Car insurance for G2 and new drivers in Ontario
The short version
Published averages put a G2 driver 25% to 50% above an experienced full-G driver, in a range of $1,500 to $5,400 a year. The useful detail is underneath that: at 18 and 19 the two licence classes cost almost the same, because age is doing the pricing, not the licence. Rushing the road test saves a teenager very little. Turning twenty saves them a great deal.
Ontario prices a new driver harder than almost anywhere else in the country, and the questions that follow are always the same two. What is this going to cost, and will getting my full G fix it? The first has a published answer. The second has a better answer than most people expect, and it is not the one the question assumes.
What a G2 actually costs
Three independent publishers, across four years, put a G2 driver 25% to 50% above an experienced driver with a full licence. That band has been stable enough across sources to be worth quoting, and it is quoted as a band because not one of them supports a single number.
In dollars, the published Ontario range for a G2 driver is $1,500 to $5,400 a year. The overall averages behind those bands are $2,947 a year for a G2 driver against $2,105 for a full-G driver, a gap of $842. That is the headline, and it is the least interesting thing on this page.
The part nobody tells nineteen-year-olds
Split those same averages by age and the story changes completely.
Published Ontario averages, G2 against a full G, by age
- At 18, G2 against full G$9,025 against $9,085 a year
- At 20 to 25, G2 against full G$2,837 against $2,697 a year
- At 31 and over, G2 against full G$2,942 against $1,906 a year
- What holding a G2 costs you at 18nothing: the full-G average is $60 higher
- What holding a G2 costs you at 31$1,036 a year
At 18 the licence class is worth less than nothing: the full-G average is the higher of the two. The penalty for still holding a G2 only arrives once age has stopped doing the work.
At 18, the full-G average is the higher of the two. Not by much, but the direction is the point: holding a G2 rather than a full G is costing that driver nothing at all, because their age is already setting the price and the licence class has almost nothing left to move. The same holds at 19.
Then look at what does move. Between the 18 band and the 20-to-25 band, the G2 average falls by about $6,188 a year. Nothing about the licence changed. The driver got older, and the premium fell by roughly two thirds. Age is not one factor among many for a new Ontario driver; in the teens it is very nearly the whole model.
The G2 penalty is real, but it arrives later than people think. It is at 26 to 30 that the gap opens to about a quarter, and by 31 and over a G2 holder is paying roughly half as much again as a full-G driver of the same age. Which is exactly backwards from the intuition: the licence class matters least when you are new, and most when you are not.
The levers that do move a new driver’s premium
- Where the car sleeps. Ontario prices by postal code, and the spread between the cheapest and dearest cities is larger than most single-driver factors. Our city ranking sets out the published averages, cheapest first.
- Which car. Insurers price the vehicle as much as the driver. Get quotes on two or three specific cars before choosing one, not after.
- Driver training. A recognised course is one of the few discounts genuinely aimed at this segment, and it shortens the graduated licensing wait as well.
- Being listed on a parent’s policy. Usually cheaper than a standalone policy for a car registered in the teenager’s own name, which is the arrangement that produces the most alarming quotes.
- Telematics. A usage-based program prices how you actually drive, which is the one way a new driver can produce evidence in their own favour rather than waiting for years to pass.
What will not help is stripping coverage to make the number fit. It is the most tempting lever on this list and the one that costs the most when it is tested, and a new driver is statistically the most likely person on the policy to test it.
Sources
Every claim in this guide either comes from one of these, or is worked out in front of you by the same engine that runs the calculator. Figures we hold in our own dated assumptions file are listed with their sources on the assumptions page.