Alabama Car Insurance Minimum Requirements
Alabama requires at least 25/50/25 liability coverage. That is $25,000 for injuries to one person, $50,000 per accident and $25,000 for property damage.
- Shorthand
- 25/50/25
- Bodily injury — per person
- $25,000
- Bodily injury — per accident
- $50,000
- Property damage
- $25,000
- Uninsured / underinsured motorist
- Included by default; rejectable by the named insured
No liability policy may be issued in Alabama without uninsured motorist coverage unless the named insured rejects it. The limits it must carry are the state minimums of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident — not your own liability limits, so a driver who buys 100/300 of liability still gets 25/50 of uninsured motorist coverage unless they ask for more. Once rejected, it does not come back on a renewal unless you ask for it in writing (Ala. Code § 32-7-23(a), citing § 32-7-6(c)).
- Personal injury protection (PIP)
- Not required
Alabama requires liability coverage only. Nothing in the Mandatory Liability Insurance Act obliges an insurer to cover your own injuries — medical payments coverage is sold separately and is optional.
Alabama sets $25,000 — higher than 23 of the 51 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $5,000 to $50,000.
How Alabama compares with every other state
What these numbers buy you
Those first two numbers are two different walls, and drivers regularly mistake them for one. $25,000 is the most the policy pays for any single person's injuries. $50,000 is the ceiling for everyone hurt in the same crash put together. Injure one person badly and $25,000 is all your insurer owes, however large the bill. Injure three people and they divide $50,000 between them. Anything a court awards above those lines is yours to pay, and it does not go away when the policy runs out.
The $25,000 of property damage cover is the figure drivers look at last and need first. It pays for what you hit — the other car, a guardrail, a storefront — and nothing else. Only 2 states on this site set a higher one. Whatever the repair or replacement actually costs above $25,000 is not covered by this policy, and the difference is a debt in your name rather than your insurer's.
None of this is what Alabama drivers actually spend. The average premium written per insured vehicle here was $452 in 2023, 17th highest of 51 states and DC — and that average covers policies far above the legal floor, not the bare minimum on this page.
Carrying the minimum is legal, not safe. It is the line below which Alabama will not let you drive — and the penalties for falling under it are on the driving uninsured page.
Common questions
Is uninsured motorist coverage required in Alabama?
Included by default; rejectable by the named insured.
Is PIP required in Alabama?
Not required.
Is full coverage required in Alabama?
No. Collision and comprehensive — the two coverages people usually mean by "full coverage" — are not part of what Alabama law requires. A lender or leasing company will usually require them until the car is paid off.
Every statute cited for Alabama
What changed
October 1, 2025
Out-of-state vehicles lose their exemption and are judged by their home state's rules
Act 2025-345 (HB 148) tightened the Mandatory Liability Insurance Act for out-of-state vehicles. Until October 1, 2025, § 32-7A-5(a)(11) exempted a vehicle properly registered in another jurisdiction from the chapter altogether. The Act deleted that exemption and put a rule in its place: such a vehicle now satisfies Alabama law by meeting the insurance requirements of the state it is registered in, and may show that state's evidence of insurance at a stop (§§ 32-7A-4(b)(2), 32-7A-6(a)). The practical effect is not a relaxation but the opposite — an out-of-state vehicle that carries no insurance at all is no longer outside the chapter.
Alabama Legislature — Act 2025-345 (HB 148), enrolled
Why the rule looks like this
- What Changed in 2026Liability minimums doubled in Hawaii, two states dropped pure comparative fault, New Hampshire stopped inspecting cars, and three crash reporting thresholds moved — a dated account of the 2026 changes, and the ones already signed for 2027 and beyond.
- Fifteen Thousand Dollars, or Two Hundred and Fifty ThousandThe legal minimum for injuring one person in a crash ranges from $15,000 in Pennsylvania to $250,000 in Michigan — and in Florida there is no bodily injury requirement at all.
More on Alabama
Checked against the primary sources above on September 27, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.