Insurance is one of those fixed costs every business owner knows they need but rarely budgets for line by line. A single slip-and-fall lawsuit, a kitchen fire, or an employee's on-the-job injury can wipe out months of profit overnight — and the right policy is what stands between that event and your personal savings. This business insurance calculator adds up the monthly premiums you are paying (or quoting) across the six most common commercial coverages, annualizes the total, and shows it as a percentage of your revenue so you can tell at a glance whether you are under-insured, over-paying, or right in line with industry norms.
Type in the monthly premium for each policy you hold, or pull fresh quotes and enter them here. The result card updates instantly and breaks the annual cost down by coverage type.
How to Use
- Enter your Annual Revenue — the gross sales figure from your most recent full year of business taxes. This is the denominator the premium-to-revenue ratio is built on.
- Add your General Liability monthly premium. This is the one policy nearly every business should carry; it covers third-party bodily injury, property damage, and advertising injury claims made against you.
- Enter your Property Insurance premium if you own or lease a storefront, office, warehouse, or own significant equipment. Skip it (leave 0) if you are a fully remote service business with no physical assets.
- Add your Workers' Compensation premium. In almost every U.S. state this is mandatory once you hire even one employee, and it is usually your single largest insurance line after health coverage.
- Fill in Professional Liability (E&O) if you sell advice, design, consulting, or professional services. It covers mistakes that cause a client financial loss — a gap your general liability policy will not pay.
- Add Commercial Auto if any vehicle is titled to the business or is regularly used for deliveries, site visits, or work trips. Personal auto policies almost always exclude business use.
- Enter Business Interruption if you want a cushion that replaces lost income after a covered fire or disaster shuts you down temporarily.
The result card annualizes every monthly line, sums them into a total monthly and total annual premium, and computes the premium as a percentage of your revenue. A healthy target for most small businesses is roughly 1%–3% of revenue; anything above 5% is worth shopping or auditing.
How Business Premiums Are Priced
Unlike a mortgage or a car loan, business insurance has no universal formula — carriers price each risk independently. Still, the levers are consistent across quotes:
- Revenue and payroll volume — higher sales mean higher limits and higher premium, especially for workers' comp, which is typically charged per $100 of payroll.
- Industry class code — a landscaper or general contractor pays far more for workers' comp than an office-based marketing agency, because injury risk differs by trade.
- Location — property premiums track local fire, crime, and weather risk, and coastal flood zones drive separate wind/storm endorsements.
- Deductible and limits — raising a deductible from $1,000 to $5,000 typically cuts the premium 10%–20%, but you self-pay that much more per claim.
- Claims history — one prior claim can push a renewal up 10%–25% for three to five years.
Because pricing is risk-based rather than formulaic, this calculator treats each monthly premium as an input you already have from a quote or renewal — it does not invent a rate. That keeps the output honest: you see exactly what your current stack costs.
What Each Coverage Actually Covers
- General Liability (GL) — slip-and-fall at your storefront, a defective product that hurts a customer, or a claim that your advertising defamed a competitor.
- Property — fire, theft, vandalism, and wind damage to your owned or leased space and the equipment inside it. Flood and earthquake are usually separate policies.
- Workers' Compensation — medical bills and partial wage replacement for an employee injured on the job, plus the legal shield that keeps the employee from suing you over the injury.
- Professional Liability / E&O — a missed deadline, an error in delivered work, or advice that costs a client money. GL explicitly excludes pure professional errors.
- Commercial Auto — collisions and liability for vehicles used in the business, including hired or non-owned autos if you have employees driving their own cars on company errands.
- Business Interruption — if a covered loss forces you to close for weeks, this replaces the net profit you would have earned and covers ongoing fixed expenses like rent and payroll.
Examples
Example 1 — The default $500k revenue small business. A local café brings in $500,000 a year. Its general liability runs $1,500/month, property coverage for the leasehold and kitchen equipment is $800/month, and workers' comp for six staff is $1,200/month. Adding those: $1,500 + $800 + $1,200 = $3,500/month, or $42,000/year. That is 8.4% of revenue — on the high side, which makes sense for a food-service operation with physical premises and a payroll.
Example 2 — A lean remote agency. A 10-person marketing firm has $1,200,000 in revenue, no physical office (property = $0), no client-facing injuries (GL $120/month), workers' comp $400/month, and E&O $280/month. Total monthly is $800, annual is $9,600 — only 0.8% of revenue. Service businesses with no inventory and low physical risk almost always land under 1%.
Example 3 — A $5M manufacturing business. A mid-sized manufacturer turns over $5,000,000. Its GL is $5,000/month, property on the plant and equipment is $2,000/month, and workers' comp is $3,000/month. Total monthly premium is $10,000, annual $120,000, equal to 2.4% of revenue. Even at that scale, insurance remains a low-single-digit cost — but the absolute dollars are large enough that annual broker shopping is well worth the time.
FAQ
How much does business insurance cost per month?
For most small U.S. businesses, total monthly commercial insurance falls between $300 and $2,000. General liability alone often runs $300–$800/month for a low-risk service firm and $1,000–$3,000/month for a contractor or restaurant. Workers' comp is usually the second-largest line and scales with payroll and industry class code.
What is a good premium-to-revenue ratio?
Across industries, total business insurance typically runs 1%–3% of annual revenue. Offices and remote services land near 0.5%–1%; construction, manufacturing, and food service run 3%–8%. If your ratio climbs above 5% for a low-risk business, shop your policy or raise deductibles.
Is general liability insurance enough for a small business?
No. GL covers third-party injury and property damage, but it excludes professional errors (buy E&O), employee injuries (buy workers' comp), damage to your own building and gear (buy property), and business-use driving (buy commercial auto). Most businesses need a business owner's policy (BOP) bundling GL + property at a discount, plus workers' comp as a separate line.
How is workers' compensation calculated?
Workers' comp is priced per $100 of payroll, using a class-code rate set by your state rating bureau. A clerical employee might cost $0.30–$0.50 per $100 of payroll, while a roofer can cost $20+ per $100. The rate is then adjusted by your company's experience modification (claims history). Enter your actual monthly premium here rather than trying to back into the rate.
Does business interruption insurance replace lost revenue?
Yes — up to the policy's limit and waiting period. After a covered loss like a fire, it reimburses net profit you would have earned plus continuing fixed expenses (rent, payroll, taxes) for the period you cannot operate, usually capped at 12–24 months. It does not cover pandemics or utility outages unless those are specifically endorsed.
Should I bundle my policies into a BOP?
Usually yes. A Business Owner's Policy bundles general liability and commercial property at a 10%–15% discount versus buying them separately, and it is automatically available to businesses under roughly $1M in revenue with low risk. Buy workers' comp, commercial auto, and E&O separately — those are rarely inside a BOP.
Does this calculator give me a binding quote?
No. It rolls up the monthly premiums you already pay or have been quoted into an annual total and a revenue percentage. Actual pricing depends on your exact industry class code, location, claims history, limits and deductible, and is set by the carrier — get three comparable quotes before renewing.
Disclaimer
This business insurance calculator is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute insurance, legal, financial, or tax advice. The totals are simple sums of the monthly premium values you enter; they are not quotes, binders, or coverage determinations. Actual premiums vary widely by carrier, industry classification, location, payroll, claims history, policy limits, and deductible. Coverage needs and legal requirements (especially workers' compensation) differ by state. Always consult a licensed, independent insurance agent or broker before binding, changing, or renewing any business policy.