Insurance School of Texas vs Kaplan: Houston Insurance Classes Compared

This is the part most people do not know, and it should shape how you compare schools.

The Texas Department of Insurance lists three application steps for a general lines license: take an exam, start the fingerprint background check, and apply for the license. There is no required number of classroom hours, and no course you have to sit through before the state will let you test. You could walk into the exam tomorrow with no course at all.

So a pre-licensing course in Texas is not a compliance box. The only thing it is for is getting you through the exam. That means the honest question is not “which school is approved” — it is “which format will actually get me to a pass”. Compare the teaching, not the paperwork.

Kaplan Financial Education is a large, long-established name in exam preparation, and their Texas insurance catalog is broad. On their own Texas pages they list preparation for Life and Health, Property and Casualty, Personal Lines, Adjuster, and a Spanish-language Life and Health course.

Their study formats are a live online classroom with Texas instructors, a self-study online course, video and audio review of the core exam topics, a License Exam Manual, and a question bank with practice and mastery exams. Packages are sold in tiers, and they carry the Kaplan Commitment money-back guarantee if you do not pass.

If you want a national brand, a large question bank and a course you can work through on your own schedule from anywhere, that is a genuinely good product and we will not pretend otherwise.

We teach one state’s exam, and we have been doing it for more than 15 years.

In person in Houston — $349. Two full days, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, in a classroom on Beltway 8 in north Houston. Your printed textbook is handed to you at check-in. The instructor is in the room, so when something does not land you can stop and ask until it does. Both class days are recorded and the link is emailed to you at the end of each day, with 14 days of access.

Live on Zoom — $299. The same two days, the same instructor, the same materials, from anywhere in Texas.

On-demand — $215. No fixed schedule. Work through the recorded course at your own pace.

Every format opens your practice exam for 30 days, and we take 10% off for teachers and military personnel — just mention it before you check out.

A lot of people searching for “Kaplan insurance classes in Houston” are really searching for one thing: a room in Houston with an instructor in it.

Kaplan’s Texas live option is described on their own site as a live online classroom. If online is what you want, that works well. If what you pictured was driving somewhere, sitting down and being taught face to face, that is what our Houston classroom is.

Being in the room changes the pace. You can ask a follow-up question the moment you are lost instead of typing it into a chat box and waiting. You are away from your desk, your phone and everything else that eats a study day. And you leave the first morning holding the textbook rather than waiting on a delivery.

No school can discount these, so budget for them on top of your tuition — roughly $140 in total:

• $49 to Pearson VUE for the exam itself.
• $39.70 to IdentoGO for the fingerprint background check.
• $50 to the Texas Department of Insurance for the license application, plus a small transaction charge.

If a course price looks unusually low, check whether these are bundled in or still to come.

Be honest with yourself about one question: have you ever finished a self-paced course?

If you have, and you are disciplined about it, a self-study package from either school will get you there and you should buy on price and on the size of the question bank.

If you have started online courses before and drifted away from them, do not buy another one. Book two days you cannot skip, in a room, with someone who will notice if you have gone quiet. That is the whole argument for the classroom, and it is the reason we still teach in one.

And if you are outside Houston, take our live Zoom class rather than the on-demand course. A fixed date does more for most people than an open-ended login.