11	Niagara Falls	$1,919	$160
12	Oakville	$1,970	$164
13	Cambridge	$1,979	$165
14	Milton	$2,003	$167
15	Thunder Bay	$2,032	$169
16	Windsor	$2,035	$170
17	London	$2,037 to $2,225	$170 to $185
18	Oshawa	$2,116	$176
19	Barrie	$2,118	$177
20	Mississauga	$2,258 to $2,531	$188 to $211
21	Markham	$2,364	$197
22	Richmond Hill	$2,422	$202
23	Toronto	$2,483	$207
24	Vaughan	$2,705	$225
25	Brampton	$3,341 to $3,802	$278 to $317

Ranked by the low end of each published average, because a page about the word cheapest should sort by the cheapest defensible reading. Every figure is listed with its source and date on the assumptions page, and each city name links to that city’s full cost-of-ownership page.

Why is the same insurance cheap in one city and not another?

Ontario prices a policy on where the car is kept as much as on who drives it. Claims frequency, repair costs and theft rates in a postal code all feed the premium, which is why two drivers an hour apart with identical records pay differently, and why the spread on this page is worth more than a full point of interest rate on the loan. Each city page runs the same car and driver through our engine in that city, so you can see what the premium does to the whole monthly cost rather than to one line of it.

A city appears here only where a published average exists to price it with. Cheap is the word people search; an average is what this page can honestly publish. For what a car costs to own in each city all-in, start at the city cost index.