Pet Sitting & Dog Walking Pricing Calculator
Price walks, drop-in visits, overnights, boarding, and daycare from your real costs — your time door to door, insurance, mileage, and supplies — with your profit margin built in, not diluted away. Built for independent sitters and walkers, not app contractors. Every price comes with a full breakdown so you can see exactly where it comes from.
Your Business Setup
Set these once — they reflect your business, not the visit.
Price a Visit
Enter the visit — the price updates as you type.
Instant Rate Card — Common Pet Sitting & Dog Walking Services
Twelve common services priced with your business settings above. Change your rate or margin and the whole menu reprices instantly. Hours are door-to-door starting points — the drive, the visit, the report card to the owner, and the lockup — for a tight service radius. Adjust them to your neighborhood, your route density, and the pets in front of you.
| Service | Typical hours | Typical supplies | Your flat rate |
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We really appreciate feedback from working pros like yourself to get these numbers accurate — to help our fellow trades and businesses succeed, now and for the next generations to come.
Worked Examples: Three Real Bookings
Using the default business settings above ($22/hr loaded rate, $6/hr overhead, 100% supplies markup, 20% target margin, 3% card fee, 3% cancellation reserve):
1. 30-minute dog walk — 0.75 hours door to door
Labor $16.50 + overhead $4.50 = $21 base → flat rate $29, netting about $6 of true profit at a 21.6% margin after fees and reserve. Look at those 0.75 hours: the client booked "30 minutes," but the drive over, leashing up, the walk, the water bowl top-off, the photo-and-note to the owner, and locking the door are all real minutes of your working day. Price the visit, not the walk.
2. Overnight sit in the client's home — 2.2 active hours, $1 in supplies
Labor $48.40 + overhead $13.20 + supplies charged at $2 (your $1 cost with markup) = $63.60 base → flat rate $89, netting about $21 at a 23.7% margin. Those 2.2 hours are the evening walk and feeding, the morning walk and feeding, meds, litter, and tidying — the active care inside a 12-hour stay. The rest of the value is the thing money can't fake: the pet is never alone, and you're not sleeping in your own bed.
3. Wedding-day pet chaperone — 4 hours, $10 parking
Labor $88 + overhead $24 + $10 parking passed through at cost = $122 → flat rate $169, netting about $37 at a 21.8% margin. Event pet care — getting the dog to the venue, handling it for photos, keeping it calm, and delivering it home tired and happy — is a premium niche with almost no competition. Notice the parking flows straight through without touching your margin — that's the point of passing it at cost.
What Does Pet Sitting Overhead Actually Cost?
"No shop, no chair rent — so no overhead," right? Wrong, and the biggest line hides in your driveway. Pet-sitter liability insurance runs $250–$600 a year. Booking and scheduling software is $250–$600 a year. Add a background-check badge, leashes and slip leads, waste bags and treats by the case, first-aid supplies, key lockboxes, and your phone plan — and then the big one: the car. A route sitter easily drives 8,000–15,000 business miles a year, and at the IRS rate of roughly $0.70 a mile, 10,000 miles is $7,000 of very real cost in fuel, tires, maintenance, and wear. A typical year lands at $8,000–$12,000 before you earn a dime.
The number that matters is overhead per billable hour — the door-to-door hours you can actually invoice, not the hours texting clients or building your schedule. A full-time solo sitter logs roughly 1,400–1,600 billable hours a year. Divide: roughly $9,000 ÷ 1,500 billable hours ≈ $6 per billable hour — the default this calculator starts with. If your territory is spread out and you drive more, run your own numbers; sprawling routes push it to $8–$10, and it belongs in the price, not in your gas tank.
Common Pet Sitting & Dog Walking Pricing Mistakes
Recommended Profit Margins for Pet Sitting & Dog Walking
These are working benchmarks, not laws. Daily walks and drop-ins run thinner margins but compound beautifully — one loyal twice-a-week walk client is over 100 visits a year. Overnights, holidays, and event care carry more because they cost you evenings, weekends, and your own bed. What matters is that the margin is a decision you made, visible in your price — not whatever was left after the gas tank.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I charge for a 30-minute dog walk?
Price the visit, not the walk. A 30-minute walk is really 45 minutes or more of your day once you add driving, parking, leashing up, notes to the owner, and locking up. Build the price from that full door-to-door time at your loaded rate, plus overhead per billable hour, divided by one minus your target margin. With typical solo-walker numbers that lands a 30-minute walk in the $25–$32 range — right where established independent walkers price it.
Should I charge more or less than Rover and Wag?
Don't copy marketplace prices at all — they aren't real solo-business prices. Platforms take roughly 15–40% of every booking, so a sitter listed at $25 may be keeping $16. As an independent, your price has to carry your insurance, mileage, and software yourself — and it can, because clients are paying for a known, background-checked person with a direct relationship, not a rotating stranger from an app. Price from your costs; use the platforms' listed prices only to understand your market's ceiling and floor.
How much should I charge for overnight pet sitting?
Charge for the active care, not the sleep. A 12-hour overnight in the client's home typically involves around two hours of real work — evening walk and feeding, morning walk and feeding, meds, litter, tidying — plus the very real cost of not being in your own bed. Most independent sitters land overnights in the $80–$110 range, with 24-hour all-inclusive care meaningfully higher. Holiday overnights should carry a 25–50% premium: it's peak demand, and it's your holiday too.
Should I charge extra for a second pet?
Yes — but as a small add-on, not double. A second dog on the same walk adds a few minutes of handling and a little risk, not a second drive across town. Most walkers add $5–$10 per additional pet from the same household. What you should never do is walk it free: multi-dog handling is a skill, it slows the visit, and it raises your insurance exposure.
Should I charge more on holidays?
Yes. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and long weekends are when everyone travels at once — demand peaks exactly when your own family time is most valuable. A 25–50% holiday surcharge is standard among independent sitters and clients expect it. Announce it in your service agreement up front, not in the invoice after.
Is this calculator really free?
Yes. No account, no email, no ads. The calculator runs in your browser and the numbers you enter are never sent to us. We use basic traffic analytics, described in our privacy policy.