Which States Don't Allow Certain Pet Insurers to Sell Policies?
The verified gap in WhichPetPlan's comparison: as of August 2026, Lemonade Pet is not sold in Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wyoming. State lines also rewrite policy terms — Healthy Paws' accident wait is 0 days in sixteen states but 15 days elsewhere for illness and injury, and its hip dysplasia wait is 12 months in most states versus 30 days in a listed state group. Only a live quote for your ZIP confirms current availability.
Get a Lemonade quote
Lemonade is the one insurer on this site we can send you to for a live quote. That does not make it the right plan for every pet. As of August 2026, Lemonade Pet is not available in Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wyoming.
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Get a quote from LemonadeTL;DR
- Lemonade Pet is not available as of August 2026 in Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wyoming.
- State lines change more than availability — Healthy Paws' accident waiting period is 0 days in sixteen states but 15 days elsewhere for non-accident conditions.
- Healthy Paws' hip dysplasia waiting period also varies by state: 12 months in most states for pets enrolled at 5 or below versus 30 days in a listed group of states.
- Lemonade's own accident wait drops to 0 days in eighteen states and DC, with 2 days as the standard elsewhere.
- Availability lists change as insurers expand licensing — always confirm at quote time rather than trusting any static list.
Why Your State Decides What You Can Buy
Pet insurance is regulated like other insurance: each carrier must be licensed in each state it sells in, and until that licensing happens, residents of that state cannot buy the policy no matter how good the price is. This is why the cheapest plan in a national comparison is sometimes simply not an option where you live. It is not that the state 'bans' the insurer in most cases — the insurer has just not completed or pursued the regulatory work to sell there. Either way, from your side of the counter the result is identical: no quote, no policy.
The clearest verified example in our data is Lemonade. As of August 2026, per our fact-check of Lemonade's own materials, Lemonade Pet is not yet available in Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wyoming — eight states plus their roughly one-and-a-half million households' worth of pets served by every other carrier on our list instead. Our review copy names this as the plan's headline catch alongside its thin dental coverage: best price in the category ($28/mo dogs, $16/mo cats illustrative), claims settle in-app, but you cannot buy it everywhere.
States Change Policy Terms Too, Not Just Availability
The subtler effect owners miss is that state regulation rewrites policy mechanics even when a carrier IS available. The starkest case in our verified data is Healthy Paws' waiting periods. In most states, accidents carry a 15-day wait after the policy effective date; but in California, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington — and DC-adjacent comparisons aside, that is sixteen states — the accident-related wait is zero days. Illness still waits 15 days in those states; only the accident clock differs.
Healthy Paws' hip dysplasia terms split by state the same way: a 12-month wait for pets enrolled at age five or below in most states, but 30 days in California, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and others, depending on state. And the underlying rule applies everywhere regardless of state: dogs enrolled at six or older get no hip dysplasia coverage at all. Lemonade shows the same pattern from the budget end — its standard 2-day accident wait drops to 0 days in Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, DC, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington.
How to Check Availability Where You Live
The only reliable method is to request a real quote for your ZIP code, because licensing changes faster than any article can track — insurers add states regularly, and a list accurate in August may be stale by winter. WhichPetPlan maintains per-state pages for all fifty states plus DC reflecting our current data, and our insurer fact-checks are dated so you can see how fresh each claim is. When you compare quotes, treat any 'not available in your state' message as final for that carrier rather than shopping around forums for workarounds; there are none.
If you live in one of the states where Lemonade is absent, the practical substitutes in our comparison depend on what drew you to it. For price, Spot starts at $38/mo illustrative for dogs and Pets Best at $33/mo, both below the $44/mo Healthy Paws entry point. For app-first claims handling, no carrier in our lineup replicates Lemonade exactly, though Figo runs everything through its Pet Cloud app — at the cost of phone support being effectively absent. Neither substitute matches Lemonade's cat pricing, where its $16/mo illustrative start leads our entire catalog.
The Honest Caveat
Our verified availability list covers Lemonade specifically because it is the only carrier whose gap we have documented from its own materials; we do not publish state-by-state licensing status for the other seven insurers in our comparison because we have not verified it, and guessing would violate the standard every page on this site is held to. That asymmetry is worth knowing when comparing articles: many sites imply comprehensive availability tables they cannot source. Treat any such table — ours included — as a starting point, and let the quote form be the referee.