How much to charge for pet sitting
There is no single right rate. It depends on your area, what the visit involves, and whether you are stopping in twice a day or sleeping at the house. What is the same everywhere is the math. This page gives you the method, not a market survey.
Step 1: build your day rate from real numbers
Start from what a day of service actually costs you, then decide what your time is worth on top:
- Time per visit, including the driving. A 30-minute visit with 20 minutes of travel each way is more than an hour of your life.
- Direct costs: fuel, supplies, insurance if you carry it.
- Taxes. If you are self-employed, a slice of every payment is not yours; price as if that slice were already gone.
- What you want to take home per working hour, decided on purpose rather than discovered at year end.
Work that back into a per-day figure and you have a rate you can say out loud and defend, which matters more than matching anyone else's number.
Step 2: price additional pets
A second dog is not free, and it is not double either. Feeding, medications, and attention all scale with each animal, so most sitters use a base rate that covers the first pet plus a set amount for each additional one. The structure matters less than having one: the expensive mistake is quoting your one-pet rate for a three-pet household because nobody did the addition.
Step 3: multiply before you quote
The rule that protects your income: write down rate x pets x days before a number leaves your mouth. As a worked example, a 30 dollar day rate with 10 dollars per additional pet, for two dogs over five days, is (30 + 10) x 5, which is 200 dollars. The sitter who instead says "let's say 150 for the week" just worked a day free. Round numbers produced on the spot almost always round down, and they are hard to raise later because there was never a structure behind them.
Step 4: show the math on the invoice
Put the rate, the pet count, and the day count on the invoice line, not just a total. Clients pay visible math faster and question it less, and next year's rate change becomes a conversation about one number. What belongs on the rest of the invoice has its own guide.
Where software fits
The method above only works if the same numbers get used every time, which is exactly what software is for. In PetSit, your rate lives on the booking, and you can change the price on any single booking as you enter it, so a special rate for one client stays that client's rate. A multi-day stay is one entry, and the charge is calculated automatically as per-day rate x number of pets x number of days. The invoice is generated from the same booking, so the quote and the bill never disagree. PetSit never touches your money and adds no per-booking fees.
See it working in two minutes
PetSit is management software for one person running a pet-sitting business: client and pet records, pet and house notes, scheduling, and invoices in one place, built for your phone. Your bookings flow into the calendar app you already use (Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, or Outlook), so your whole day stays in one view. The demo is a full working example with sample data. No signup needed, and it is not your data, so nothing can break.
The free month lasts 30 days and needs no credit card. After that, 12 dollars a month, flat, with no per-booking fees.