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Pet Sitting Rate Calculator — What to Charge for Drop-Ins, Walks & Overnights
Price a visit from the time it really takes, the pets in the house, the drive to get there and the rate you need to earn — then see what you would have to list on a marketplace to take home the same amount. Runs entirely in your browser: nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is stored.
For an overnight or a house sit, count the hours you are actually working or on call — not the full 24.
Nudges the time value up or down for your market. −20% to +40%.
Fuel, wear and insurance per mile. The pet sitter mileage calculator works this out from the IRS standard rate.
Suggested price
$25.90
per drop-in visit — 30 min
Effective hourly after travel
$17.86
across 0.98 h of your day
Monthly at 20/week
$2,245
$1,517 after your travel cost
How this number is built
- Time value: 0.5 h × $35.00 = $17.50
- Travel recovered: 6 miles each way = 12 round-trip miles × $0.70 = $8.40
- Price = time value + extras + uplifts + travel = $25.90
- Effective hourly: the drive takes 29 min at 25 mph, so the visit costs you 0.98 h. Take the travel money back out ($25.90 − $8.40) and divide: $17.86 an hour.
- Monthly: 20 visits/week × 52 ÷ 12 = 87 visits a month × $25.90 = $2,245.
If you book through a marketplace
Rover and Wag both charge the sitter a service fee that comes out of what you are paid, so a marketplace booking has to be listed higher than your direct price for you to take home the same amount. Published figures vary by platform, country and programme: Rover's California help page states a 25% marketplace fee on the rate the provider sets, plus an 11% booking fee that pet owners cover. We could not verify a single current sitter-side percentage for every platform and region from the platforms' own fee pages, so enter the percentage shown on your own payout statement rather than relying on a number here.
List at
$32.37
$25.90 ÷ (1 − 20%) — the fee takes $6.47 per visit, about $561 a month at this volume.
https://casedaisy.com/tools/pet-sitting-rate-calculator?service=drop30&hours=0.5&pets=1&petfee=5&holiday=0&holidaypct=25&rush=0&rushpct=15&meds=0&medsfee=5&miles=6&permile=0.7&mph=25&rate=35&col=0&fee=20&perweek=20
casedaisy plans your day so the visits you price actually fit
A price only works if the visit happens inside the time window the client asked for and the drive between houses leaves room for the next one. Households, pets, standing walks and travel go into one day plan, so the route matches the rates you just set.
How sitters actually price work
Most pet sitters set a price by looking at what everyone else in town charges for a 30-minute drop-in, then shaving a couple of dollars off it. That copies someone else's costs, someone else's territory and someone else's van, and it usually ends in a full book of work that produces a disappointing bank balance. The alternative is to build the price from your own numbers: the hours a service occupies, the rate you need for those hours, the extra work a second or third pet adds, and the travel it takes to get to the door.
Travel is the part most often left out. A visit is not the time you spend inside the house — it is the drive there, the visit, and the drive on. If you price 30 minutes and spend 55, the difference comes out of your income silently, one visit at a time. Adding the round trip to the clock and your per-mile cost to the price is what turns a busy week into a paid one.
The marketplace-fee math
A marketplace fee is not a discount you absorb — it is a divisor. If a platform keeps a fifth of what you are paid, your listed price has to be your direct price divided by 0.8, not your direct price plus 20%: those two are different numbers, and the second one leaves you short. A $30 direct price needs a $37.50 listing at a 20% fee, and $40.00 at 25%. The calculator above does that division for whatever percentage appears on your own statement.
It is worth doing the same sum on a month rather than a visit, because the per-visit gap looks small and the annual one rarely does. Many sitters end up running a hybrid: new clients arrive through a platform at the listed price, and repeat clients move to direct booking at the lower direct price — the same take-home for you, a better deal for them.
When to raise your rates
- You are turning work away most weeks — demand is telling you the price is under market
- Your effective hourly after travel has quietly fallen below your target rate
- Fuel, insurance or supply costs have gone up and the price has not moved in a year
- You have added a qualification, insurance, or medication and injection experience
- A particular client's visits cost far more travel or time than the rest of the book
Give existing clients notice in writing, apply the new rate from a clear date, and raise everyone together rather than negotiating one at a time. Run the calculator at the old and the new rate and keep both numbers — the difference is the case for the change.
Why time windows matter for capacity
Pet care demand is not spread evenly across the day. Almost everyone wants a midday drop-in, a morning walk before work, and a dinner-time visit — so the number of visits you can sell is set by how many fit inside those windows, not by how many hours you are willing to work. Two clients three miles apart in the same window are worth more than two clients ten miles apart, because the second pair cannot both be served on time.
That is the capacity question behind the pricing question: a rate is sustainable only if the visits it applies to can physically be delivered. If you want to test the volume side of that, the capacity calculator turns visits, travel and admin into the hours a week actually needs, and the free pet care templates give you somewhere to list households, pets and standing visits before you start.
This tool is a planning estimate based on the figures you enter. It is not tax, legal or pricing advice, and platform fees change — always check your own payout statement and the platform's current fee page. Last reviewed: September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I decide what my target hourly rate should be?
- Work back from what you need to earn, not from what the sitter down the road charges. Take the yearly income you want, add self-employment tax, insurance, mileage, supplies and unpaid admin time, then divide by the hours you can realistically be out working — which is far fewer than a 40-hour week once travel and gaps between time windows are counted. The number that comes out is your target hourly rate, and this calculator turns it into a price for each service you offer.
- Why is my effective hourly rate lower than the rate I set?
- Because a 30-minute drop-in is rarely 30 minutes of your day. A 15-minute drive each way turns it into an hour, and the money you spend on fuel and wear comes out of the same visit. This calculator divides your price by the time the visit actually consumes, including the round trip, and subtracts your own per-mile cost — which is why a well-priced visit ten minutes away can out-earn a more expensive one across town.
- Should I charge the same price on a marketplace as I do directly?
- No, not if you want to take home the same amount. A marketplace deducts its service fee from what you are paid, so your listed price has to be higher than your direct price for the two to match. Rover's published California help page, for example, states a 25% marketplace fee on the rate the provider sets, plus an 11% booking fee that pet owners cover. Fees differ by platform, country and programme, so this tool asks you for the percentage on your own payout statement rather than assuming one.