A side-by-side scenario illustration — not a quote — of monthly premiums and total cost for term life vs. whole life insurance at the same coverage amount.
Premium estimates are based on typical market rates for healthy applicants. Actual quotes will vary by insurer, state, and your full underwriting profile. Get a licensed quote for your actual premium.
The dollar figures above are a scenario illustration, not a real-time quote from any insurance carrier. They're built from a simplified rate table (approximate cost per $1,000 of coverage, by age band and health class) that reflects the general shape of published term and whole life pricing patterns for healthy, non-tobacco applicants — not a specific insurer's current rate filing, and not tied to a particular pricing date.
What this tool does not account for: your state of residence (premiums vary by state due to insurance regulation), tobacco use, gender, specific medical history, family history, occupation or hobby-based risk ratings, the exact underwriting class an insurer assigns you after a paramedical exam, or a particular carrier's own pricing. Two people with identical calculator inputs can receive real quotes that differ by 20% or more once actual underwriting happens.
Term life insurance covers you for a fixed period — 10, 15, 20, or 30 years — and pays a death benefit only if you die during that window. There's no cash value component, which is exactly why it's so much cheaper: the insurer is pricing pure mortality risk over a defined term, not building an investment account alongside it.
Whole life (and other forms of permanent insurance) covers you for your entire life and builds a cash value component you can borrow against or, in some cases, withdraw from. That permanence and cash-value feature is what drives the dramatically higher premium — you're paying for lifetime coverage plus a savings vehicle, bundled into one product, instead of paying only for the years you actually need the death benefit.
The right policy type tracks how long the underlying need actually lasts:
Most term policies include a conversion privilege — the right to convert some or all of the coverage to a permanent policy without new medical underwriting, usually within a defined window (often the first 10-20 years of the term, though this varies by carrier and policy). This matters if your health changes during the term: converting locks in insurability you might not otherwise still have.
If permanent coverage's cost is the obstacle rather than its purpose, two middle-ground alternatives are worth knowing about: guaranteed universal life (GUL), which is priced closer to term but designed to last to a specific age (often 90 or 100) rather than truly for life, and laddering two term policies of different lengths instead of one large policy, which can lower blended cost during the years when coverage needs are highest and then step down. Neither of these is modeled directly by this calculator — they're mentioned here so you know what to ask about if the term/whole-life choice alone doesn't fit your situation.