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Nine dollars a month. That’s roughly where Pets Best starts its accident-only plan for dogs in most states, and it’s low enough that the reflex is to assume something is wrong with it.
Mostly, nothing is. Pets Best is a legitimate carrier selling genuinely inexpensive coverage, and the cheapness is a business model rather than a trick. But “cheap and real” still leaves you with decisions that decide whether you end up covered or just paying.
Here’s the Pets Best pet insurance review.
This is general information, not veterinary or financial advice. Always confirm coverage details directly with your insurer and consult your vet for diagnosis and treatment decisions.
The Accident-Only Tier Is the Headline, and It’s Real
Pets Best publishes accident-only pricing starting around $9/month for dogs in most states. That’s the cheapest entry point to real coverage in the mainstream market.
Understand exactly what it buys. Accident-only covers sudden external events — broken bones, lacerations, swallowed objects, toxic ingestion, being hit by a car. It covers no illness at all: no cancer, no diabetes, no allergies, no ear infections.
For a young accident-prone dog, or for an owner whose real alternative is no coverage at all, that’s a good trade. For anyone whose fear is a cancer diagnosis, it’s the wrong product at any price. The full breakdown of who it fits is in accident-only pet insurance.
The Accident-and-Illness Plans
Above the accident-only tier, Pets Best sells conventional accident-and-illness coverage with reimbursement options in the standard 70–90% range and a spread of deductibles and annual limits, including higher-tier plans with generous caps.
The plans are competent and priced at the low end. What you don’t get is a structural edge: no diminishing deductible like Embrace, no per-condition deductible like Trupanion, no direct vet pay.
Pets Best does recognize curable pre-existing conditions, which is a meaningful policy feature and one of the few places a budget carrier matches the mid-market — the mechanism is in curable pre-existing conditions.
Where It Gets Weaker
Tier sprawl. Pets Best sells several plan levels, and the differences between them — exam fees, rehabilitation, specific caps — are where the price gap lives. Two Pets Best quotes can differ substantially in what they actually cover. Read the tier you built, not the brand.
Routine care is a separate add-on, as always a budgeting product rather than insurance. Compare its caps to your real spending — wellness plans vs. pet insurance.
Customer experience is mid-pack. It’s not the app-first experience of Lemonade, and claims are conventional reimbursement — see how to file a claim.
You might be thinking: if the cheapest tier is this cheap, why would anyone buy up? Because the cheap tier is accident-only, and the gap between accident-only and accident-and-illness is the entire category of things most likely to bankrupt you. The ladder is real; just know which rung you’re standing on.
Pets Best Against the Field
| Pets Best | Lemonade | Spot | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accident-only tier | Yes, from ~$9/mo | No | Yes |
| Reimbursement | 70–90% | 70/80/90% | 70–90% |
| Curable pre-existing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Diminishing deductible | No | No | No |
| Price position | Low | Lowest | Middle |
Against Lemonade specifically, the deciding factor is usually the accident-only tier and state availability rather than the accident-and-illness price, which lands close.
Who Should Buy Pets Best
Buy it if: you want the cheapest legitimate route to some coverage, you’re insuring a young dog whose risk is genuinely trauma-weighted, or you need accident-only for a senior dog locked out of full plans — see pet insurance for senior dogs.
Look elsewhere if: you want a structural advantage that compounds, you want the best claims experience in the category, or you’re insuring a breed with concentrated hereditary risk where the extra monthly cost of a stronger policy is trivially justified — the French Bulldog case being the clearest.
The honest framing: Pets Best is the answer to “what’s the least I can spend and still be genuinely insured.” That’s a real question with a real answer, and there’s no shame in it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is $9/month accident-only coverage actually worth buying? Yes, if you understand it covers no illness. A single foreign-body surgery runs into the thousands and is the most common catastrophic claim in young dogs, and it’s covered.
Does Pets Best cover hereditary conditions? On accident-and-illness plans, yes, subject to the standard rule that symptoms didn’t appear before waiting periods ended.
Can I upgrade from accident-only later? Usually, but anything diagnosed while you were on the cheaper tier becomes pre-existing under the new plan. Accident-only doesn’t hold your place in line — see pre-existing conditions.
Which Pets Best tier should I pick? Compare on exam-fee coverage and annual limit rather than headline price, since that’s where the tiers actually diverge.
The Bottom Line
Pets Best does the most useful thing a budget carrier can do: it makes “insured” reachable for people who’d otherwise be uninsured, without pretending the cheap tier is something it isn’t.
Buy the accident-and-illness plan if you can afford it. Buy accident-only if you can’t — and know exactly what you’ve bought either way. What you shouldn’t do is buy the cheapest line on the page and assume the word “insurance” means the same thing it means everywhere else.
The rest of the field is in the 2026 comparison.
If budget is the binding constraint but your dog sits in a high-risk breed, read the trade-off in English Bulldog insurance costs before settling for the cheapest tier on the page.
Sources & Methodology
Accident-only starting price and plan structure reflect Pets Best’s published coverage pages as of 2026, cross-checked against MoneyGeek and Insurify market data. Reimbursement and deductible ranges reflect published plan documentation. Prices vary by breed, age, state and tier — treat all figures as ranges and confirm in a live quote. We have no commercial relationship with Pets Best, and no carrier reviewed here paid for or reviewed this article.
Last reviewed and updated: September 2026