A telematics discount pays you for driving well. Pay-per-mile insurance pays you for not driving. The two get lumped together, but they're different products: Snapshot, DriveEasy and Drive Safe & Save, which we compared here, take a normal premium and shave a percentage off for smooth braking. A pay-per-mile policy throws the normal premium out and replaces it with a small fixed charge plus a few cents for every mile the car moves.
For a retiree, a work-from-home household's second car, or a city driver who takes the train most days, that can be the cheapest policy on the market. For a commuter, it's often the most expensive. Four programs are worth knowing by name in 2026, and they differ more than their marketing suggests.
The Four Programs at a Glance
| Nationwide SmartMiles | Allstate Milewise | Mile Auto | Lemonade (formerly Metromile) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How you're billed | Monthly base premium + cost per mile, both fixed for the policy term | Daily rate + per-mile rate, deducted from a prepaid account after each trip (or a daily rate only on the Unlimited option) | Monthly base rate + per-mile rate | Monthly base price + per-mile price, billed for the prior month |
| How miles are counted | Plug-in device, or the car itself on 2018+ Ford and Lincoln connected cars | Plug-in device in the diagnostic port | A photo of your odometer once a month; no device, no app tracking | App and device; an adapter cable covers some cars without a standard port |
| Road-trip cap | Only the first 250 miles in a day count | 250 miles a day in most states, 150 in some, as reported by reviewers | None reported | 250 miles a day in Oregon, per Lemonade |
| Where it's sold | Everywhere except AK, HI, LA, NC and NY (Nationwide's fine print also excludes OK) | Allstate's Milewise pages don't publish a state list; check your ZIP or an agent. Reviewers put it at about 22 states | AZ, CO, FL, GA, OH, OR, TN and TX, as reported in September 2026 | Pay-per-mile in AZ, OR and WA; regular policies in IL, OH, TN and TX |
| Driving behavior | A safe-driving discount can apply at the first renewal (it can be zero; not offered in California) | In some states the daily and per-mile rates can move up or down with driving: speeds over 80 mph, hard braking, 11 p.m.–4 a.m. trips | Not tracked | Mileage sets the price in the three per-mile states |
Sources: Nationwide, Allstate and Lemonade program pages, October 2026; Mile Auto availability and rates as reported by FinanceBuzz (September 2026) and U.S. News; Milewise availability and caps as reported by Insurify and WalletHub. Program terms vary by state.
How the Math Works
Every one of these programs prices the same way: a fixed amount that covers the car while it sits, plus a per-mile charge that covers it while it moves. Nationwide's own example is a Chicago driver at $35 a month plus 7 cents a mile, who drove 500 miles in the month and paid $95, against $133 for the same driver on a traditional Nationwide policy. Lemonade's example is a base price of $31 plus 7 cents a mile: 213 miles in a month came to $45.91.
Run that structure against your own odometer and the pattern is obvious:
| Annual miles | Monthly miles | Monthly cost at $35 + 7¢ |
|---|---|---|
| 4,000 | 333 | $58 |
| 6,000 | 500 | $70 |
| 8,000 | 667 | $82 |
| 10,000 | 833 | $93 |
| 12,000 | 1,000 | $105 |
| 15,000 | 1,250 | $123 |
Illustration only; your base rate and per-mile rate depend on the same things a normal premium does: driving record, age, ZIP code, vehicle, coverage limits and, in most states, credit.
The break-even sits wherever that line crosses what a traditional policy would charge you. For most drivers the programs are built for, that's somewhere around 10,000 to 12,000 miles a year. Below it, pay-per-mile wins. Above it, you're paying a per-mile surcharge for the privilege of being tracked. The programs know this: Nationwide won't quote SmartMiles to a 15,000-mile-a-year driver at all, as ValuePenguin found when it tried.
What Separates Them
Nationwide SmartMiles is the one most people can actually buy. It's sold in every state but five (six, counting the Oklahoma exclusion in Nationwide's fine print), your base premium and cost per mile are locked for the policy term, and the 250-mile road-trip exception is written into the program. The catch is that the safe-driving discount is a maybe: it applies at the first renewal, it can be zero, and California doesn't get it.
Allstate Milewise bills by the day, not the month. You fund a prepaid account, and each day's charge comes out of it: a daily rate whether you drive or not, plus the per-mile charge for that day's trips. If you'd rather not count miles on one car, the Unlimited option charges a daily rate only, with no per-mile charge. Two things to know before signing: if the device stops reporting, Allstate charges a Default Mileage Use of 40 miles a day until it's fixed, and in some states your rates can rise or fall with your driving. Allstate's Milewise pages don't publish a list of states, so confirm with an agent that it's sold where you live before you plan around it.
Mile Auto is the privacy option. No device, no app watching where you go. Once a month you photograph the odometer and the company's system reads it. The trade-offs are a small footprint, reviewers report eight states and per-mile rates of roughly 6 to 8 cents, and no daily cap, so a long road trip is billed in full.
Lemonade inherited Metromile's product. Metromile was the original pay-per-mile insurer; Lemonade bought it in 2022 and has retired the brand. Today Lemonade's per-mile pricing is sold only in Arizona, Oregon and Washington, and its policies in Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas are conventional six-month premiums. Mileage comes through the app and a device, and Lemonade publishes a 250-mile daily cap for Oregon. Insurify's September 2026 review notes customer complaints about base prices rising at renewal, which is the number to watch on any of these programs, since the per-mile rate is the part that gets advertised.
Who Should Sign Up, and Who Shouldn't
Pay-per-mile tends to work for:
- Retirees and part-time drivers who put 5,000 to 8,000 miles a year on a car.
- Second cars in a two-car household where one vehicle does the commuting.
- Remote workers and transit commuters whose car mostly moves on weekends.
- Students and snowbirds whose car sits for months at a time; the base rate is all you pay while it's parked.
It tends not to work for:
- Anyone over about 12,000 miles a year. You'll pay more than a standard policy, with a device in the car to prove it.
- Rideshare and delivery drivers. The programs are for personal use, and the mileage would be ruinous anyway.
- Drivers who hate being tracked. Three of the four programs need a device or an app. Mile Auto is the exception, and it's sold in eight states.
- Anyone who'd ignore a dead device. Allstate's 40-mile-a-day default charge is the clearest example, but every device-based program has some version of a penalty for miles it can't see.
One more thing to check: the daily cap. A 400-mile drive to a wedding costs you 250 billable miles on SmartMiles, 250 or 150 on Milewise depending on the state, 250 in Oregon on Lemonade, and all 400 on Mile Auto.
Where You Live Decides Most of It
Availability is the first filter, and it's a strict one. A low-mileage driver in Louisiana, North Carolina or New York has no SmartMiles to buy, and Lemonade's per-mile product is three states wide. In Alabama, where we published a new rate guide today, SmartMiles is sold and Mile Auto and Lemonade's per-mile policies are not, so the comparison for most Alabama drivers is Nationwide against the state's $142-a-month full-coverage average, with Allstate as a question for an agent. The same exercise applies in every state: list the programs that sell where you live, then price the ones left against the conventional quotes.
Do that part honestly. A per-mile policy at $70 a month is a good deal only if the best standard policy for your profile costs more than $70, and in cheap states with cheap carriers it sometimes doesn't. Compare standard quotes for your ZIP code first, then ask the per-mile programs to beat the number. If you drive little and the per-mile quote wins, take it. If you drive a normal amount, a telematics discount on a standard policy is the better tool, and our comparison-shopping guide covers how to line the quotes up like for like.
Program mechanics, examples and availability from Nationwide's SmartMiles page (base premium and cost per mile fixed for the term; first 250 miles per day; device or 2018+ Ford/Lincoln connected cars; not sold in AK, HI, LA, NC, NY, with OK listed in the fine print; safe-driving discount at first renewal, may be zero, not in California; the $35 + 7¢ Chicago example), Allstate's Milewise help and FAQ pages (daily rate plus per-mile rate, Unlimited option, prepaid account, Default Mileage Use of 40 miles per day, driving-based rate movement in some states; no state list published there), and Lemonade's pay-per-mile pricing pages (base price plus per-mile price, the $31 + 7¢ example, 250-mile daily cap in Oregon), all read October 9, 2026. Lemonade's per-mile states and the retirement of the Metromile brand per Insurify (September 2026) and NerdWallet; Mile Auto's states, per-mile range and lack of a daily cap as reported by FinanceBuzz (September 2026), U.S. News and ValuePenguin; Milewise's state count and daily caps as reported by Insurify and WalletHub; Nationwide's 15,000-mile refusal as reported by ValuePenguin. The $35 + 7¢ illustration table is ours and is not a quote. Alabama average per Insurify, rates current as of September 30, 2026. Actual rates vary by driver profile and state.