Every page I could find on when insurance shoppers reach out is written by a company that sells after-hours answering or leads, and their numbers run from 15 percent to “more than half” with no sample behind any of them. So we counted. Four live independent agency websites, 146 quote and contact requests from July 31 to October 26, 2026, each one timed in that agency’s own local time. Four agencies is a small sample, so read this as directional, not as a benchmark.
Last updated: October 26, 2026
What share of insurance quote requests come in after hours?
About four in ten. On four live agency websites, 58 of 146 quote and contact requests came in outside Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm, in each agency’s own time zone. That is 39.7 percent. Every one of the four sites was somewhere between 29 and 52 percent.
How big the number is depends on what you call business hours, so here it is three ways:
| If your office is open | Requests that came in while you were closed | Share of 146 |
|---|---|---|
| Monday to Friday, 8 to 6 | 47 | 32% |
| Monday to Friday, 8 to 5 | 58 | 40% |
| Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 | 65 | 45% |
Of the 58 that came in outside 8 to 5, 30 were weekday evenings after 5, 24 were on a weekend, and 4 were weekday mornings before 8.
The ranking pages are all over the place on this. MediaAlpha, which sells leads, says more than half of the leads on its agent platform come outside regular business hours. Sonant, which sells AI phone answering, puts after-hours volume at 15 to 25 percent of inbound. Neither page gives a sample or says what hours it means. Ours is web forms only, not phone calls.
What time of day do people request insurance quotes?
Mostly during the workday, with a second bump right at quitting time. The busiest single hour was 2 pm with 18 requests. The 5 o’clock hour brought 13, more than 3 pm or 4 pm. After 6 pm it thins out fast, and only 11 of the 146 came between 9 pm and 6 am.
| Local time | Requests |
|---|---|
| Before 8 am | 4 |
| 8 am to noon | 46 |
| Noon to 5 pm | 62 |
| 5 pm to 6 pm | 13 |
| 6 pm to 9 pm | 12 |
| 9 pm to midnight | 9 |
| Total | 146 |
That 5 o’clock bump is the part I would pay attention to. Those are people filling out the form on the way out of their own job, which is right when most agency phones go to voicemail.
One ranking page says insurance calls pick up between 5:30 and 8 pm on weekdays, based on call data it does not show. On these four websites the evening tail was real but small: 12 requests between 6 and 9 pm across nearly three months.
Which days do quote requests come in?
Pretty evenly across the workweek, and lighter on weekends but far from empty. Monday to Friday each brought between 21 and 28 requests. Saturday brought 11 and Sunday 13, so 24 of the 146 landed on a weekend, about one in six. Those 24 sit until Monday at most agencies.
| Day | Requests |
|---|---|
| Monday | 24 |
| Tuesday | 28 |
| Wednesday | 27 |
| Thursday | 22 |
| Friday | 21 |
| Saturday | 11 |
| Sunday | 13 |
The Monday number is a little misleading on its own. A Monday morning queue is Monday’s requests plus everything from Friday evening on. On these sites that weekend carryover was 24 requests plus the Friday evening ones.
Do after-hours quote requests close?
Some do. Of the 17 new households sold so far, 5 came from requests that arrived after hours and 12 from requests during the workday. Among the leads already decided, 5 of 33 after-hours requests sold, against 12 of 49 during the day. Those counts are too small to say timing changes the close rate.
We matched 122 of these requests to each agency’s own CRM to see who bought, leaving out people who were already customers, repeats and leads not yet matched. 40 of the 122 are still open, so these counts will move. The full close-rate picture is in do insurance website leads actually close.
I would not read the gap between 5 of 33 and 12 of 49 as proof of anything. It could be the time of day, the line of business, or plain luck with four agencies. What it does show is that after-hours requests are not junk. People who fill out a quote form at 8 pm on a Sunday buy policies too.
What is the best time to call insurance leads back?
As soon as your office opens, and before the new ones start coming in. Most requests arrive during the day, so the ones that came in overnight or over the weekend are the ones that wait longest. Call those first. We did not measure callback times, so we cannot tell you how much a delay costs.
That last part matters. The ranking pages lean hard on speed-to-lead studies, several of them more than ten years old and not about insurance. I did not check those studies today, so I am not going to repeat their numbers. What I can say from our own data is narrower: the overnight and weekend requests are a real share of the pile, and the first hour of the morning is the cheapest place to make up the time they already waited.
What should an agency do with quote requests that come in after hours?
Decide who owns them before Monday, not on Monday. Four in ten requests on these sites came in while the office was closed. A short automatic reply that says when someone will call, a first-thing-in-the-morning list, and one person who works the weekend pile will catch most of them.
A few plain steps that cost nothing:
- Look at your own split. Pull the timestamps on your last 50 website requests and count how many came in while you were closed. Use your real hours, not 8 to 5 by default.
- Set the expectation in the reply. The form’s confirmation message and email should say when the person will hear back, in plain words.
- Start the day with the overnight list. Work requests from the evening, overnight and weekend before the phones get busy.
- Give the weekend pile an owner. Twenty four requests over a few months is not a lot, but they all land on the same Monday morning.
- Do not price them lower in your head. On these sites, 5 of the 17 sales started after hours.
You do not need a 24 hour phone service to do any of this. You need to know the requests are there and have someone pick them up first.
How we counted
Every number comes from the lead records of four live independent agency websites EffiWise built and hosts. A request is a completed quote, callback or contact form, not a service request and not from a paid social ad. The 146 requests ran from July 31 to October 26, 2026. Times are in each agency’s own local time zone. After hours means anything outside Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 4:59 pm, with no holiday adjustment (no request fell on Labor Day). Phone calls are not included. Sales come from matching 122 new-prospect requests to each agency’s own CRM. No agency is named next to any number, and per-site figures are given only as an unnamed range. Ranking-page claims were read on each publisher’s own page on October 26, 2026. All queries were run on October 26, 2026.
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