What does a dog or cat really cost per month?

Part of Pet Kit, a free appSave your details once and all 5 tools fill themselves in. Installs to your phone, works offline, nothing leaves your device.Open

The number that gets people is the vet

Routine care (annual exam, vaccines, flea, tick, and heartworm prevention, a dental cleaning every year or two) runs $400 to $900 a year for a dog and a bit less for a cat, before anything goes wrong. When something does go wrong, a single emergency visit is commonly $1,500 to $5,000. That is the case for insurance or a dedicated pet savings account; the tool assumes one or the other, and the insurance line is where it lands if you tick the box.

Food scales with weight, not with love

A 70-pound dog eats roughly three times what a 20-pound dog eats. Fresh or premium food multiplies that again. The Dog Food Portions tool on this site does the cups-per-day math for your specific food.

First-year setup

Adoption or purchase, spay or neuter, microchip, initial vaccine series, crate, bed, leash, bowls, litter box, and the toys they will destroy. $600 to $2,000 is typical, front-loaded into the first three months, which is why the setup toggle spreads it over year one.

What is not in here

Boarding for vacations ($40 to $90 a night), training classes, pet deposits and monthly pet rent in apartments, and the big-ticket surgeries. Add a line in your budget for at least one of those a year.