Host Guarantee and Protection: What It Covers
Your earnings plan sets a cap on how much a damage claim can cost you out of pocket — here's exactly what's covered, what isn't, and where our coverage still has a real gap you should know about.
Your damage-responsibility cap, by plan
Every vehicle you list is on one of three earnings plans, and the plan sets both your payout share and your damage-responsibility cap — the most a single covered claim can cost you:
| Plan | Your share of trip price | Your damage responsibility per claim |
|---|---|---|
| Max Protection | 75% | $250 |
| Balanced | 85% | $1,250 |
| Max Earnings | 93% | $2,500 |
Lower cap, lower earnings share; higher earnings share, higher cap. You choose per vehicle, and you can change it going forward at any time — the plan active when a trip starts is the one that governs that trip. Full mechanics: Choosing an Earnings Plan.
Beyond your cap, Carvia's protection program covers the rest of a covered claim's repair cost out of protection-plan revenue and marketplace funds — you're never on the hook for more than your plan's cap on a covered claim.
What's generally covered
- Collision damage to your vehicle that happens during an active, documented trip.
- Theft of the vehicle during an active trip, provided it's reported to police within 24 hours.
Coverage applies up to your damage-responsibility cap, and is subject to the claims process and evidence rule — Carvia verifies what happened before approving a claim, the same way for every host.
What's generally not covered
- Prohibited uses — racing, towing, unauthorized off-roading, driving under the influence, subletting, and other uses outside your trip rules. See Prohibited Uses Policy.
- Normal wear and tear — the ordinary scuffs, interior wear, and mileage accumulation that come with any vehicle in regular use.
- Mechanical failure unrelated to a trip incident — if something breaks on its own rather than because of a collision or documented incident, it's not a damage claim.
- Damage reported outside the 24-hour window, unless you have a documented reason you couldn't report sooner.
Third-party liability: where we're honest about the gap
This is the part we won't dress up. Carvia does not yet have a signed agreement with a licensed insurance carrier. `[PENDING CARRIER]`
That means the third-party liability coverage described in our target program design — coverage for bodily injury or property damage a guest causes to someone else while driving your car under a trip agreement — is not yet active. The damage-responsibility caps above are real today: they're Carvia's own marketplace-funded commitment, and Carvia is on the hook for paying covered claims within those caps right now, ahead of any carrier being in place. But liability to third parties beyond that is a current gap, not a hypothetical one.
Until a carrier agreement is signed, don't assume Carvia's protection program replaces the liability coverage your personal auto policy, a commercial policy, or your state's financial-responsibility law may require you to carry. If your personal policy has a rental-use or commercial-use exclusion, listing your car on Carvia could affect your coverage under that policy — check with your insurance agent before you rely on any single source of coverage. Full detail, including what we'll do the moment a carrier is signed: Insurance Disclosure.
How this connects to filing a claim
Your damage-responsibility cap only matters once a claim is approved — getting there runs through the same evidence rule and published timeline as every other claim. See Filing a Damage Claim (Host) to report damage, and Claims SLA: What to Expect for exactly what happens after you do.