Dog walking prices in the UK: how to set your rates

The cleanest model is a per-dog price for a standard group walk, with a reduced rate for each additional dog from the same household. One stop, two dogs, less driving — so the second dog can be cheaper without costing you anything.

Then set separate prices for the services that take different amounts of time: solo walks, puppy visits, home visits and cat feeds, bank holidays, and overnight or day boarding.

Write these down as walk types with fixed prices rather than deciding each time. It removes the negotiation, and it means every booking prices itself.

• Standard group walk — your core per-dog rate
• Additional dog, same household — a reduced rate
• Solo walk, puppy visit, home visit — priced separately
• Bank holidays and boarding nights — their own rates

A 60-minute walk rarely takes 60 minutes. Pickups, drop-offs, towel-drying a soaked spaniel and the drive between two ends of town all come out of the same day.

The practical fix is geography rather than a surcharge: build your day in tight clusters, and set a radius beyond which you either charge more or say no. Two clients on the same street are worth more than four spread across the county.

If you do serve outlying clients, price the travel in openly as a distance supplement so it never feels like a surprise.

• Group clients by area and by time slot
• Set a service radius and a supplement beyond it
• Count travel minutes when you work out walks per day

Start with the annual figure you want to take home, add tax and National Insurance, add costs — insurance, fuel, vehicle, phone, equipment, software, accountant — and add the weeks you will not work because of holiday or illness.

Divide that by the number of walking weeks you actually have, then by the walks you can genuinely deliver in a week. That number is your minimum viable rate. Anything below it is a hobby with a van.

Our calculator does this arithmetic for you: put in your rate, dogs per walk and walks per day and it shows the weekly, monthly and yearly picture.

• Target take-home + tax + costs + unpaid weeks
• Divide by realistic working weeks and walks per week
• Sense-check the result against local advertised rates

Costs move — fuel, insurance and everything else. Walkers who never raise prices end up quietly earning less every year for the same work.

Set an annual review date and stick to it. Give clients a month's notice in writing, explain it briefly, and apply it to everyone at once rather than case by case.

A notification tool makes this a five-minute job: write the message once, send it to every affected client, and get on with your walks.

• One review date a year, applied to everyone
• A month's notice, in writing, with a short explanation
• Keep new and existing clients on the same rate card

A great rate is worthless if invoices go out late. Decide your billing day — most walkers invoice monthly in arrears on a fixed date — and put it in your terms so clients expect it.

Bill from what you actually delivered. Invoices built automatically from completed walks and boarding stays catch the extra Friday walk that a manual invoice always forgets.

Track who has paid in the same place you track the walks, so chasing takes one glance rather than a scroll through bank statements.

• Pick a fixed monthly billing day and publish it
• Invoice from completed work, not from memory
• Keep payment status next to the booking it belongs to

Our free dog walking price calculator turns a per-dog rate into weekly, monthly and annual revenue, and shows what an extra dog per walk or one more walk a day is worth over a year. No sign-up needed.

When you are ready to get back to the walks rather than the maths, PawLoop holds your walk types and prices, applies them automatically when you book, and lets you override rates for individual clients who are on legacy prices.