UK Dog Food Price Index
Built live from the retailer prices we track - updated July 27, 2026 . Free to reuse (CC BY 4.0, link required).
How much does a dog really cost to feed? We turn every price we track into a simple daily cost for one average 10 kg dog - so a giant bag of dry and a tiny tray of wet finally line up side by side. Every number below is live and updates itself.
- Dry£0.69/day
- Wet£3.00/day
- Raw£2.20/day
Complete foods only. Treats, toppers and prescription (veterinary) diets are excluded - they are not what a dog is fed as an everyday meal by choice. Every figure on this page covers the same set of foods.
Does paying more get you a better bowl?
Across 2,648 foods we have both priced and scored, the answer is: barely. Each dot is a food - cost per day along the bottom, our independent quality score up the side. If price bought quality the cloud would climb to the right. It stays flat.
0.18 correlation between price and score (0 = none, 1 = perfect, so this is almost nothing)
What it costs to feed a dog for a year
The average across every complete food we track, scaled to four dog sizes by energy need. The food you choose moves this more than the size of your dog - see the range by type below.
| Dog size | Per day | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| A small dog (5 kg) | £0.81 | £24 | £297 |
| A medium dog (10 kg) | £1.37 | £41 | £500 |
| A large dog (30 kg) | £3.12 | £94 | £1,140 |
| A giant breed (40 kg) | £3.87 | £116 | £1,414 |
The label-claim tax
What the buzzwords on the front of the bag add to the daily cost, on average, versus foods without the claim. A claim on the pack is not the same as a better score.
| Label claim | With the claim | Without it | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grain-free | £1.83 | £1.03 | +78% |
| Hypoallergenic | £1.92 | £1.25 | +53% |
What a day of dog food costs, by type
Average, cheapest and priciest cost per day for the 10 kg reference dog. Every type links to its rated directory.
| Food type | Avg / day | Range | Foods |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dry | £0.69 | £0.12 - £3.44 | 1,763 |
| Wet | £3.00 | £0.36 - £7.41 | 563 |
| Raw | £2.20 | £0.72 - £6.14 | 126 |
| Cold-pressed | £0.91 | £0.41 - £1.93 | 93 |
| Fresh-cooked | £3.32 | £1.73 - £6.14 | 56 |
| Air-dried | £3.25 | £1.49 - £6.96 | 25 |
| Freeze-dried | £4.56 | £1.21 - £7.15 | 22 |
Types with no tracked prices are absent - a row appears the day its first price lands.
Does paying more buy a better food?
Our score comes from the label alone - price never moves the number. So here is what each score band actually costs per day, side by side.
Best value: good foods, cheapest first
Every food scoring 60/100 or better, ranked by cost per day. Scores are live - the order updates itself.
| Rank# | Food | ODF Score | Cost / day | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
briantos
briantos Adult Chicken & Rice
| 66Good | £0.28 | Dry |
| 2 |
Autarky
Autarky Adult - Delicious Chicken
| 66Good | £0.29 | Dry |
| 3 |
briantos
briantos Maxi Adult
| 72Good | £0.30 | Dry |
| 4 |
briantos
briantos Adult Sensitive Lamb & Rice
| 68Good | £0.31 | Dry |
| 5 |
Burgess
Burgess Supadog Puppy Complete
| 60Good | £0.31 | Dry |
| 6 |
briantos
briantos Junior
| 70Good | £0.32 | Dry |
| 7 |
briantos
briantos Adult Mini Lamb & Rice
| 61Good | £0.32 | Dry |
| 8 |
IAMS
IAMS Advanced Nutrition Adult Small & Medium Dog - Chicken
| 77Good | £0.33 | Dry |
| 9 |
Autarky
Autarky Adult - Succulent Salmon
| 76Good | £0.33 | Dry |
| 10 |
Harringtons
Harringtons Large Breed Adult Dog - Rich in Lamb & Rice
| 72Good | £0.33 | Dry |
The full spread of a dog's dinner
Feeding the very same 10 kg dog, the tracked foods run from a few pennies to several pounds a day. Here are the two extremes, the gap over a year, and where every priced food sits in between.
briantosbriantos Adult Active
Lily's KitchenLily's Kitchen Organic Chicken Supper
Same dog, same day: the priciest tracked food costs about 61.8× the cheapest - roughly £2,661 a year between the two extremes.
Where every priced food sits
Number of tracked foods in each cost-per-day band. Most cluster low; a small luxury tail stretches the top end.
How this index is built
Every figure on this page is computed live from real price observations: a price we saw at a named UK retailer, recorded with its date. Observations are append-only - a new price supersedes the old one, nothing is ever edited or backfilled.
To compare a 12 kg sack with a 400 g tray we convert every price to the cost of one feeding day for the same reference dog: a 10 kg adult needing about 534 kcal a day (the FEDIAF maintenance formula, 95 x weight to the power 0.75). We divide that by each food's energy density - declared on the label, or calculated from its analysis when it is not - to get the grams that dog eats, then price those grams. A dense kibble and a watery tray therefore compete on what it actually costs to feed a dog, not on what a kilogram costs. Your own dog will differ; the like-for-like ranking is the point, not the exact pennies.
This index covers complete foods only - the meals a dog lives on. Treats, toppers and mixers are left out: they are fed alongside a meal, not as one, so a cost-per-day figure for them would not mean anything.
Prescription (veterinary) diets are excluded too. They are fed for a diagnosed condition on a vet's advice rather than chosen on price, and we never score them, so averaging them in would distort what an ordinary dinner costs. Their prices are still shown on their own food pages.
Cost per day uses each food's cheapest current per-kg price, so a multibuy deal or an oversized value pack can nudge an individual figure. We publish what a feeding day genuinely costs to buy - not a cherry-picked cheapest line.
The index updates whenever a new observation lands, and the "updated" date above is the newest real observation - never the day the page happened to render. Quality scores come from our open, ingredient-led algorithm; price never moves a score.
The data is open under CC BY 4.0: use it in articles, tools or research. The one condition is attribution with a link to this page. See how the scores work