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Mandy Sleight has over 15 years of insurance knowledge and expertise in auto, home, life, health, pet, supplemental benefits, and other insurance products. She’s a sought-after insurance expert, appearing in Bankrate.com, Moneygeek.com, U.S. News & World Report, Reviews.com, CNET, and other publications, and she's been writing for Compare.com since 2023.
Mandy uses her background and experience working for well-known insurance companies like State Farm and Nationwide Insurance to create engaging and easy-to-understand content that helps readers make smarter insurance choices that have a positive effect on their budgets and finances.
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Lequita Westbrooks is an insurance editor at Compare.com. Her writing and editing experiences span several industries, including insurance, personal finance, higher education, and more. She excels at explaining complex topics like auto insurance in simple, easy-to-understand language and is passionate about helping readers save money. Lequita graduated from the University of South Florida, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in English.
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Licensed property and casualty insurance agent
NPN: 21630969
MacK Korris is a licensed insurance agent who reviews and fact-checks articles for Compare.com. MacK has several years of experience reviewing and editing a variety of insurance topics, and he also holds valid insurance producer licenses in property and casualty lines from the Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance (NPN #21630969).
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At Compare.com, it’s our mission to give you the tools to find the best (and most affordable) insurance for your unique needs and budget. We strive to provide information that’s helpful, clear, and unbiased, and we believe that comparing insurance companies should never put you at risk of spam. Our editorial team — which is made up of experienced writers, editors, insurance agents, and data analysts — has spent thousands of hours researching and creating the coverage overviews, side-by-side comparisons, and detailed reviews you see across our site.
While we make money through partnerships with some of the brands we discuss in our articles, our editorial team operates 100% independently, and these partners never influence or affect the topics, reviews, ratings, or recommendations we provide. We never guarantee favorable reviews or mentions in exchange for compensation from any brands or partners, and we uphold strict editorial standards to ensure our content is always independent, truthful, and unbiased.
ValuePenguin helps people make better spending decisions by offering free information and tools. It provides financial and insurance product reviews, including ones for car, home, and health insurance, as well as banking products. You can also get free car, renters, home, and health insurance quotes.
We put ValuePenguin to the test by going through the car insurance quote process on its website. This ValuePenguin review shows the step-by-step process, including the results, proving it’s a lead-generation tool rather than a true car insurance comparison website.
ValuePenguin is an insurance and personal finance website that publishes guides, company reviews, and research on insurance pricing. The site operates as a lead-generation platform and doesn’t show real-time auto insurance quotes or let you buy your policy directly.
When you use it to shop for coverage, it’ll ask you for your contact information and other questions before providing you with final offers. After that, it’ll redirect you to partner companies to continue the quote process.
ValuePenguin is best for researching car insurance companies and comparing auto coverage options at a high level. It also provides a car insurance cost estimator to give you an idea of what you might pay for coverage. But it’s less helpful if you’re looking for actual insurance quotes in one place or prefer not to receive follow-up phone calls or emails.
Detailed insurance guides
Helpful car insurance cost estimator tool
Offers multiple coverage types
No real-time quotes
Redirects to partner sites
Reports of customer complaints and spam concerns
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ValuePenguin was launched in 2013 by three former financial analysts to help people use real-life data to choose financial products. It also developed a tool to help users compare health insurance quotes side by side in the same year.
ValuePenguin launched its credit card analysis and comparison tool the following year. By 2018, the website had received visits from more than 16 million unique visitors. LendingTree acquired ValuePenguin in 2019, and more than 10 million unique users visit the website each year.
You can access a large library of articles on auto, home, and health insurance products on the ValuePenguin site. Its breakdowns and calculators may help you make smarter financial decisions, and its insurance quote tool can provide a list of companies to get quotes from. Unfortunately, you may not receive actual quotes from insurance companies, as you’ll see below.
Despite some positive customer reviews, many customers complain about spam from third parties and insurance companies after entering their information. Be sure to read the fine print before submitting your information to understand what you consent to by requesting quotes from the site.
Check quotes from 120+ top insurance companies.
ValuePenguin advertises that you can enter your information once to compare car insurance quotes. On its website, ValuePenguin states that it gets rates from top companies and collects quotes from national and local insurers so you can see accurate pricing.
To see how the process works and what you can expect, we went through the quote flow step by step.
The site is easy to navigate and uses a multi-step form to collect information about your vehicles, driving record, and personal details before showing available matches.
First, you’ll start on the main auto insurance page, where you’ll see a quote form near the top labeled something like “Find Cheap Auto Insurance Quotes in Your Area.”
You’ll enter the following:
Insurance type (auto is typically preselected)
Your ZIP code
Your age
After clicking the “Find Insurers,” you’ll move into the multi-step questionnaire.
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Next, you’ll go through a series of screens about your vehicle(s) and insurance history. The questions include:
How many vehicles you want to insure
Vehicle year, make, and model
Whether you’ve had auto insurance in the past 30 days
Select your current car insurance company
How long you’ve continuously had auto insurance
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It’ll also ask you to provide personal details, including:
Gender
Marital status
Homeowner status
Driving incidents in the last three years
Military service status
Birth date
First and last name, and email address
Next, you’ll provide your home address, ZIP code, and phone number, and click “Get My Auto Quotes Only.” At this stage, you consent to receive emails, texts, and phone calls from ValuePenguin and its partners. We’ll discuss that more in the next section.
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After submitting your information, ValuePenguin displays the matches it found. In our case, it returned five results, and each listing has a “View My Rate” button — not an actual premium. Clicking that button takes you to the insurer’s website to continue the quote process.
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Although ValuePenguin offers a robust library of informative insurance reviews, auto insurance resources, and personal finance content, its customer reviews are below average. So far, the comparison website hasn’t received any reviews or ratings from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Shopper Approved, or Clearsurance.
ValuePenguin earns a poor rating on Trustpilot, with 2.0 out of 5 stars.[1] Trustpilot reviews are overwhelmingly negative. While ValuePenguin provides helpful content, many customers express concerns about the company sharing their contact information and receiving unwanted follow-up phone calls.
Some describe the experience as misleading and even as a scam. Here are three negative reviews left on Trustpilot that perfectly illustrate many users’ frustrations with the auto insurance quote process:
"Scam. ValuePenguin sold my email to multiple sites. I know because I hide my email and know which sites are selling my information...without my permission."
"Had two different representatives just hang up on me instead of offering to help me find the right department. That’s not how you make freaking money."
"Avoid at all costs. SCAM. Received multiple calls after entering information for quotes."
You can receive auto and home insurance quotes from both ValuePenguin and Compare.com. While both are user-friendly, offering step-by-step processes to receive quotes, only Compare.com provides rates from actual insurance companies.
ValuePenguin acts as a lead-generation comparison tool, providing a list of comparison sites, including Compare.com, instead of real quotes with prices.
Compare.com received a near-perfect rating from Shopper Approved, but ValuePenguin isn’t rated.[2] It also doesn’t have a rating with Clearsurance, while Compare has 4 out of 5 stars.[3] It also isn’t rated or accredited by the BBB, while Compare.com has an A+ rating and has been accredited since June 2015.[4]
Compare.com also has higher ratings on Trustpilot, as shown in the table below.
Feature  | ValuePenguin | Compare.com |
|---|---|---|
| Shopper Approved ratings | Not rated | 4.7 out of 5 |
| Clearsurance ratings | Not rated | 4 out of 5 |
| Trustpilot ratings | 2.0 out of 5 | 4.6 out of 5 |
| BBB rating | Not rated | A+ |
| Number of real-time quotes* | 0 | 8 |
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ValuePenguin can be classified as a spammy site, given reviews from real customers and its fine print under the “Get My Auto Quotes” button.
It clearly states that by clicking the button, you’re giving “written consent to telemarketing calls, text messages, emails, and postal mail from this website, our marketing and re-marketing networker, and up to eight insurance companies or their affiliates.”
That’s not to say you won’t get auto insurance quotes. But be prepared to receive a lot of emails, phone calls, and text messages from ValuePenguin and affiliates. After clicking the quote button, removing your information from its database, marketing networks, and affiliates may be difficult or even impossible.
Consider using a true auto insurance-comparison site or going directly to the insurer’s website to receive car insurance quotes.
Save up to $867 per year on auto insurance.
If you want to learn more about ValuePenguin and its auto insurance quote process, we’ve answered some of the most commonly asked questions below.
Yes. ValuePenguin is easy to use. It walks you through the quoting process step by step. You can also call ValuePenguin to speak with a licensed insurance agent to compare auto, home, renters, or Medicare insurance products. ValuePenguin also provides articles on the same insurance topics.
Yes. ValuePenguin provides informative articles on various insurance topics. But to receive an insurance quote, you consent to receive phone calls, texts, mail, and emails from ValuePenguin, car insurance companies, networkers, and affiliate organizations.
You don’t have control over who receives your personal information and what they do with it. Many reviewers on websites such as the BBB and Trustpilot describe being bombarded with spam after entering their information on ValuePenguin.
No. ValuePenguin is free to use. You can use the website to learn about home, auto, renters, and health insurance. You can also get free quotes for auto, renters, and home insurance online or call to get quotes, including Medicare health insurance quotes.
But when you provide your personal information to ValuePenguin, you consent to your information being provided to insurers, ValuePenguin networkers, and affiliates.
ValuePenguin makes money through advertisements on its websites. It also receives affiliate income from companies it showcases on its website. Compensation can affect the offers you see and the order in which you receive recommendations.
Companies or product manufacturers that don’t compensate ValuePenguin may not show in reviews, recommendations, or articles on the website.
Yes. ValuePenguin is a legit personal finance website owned by LendingTree. It offers information about insurance and other financial products. That said, it mainly collects leads for partners instead of showing you real quotes for comparison. While it’s free to use, you should expect follow-up emails, calls, or texts from partners.
Customer reviews of ValuePenguin tend to skew negative, particularly on platforms like Trustpilot. Many customer complaints center on the site’s auto insurance quote process and how information is shared with insurance companies and marketing partners.
Most experts suggest getting at least three car insurance quotes before picking a policy, according to the Insurance Information Institute.[5] By comparing quotes from different companies, you can find the best car insurance rates. ValuePenguin helps people connect with insurance companies, but it doesn’t show auto insurance quotes in real time.
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Mandy Sleight has over 15 years of insurance knowledge and expertise in auto, home, life, health, pet, supplemental benefits, and other insurance products. She’s a sought-after insurance expert, appearing in Bankrate.com, Moneygeek.com, U.S. News & World Report, Reviews.com, CNET, and other publications, and she's been writing for Compare.com since 2023.
Mandy uses her background and experience working for well-known insurance companies like State Farm and Nationwide Insurance to create engaging and easy-to-understand content that helps readers make smarter insurance choices that have a positive effect on their budgets and finances.
Lequita Westbrooks is an insurance editor at Compare.com. Her writing and editing experiences span several industries, including insurance, personal finance, higher education, and more. She excels at explaining complex topics like auto insurance in simple, easy-to-understand language and is passionate about helping readers save money. Lequita graduated from the University of South Florida, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in English.
Licensed property and casualty insurance agent
NPN: 21630969
MacK Korris is a licensed insurance agent who reviews and fact-checks articles for Compare.com. MacK has several years of experience reviewing and editing a variety of insurance topics, and he also holds valid insurance producer licenses in property and casualty lines from the Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance (NPN #21630969).