Pet spending in America: what owners pay by category, and how prices changed

In 2024 the average US consumer unit spent $880 Surveyed[1] on pets. By category that was $308 Surveyed[1] on vet services, $296 Surveyed[1] on pet food, $176 Surveyed[1] on buying pets, supplies and medicine, and $101 Surveyed[1] on pet services such as grooming and boarding.

These are means across every consumer unit, including the many with no pet, so pet-owning households spend more than this on average. BLS does not publish a pet-owners-only average. BLS rounds each category to the dollar separately, so the four categories may not add exactly to the rounded total.

Comparing 2019 and 2025 annual average prices (CPI-U, US city average, not seasonally adjusted): veterinarian services rose 47.0% Counted[2], pet services 35.4% Counted[2], pet food and treats 23.1% Counted[2], and the whole pets, pet products and services group 28.4% Counted[2]. All items rose 25.9% Counted[2].

A note on grooming

BLS publishes no grooming-only price index among its pet series. Grooming is priced within pet services, which BLS describes as grooming, boarding and training. For what a groom costs today by size and coat, use our grooming cost estimator or the groomer tip calculator.

The price chart above shades 2020 and 2021. The pet food and pet supplies indexes barely moved from 2015 through 2021, then climbed sharply in 2022 and 2023. The vet index was already rising faster than prices overall before 2020 and kept pulling away after it.

On the spending side, the household figure went from $699 Surveyed[1][2] in 2015 (in 2024 dollars) to $880 Surveyed[1] in 2024. The household survey cannot say how much of that is more pets and how much is more spent per pet.

APPA’s $158 billion Estimated[3] for 2025 is a supply-side estimate of sales, built from retail scanner data, market research and industry validation. The BLS figure comes from households reporting what they spent.

The two count different things. APPA’s categories mix product sales into vet care and include live animals and over-the-counter medicine with supplies. BLS counts consumer units, not pet owners, and its survey is designed to measure household budgets rather than an industry. Neither source publishes a reconciliation, so do not divide one by the other.

APPA also revises earlier years between releases and changed its method for 2018, so its older totals are not comparable with the current series.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey publishes pet spending for the four Census regions. In 2024 the average was $1,151 Surveyed[1] in the West, $837 Surveyed[1] in the Midwest, $836 Surveyed[1] in the South and $685 Surveyed[1] in the Northeast.

BLS does not publish pet spending by state, so there is no state table on this page.

Data sources

Household spending: BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey annual means for all consumer units, income quintiles and Census regions, downloaded from the BLS public data API. Prices: CPI-U U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted, monthly values from the same API and annual averages from the BLS Data Viewer. Industry totals: APPA’s public statistics page and press releases; we did not use its paid report.

Calculations you can reproduce

Price change between two years is the later annual average divided by the earlier one, minus one. Real dollars multiply a year’s spending by the all-items annual average of the target year and divide by that of the spending year. The calculator multiplies the amount by the index in the latest month and divides by the index in the month you chose.

We checked the calculator against the BLS CPI Inflation Calculator on two dates. BLS returned $133.86 Counted[2] for 2019-01 to 2026-09 and $135.93 Counted[2] for 2015-01 to 2025-01, both for a hundred dollars; our all-items calculation gives the same to the cent.

Definitions

A consumer unit is roughly a household: people living together who share major expenses. Pet services cover grooming, boarding and training. Vet services are veterinary care. The CPI series have different base periods, so the chart compares them by indexing each to its own average for the first year.

Downloads: the full household table and the CSV under each chart.

• BLS household spending is a mean over all households, including those without pets. There is no pet-owner average and no figure per pet.
• Our CE data starts in 2010 (the API returned nothing earlier for these series) and ends in 2024; the next year is not yet released. Real dollars start in 2015, the first year of our CPI file.
• Some income-quintile and regional figures carry a BLS warning that the relative standard error is at least a quarter of the estimate. The warning is kept in the notes column of the CSV.
• BLS gives the CE sample as respondents per quarter rather than one annual sample size: BLS reports it in its data quality report, quoted in the hover text of each household figure.
• BLS published no October 2025 CPI values because of the federal funding lapse; the calculator says so if you pick that month.
• APPA does not publish ranges, sample sizes or a full method, revises past years, and changed method part-way through its series. Its figures are labelled estimated, and its terms restrict linking, so its address is shown as text.
• There is no state-level pet spending from BLS, and we found no other official state series.