NEXT Insurance says its roofing customers pay an average of $125 a month for general liability, or GL, while a Dallas roofer starting out was quoted $10,000 a year by Progressive. The policy pays what you owe when your work injures someone or damages their property, and it leaves out injuries to your own employees and the cost of redoing your own faulty roof.
Get several written quotes, because reported prices run thousands apart
NEXT’s cost page, updated September 2026, puts its roofing customers between $63 and $665 a month, based on its active customers over the previous year. NEXT sells online to small and solo firms, so its figures undercount crews with a large payroll. It says price depends on “the work you do, where you work, how many employees you have and other factors.”
On r/Roofing, one roofer collected quotes from $1,200 to $4,500 a year, and another owner paid biBERK $307 a month and asked whether to keep shopping.
Compare the deductible along with the price. A solo roofer on r/Construction posted a best quote of $5,500 a year for $1 million of coverage with a $10,000 deductible, while the Dallas quote from Progressive carried no deductible.
A general contractor doing 60% roofing and 40% siding, with no employees and every crew subbed out, was told that new roofing applications would raise its GL premium 500%. A commenter on r/Roofing read it this way: “They don’t want to cover you is the issue.”
Ask each carrier for the deductible and every limit in writing so you compare the same policy, and keep quotes from more than one carrier that writes roofing, so you have somewhere to go if yours raises the premium like that.
Subs without a certificate on file can be billed as your payroll
The premium you pay at the start is an estimate, and the standard policy form calls it “a deposit premium only.” At the end of each audit period the carrier works out the premium you earned, then bills you the difference or returns the excess, and the form requires you to keep the records it needs.
Audit guides published by Travelers and Liberty Mutual say the auditor asks for payroll reports, check registers, your cash disbursements journal with every payment to subs, and your subs’ certificates of insurance. If a sub’s certificate isn’t there, what you paid that sub goes on the audit, and a sub without enough insurance is counted as your employee under the matching payroll class.
An owner pricing a replacement on r/Roofing figured labor from “subs using their own GL & WC.” That labor price only holds at audit if each sub’s certificate is in your file. Collect a current certificate before a sub’s first job, and write the requirement into the sub agreement (Roofing Subcontractor Agreement Template: Scope, Insurance, Payment and a No-Poach Clause). For how the audit runs on both policies, see Roofing Workers’ Comp and General Liability: What It Costs and How Audits Work.
GL pays what you owe others for injury or damage, and defends you
The standard commercial general liability form, ISO’s CG 00 01 04 13, pays the sums you become legally obligated to pay as damages for bodily injury or property damage. It also gives the insurer “the right and duty to defend” you against a suit seeking those damages. The harm has to come from an “occurrence” and happen during the policy period, and the form defines an occurrence as “an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions.” Carriers narrow this form by endorsement or write their own, and courts read it differently from state to state.
Under the base form, what the insurer spends defending you doesn’t reduce your limits, but its duty to defend ends once it has used up the limit paying judgments or settlements. Some carriers sell forms where defense comes out of the limits, so check your declarations and endorsements for that.
The form sets six limits: general aggregate, products-completed operations aggregate, personal and advertising injury, each occurrence, damage to premises rented to you, and medical expense. Claims from finished work draw on the products-completed operations aggregate, which the general aggregate leaves out. A “$1 million” policy usually means the each-occurrence limit, so read all six amounts on your declarations page, where the dollar figures sit.
Personal and advertising injury, which the form calls Coverage B, answers claims such as using another company’s advertising idea or slogan in your ads. Some contractor policies strip it by endorsement, so look for that before you run ads.
Injuries to your own employees are excluded, however the suit is framed
Two exclusions take your own employees off the policy. One removes any obligation you have under a workers’ compensation, disability benefits or unemployment compensation law. The other removes bodily injury to an employee arising out of the job, and it applies “whether the insured may be liable as an employer or in any other capacity.”
In Texas, workers’ comp is elective for private employers under Labor Code 406.002, and the Texas Department of Insurance says it is “not required in most cases.” Under 406.033, an employer without comp who is sued by an injured employee can’t defend on the employee’s own negligence, assumed risk or a co-worker’s negligence. The employee still has to prove you were negligent, and a waiver signed before the injury is void.
Under the base form, a Texas roofer without comp has nothing on the GL policy for an injured employee’s lawsuit. Ask your broker whether comp, an employer’s liability policy or an occupational accident policy should fill that gap.
GL is built for leak damage to the house, and the roof is yours
While the work is under way, the form excludes damage to the part of the property you or your subs are working on, when the damage comes out of that work. It also excludes any part that has to be repaired or replaced because your work on it was done incorrectly. Once the job is finished, damage to your own work arising out of it is excluded as well, unless a subcontractor did that work for you. A carrier can remove that subcontractor exception by endorsement, so ask whether yours has.
That leaves the tear-off and the new roof on you. Water that comes through a bad roof and ruins the ceilings, drywall and contents below is the damage GL is built to answer. When that happens after the crew leaves, it falls under what the form calls the products-completed operations hazard. The form treats work that “may need service, maintenance, correction, repair or replacement, but which is otherwise complete” as completed.
The form’s definition of your work includes “warranties or representations made at any time” about how the work will hold up or perform. A workmanship warranty claim to fix the roof itself runs into these exclusions, so price the warranty you offer as money that comes out of your own pocket (Roofing Workmanship Warranty Template).
Trucks, pollution, intended harm, late finishes and contracts fall outside it
- Trucks and trailers. Injury or damage from any auto you own, rent or borrow is excluded, loading and unloading included, so an accident with your truck or trailer at the job site goes to your commercial auto policy.
- Pollution. The base form excludes it, with exceptions the form spells out.
- Harm you meant to cause. Injury or damage “expected or intended from the standpoint of the insured” is excluded.
- Late or defective work that damages nothing. Loss to property that isn’t physically injured is excluded when it comes from a defect in your work or from “a delay or failure” to perform a contract on its terms.
- Liability you take on by contract. It is excluded unless the contract counts as an “insured contract” under the form, so have a broker read any clause that shifts a builder’s liability onto you before you sign.
Florida’s license requires it, and permit offices can ask for a certificate
Florida’s licensing rule calls the cover public liability insurance. Rule 61G4-15.003 sets minimum liability and property damage amounts that a licensed roofing contractor must carry, with higher minimums for general and building contractors. When the board asks in writing, a licensee has 30 days to send an original certificate of insurance.
Licensing and permit offices elsewhere set their own proof-of-insurance rules. A roofer with more than 20 years in the trade who had just formed an LLC wrote on r/Roofing that he needed general liability before he could get his licenses and permits. Ask your city’s permit office which certificate it wants on file before your first job there.
Check these before you renew
- Get written quotes from more than one carrier, with the deductible and all six limits.
- Find out whether defense costs sit outside your limits or come out of them.
- Read the endorsements for anything that removes the subcontractor exception or strips Coverage B.
- Hold a current certificate of insurance from every sub before the job starts.
- Cover your employees with comp or another policy, since GL excludes them.
- Put every truck and trailer on a commercial auto policy.
Once the policy is in order, the next question is whether homeowners searching near your office find you on Google Maps. Run the free Google Maps heatmap: pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.