How much does it cost to feed a dog? (UK, per week & month)

Every guide answers this question with a range so wide it is useless. “Between £15 and £120 a month, depending.” Depending on what, exactly, is the part that gets left out.

It depends on three things, and only three: how heavy your dog is, what form the food takes, and what you pay per kilo. The calculator above does the arithmetic. This page explains what it is doing and why the answer is often a surprise.

Weight matters, but not the way you think

Here is the thing almost nobody tells you: food cost does not scale with body weight. It scales with weight to the power of three quarters.

A chihuahua weighs 2.5kg and needs about 223 calories a day. A great dane weighs 60kg — twenty-four times as much dog — and needs about 2,415 calories. That is only eleven times the food. On the same mid-range kibble, the chihuahua costs £1.16 a week and the dane £12.56.

The reason is surface area. A small animal loses heat faster relative to its size, so it burns proportionally more just staying warm. Metabolism follows that curve rather than the scales, which is why the standard veterinary formula for resting energy is 70 × weight^0.75 and not a straight multiplication.

The practical consequence: going up a size bracket costs less than people fear, and going down saves less than they hope. If you are choosing between a cocker spaniel and a labrador and the food bill is part of the decision, the honest figures are £3.99 and £7.47 a week. Over a year that is £208 against £389 — real money, but not the gulf the size difference suggests.

Does the formula actually work?

Fair question, and one you should ask of any calculator that tells you what to feed your dog.

Here is the check. PetMD publishes figures for a 4.5kg puppy: 649 calories a day under four months old, and 433 over four months. Run 4.5kg through 70 × weight^0.75 and you get a resting requirement of 216 calories. Multiply by 3.0 for a puppy under four months and you get 649. Multiply by 2.0 for a puppy over four months and you get 433.

Both to the calorie. The multipliers in the life-stage dropdown above are the standard ones: 1.4 for a senior or a dog that puts weight on easily, 1.6 for a neutered adult of normal activity, 1.8 for an entire or genuinely active dog, 2.0 and 3.0 for the two puppy stages.

The format changes the bill more than the brand does

This is the number that catches people out, and it has nothing to do with quality.

Dry food is around 3.7 calories per gram. Wet food is around 0.9, because most of a tin is water. So the same dog needs roughly four times the weight of wet food to get the same energy — and you are paying by weight.

For a 12kg dog:

Food	A day	A week	A year
Economy dry, £1.70/kg	£0.33	£2.32	£121
Mid-range dry, £2.75/kg	£0.54	£3.75	£196
Premium dry, £5.50/kg	£1.07	£7.51	£392
Raw, £3.50/kg	£1.68	£11.80	£615
Wet, £4.00/kg	£3.21	£22.45	£1,171
Fresh cooked, £6.00/kg	£3.33	£23.33	£1,216

Same dog. Same calories. Ten times the cost from top to bottom. The gap between the cheapest and dearest dry food is £271 a year; the gap between mid-range dry and wet is £975.

None of which makes wet food wrong. There are good reasons for it — a dog who will not drink enough, a fussy eater, a recovery diet. But if you are feeding it because it looks more like food, that is an expensive aesthetic, and it is worth knowing what it costs before the direct debit is a year old.

The dry prices above are anchored to real UK shelf prices in September 2026: Skinner’s Field & Trial at £24.89 for 15kg is £1.66 a kilo, the salmon and rice version at £40.99 for 15kg is £2.73, and Royal Canin Mini at £43.19 for 8kg is £5.40. The wet, raw and fresh figures are broader averages — which is exactly why the price field in the calculator is editable. The only number that matters is the one on the bag you actually buy.

What it costs, by breed

Typical adult weights, on mid-range dry food, for a neutered adult of normal activity. Find your breed, then go and check it against the calculator with your dog’s real weight — crossbreeds and individuals vary more than the table can.

Breed	Adult weight	A week	A year
Chihuahua	2.5 kg	£1.16	£60
Yorkshire terrier	3 kg	£1.33	£69
Miniature dachshund	5 kg	£1.95	£102
Shih tzu	6 kg	£2.23	£116
Jack Russell terrier	7 kg	£2.51	£131
Miniature schnauzer	7 kg	£2.51	£131
Cavalier King Charles	7.5 kg	£2.64	£138
Pug	7.5 kg	£2.64	£138
Cockapoo (miniature cross)	9 kg	£3.03	£158
Standard dachshund	10 kg	£3.28	£171
French bulldog	11 kg	£3.52	£184
Cocker spaniel	13 kg	£3.99	£208
Staffordshire bull terrier	14 kg	£4.22	£220
Border collie	18 kg	£5.09	£266
Springer spaniel	20 kg	£5.51	£287
Bulldog	23 kg	£6.12	£319
Boxer	28 kg	£7.09	£370
Labrador retriever	30 kg	£7.47	£389
Golden retriever	30 kg	£7.47	£389
Greyhound	30 kg	£7.47	£389
German shepherd	33 kg	£8.02	£418
Rottweiler	45 kg	£10.12	£528
Great dane	60 kg	£12.56	£655

For the other price bands the arithmetic is easy: economy is a shade under two thirds of these figures, and premium is exactly double them.

Two warnings about reading this table. A working collie or a greyhound in training is on the 1.8 multiplier, not 1.6, which adds an eighth to every figure. And a great dane puppy is a conversation for your vet before it is a line in a budget — controlled growth in giant breeds is a skeletal matter, and the eight months where he is eating like an adult dane while still growing into one is the expensive part.

The subscriptions price differently

Everything above assumes you buy food by the kilo. The fresh and tailored subscription companies do not sell it that way, and their pricing does not follow the calculator.

Ongoing prices for a 12kg dog, from our subscription comparison: tails.com at £0.85 a day, Bella+Duke from £1.18, Marleybones at £1.79 on the half plan and £3.09 on the full one, Pure Pet Food at £1.83, Different Dog at £2.96, Butternut Box at £3.26.

The thing worth knowing is that those prices flatten out as the dog gets bigger. Butternut charges about £76.62 a month for a 9kg dog and £148.55 for a 30kg one. The 30kg dog eats nearly two and a half times the calories, but the bill only doubles. So for a small dog the subscriptions look dear next to a bag of kibble, and for a large dog the gap narrows considerably. If you have a labrador and you have been assuming fresh food is out of reach, the arithmetic is closer than you would guess.

What the calculator leaves out

Treats, chews and training rewards. These are not a rounding error — a dog in active training can take ten per cent of his daily calories in cheese and sausage, and the standard guidance is that treats should not exceed that share.

The important half of that rule is the part people skip: if you feed treats, take them off the meal. Otherwise you are not spending an extra 50p a week, you are gradually building an overweight dog, and that costs considerably more than food ever will.

Also not included: bowls, storage, and the bag you throw away because he decided he hated it in week two. Budget something for that last one. It happens to most people once.

Who should ignore this page

If your dog has a prescription or veterinary diet, none of these figures apply and you should not be shopping on price. Those foods cost what they cost — Hill’s Prescription Diet runs to £8.00 a kilo — and the reason you are buying one is a clinical reason.

If your dog is overweight or underweight, the calculator will faithfully compute the cost of keeping him exactly as he is. Feed for the weight he should be, not the weight he is, and have that conversation with your vet first.

And if you are reading this to decide whether you can afford a dog at all, food is the predictable line and the smallest of the big ones. Insurance, vaccinations, and the unplanned vet bill will all outrun it. A labrador on decent kibble is about £389 a year. One evening at an out-of-hours vet can be more than that.

What to do next

If the subscription prices caught your eye, what they actually cost once the puppy grows goes through the trap in that market — the quote at signup is for the dog you have today, and on most plans a labrador puppy’s bill nearly doubles before his first birthday.

And if you are still working out what your puppy will finish at, the crate size guide covers how to arrive at an adult weight you can trust. It is the same number this calculator needs.

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Energy requirements use the standard resting-energy formula, 70 × weight^0.75, with conventional life-stage multipliers; the model reproduces PetMD’s published figures for a 4.5kg puppy exactly. Dry food prices were checked at UK retailers in September 2026 and move often; wet, raw and fresh figures are broader averages, which is why the calculator lets you enter your own. Subscription prices are from our own comparison, checked the same month. Nothing here is veterinary advice — portions from any calculator are a starting point, and for a dog who is over or under weight, on a prescription diet, or a giant-breed puppy, speak to your vet.