Worked Numbers
Pet Sitting Rates Per Visit, Hour, Day and Night, Worked Out
Pet sitting rates start from one number: the hourly floor, the least an hour of paid work can earn and still pay you the income you want. Take that income, gross it up for the tax you set aside, add your yearly business costs, and divide by the hours clients will actually pay for. Every other rate - per visit, per day, per night - is that floor times the hours the job takes, including the drive. In the illustrative example below, the floor is $43.75 an hour, and a 30-minute drop-in visit with a 20-minute round trip has a floor of $40.16.
This post does not quote what other sitters charge. Rates copied from someone else’s area carry their drive times, their costs and their hours, not yours. A floor built from your own numbers tells you the least you can charge; what clients near you will pay is a separate question.
The pet sitting rate formula
hourly floor = (income wanted / (1 - tax set-aside) + yearly costs) / paid hours a year
visit floor = hourly floor x (pet minutes + round-trip drive minutes) / 60
+ miles x your cost per mile + supplies
day floor = visits a day x visit floor
night floor = active hours x floor + standby hours x floor x standby share + travel
Paid hours are the hours a client pays for: time with animals plus the drive you build into the price. Messages, booking, meet-and-greets and invoicing are not paid hours, so the floor has to pay for them too.
Pet sitting rates per hour
These figures are illustrative, chosen to show the method. The sitter wants to keep $40,000 a year, sets aside 20% of profit for tax, has $2,500 of yearly costs, and expects 25 paid hours a week for 48 working weeks.
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Profit needed before tax | $40,000 / (1 - 20%) | $50,000.00 |
| Business costs a year | insurance, software, phone, supplies | $2,500.00 |
| Revenue needed a year | sum of the two | $52,500.00 |
| Paid hours a year | 25 a week x 48 weeks | 1,200 |
| Hourly floor | $52,500.00 / 1,200 | $43.75 |
Check it the other way: 1,200 hours at $43.75 brings in $52,500.00; less the $2,500 of costs and the 20% set-aside, that leaves exactly $40,000. Half an hour at this floor is $21.88.
The hourly floor is the answer to “pet sitting rates per hour” only for work priced by the hour on site. A visit is not priced on the time with the pet.
Pet sitting rates per visit: count the drive
A 30-minute visit with a 20-minute round trip takes 50 minutes of your day, and 40% of that time is in the car. Priced on the pet’s 30 minutes alone, the visit’s time is worth $21.88. Priced on all 50 minutes:
- Time at the floor, 50 minutes: $36.46
- Driving, 8 miles at your own $0.40 a mile: $3.20
- Supplies (bags, wipes, treats): $0.50
- Visit floor: $40.16
The cost per mile is the sitter’s own estimate of fuel, wear and insurance, not a published mileage rate.
Now the insight the calculator pack is built on. Say the sitter charges $30 a visit - an illustrative price, not a market one. That is more than the $21.88 the pet’s time is worth, so it looks safe. But after driving and supplies, $30 over 50 minutes pays $31.56 an hour, below the $43.75 floor. The drive is where the money goes.
Here is the same visit at different round-trip drives, with miles growing at the example’s pace of 0.4 miles a minute:
| Round-trip drive | Miles | Visit floor | Drive share of the visit floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 min | 0 | $22.38 | 0% |
| 10 min | 4 | $31.27 | 28% |
| 20 min | 8 | $40.16 | 44% |
| 30 min | 12 | $49.05 | 54% |
A longer drive should cost the client more. A flat visit price across your whole service area means close clients overpay and far ones are subsidized, and the far ones are where the floor fails. Pricing zones by drive time, or a drive fee beyond a radius, fixes it with the same arithmetic.
Pet sitting rates per day
For drop-in care, a day is a number of visits, and each visit is its own round trip. Pricing a day as one visit’s floor plus a little more for the later visits misses that the drive repeats:
| Visits a day | Your time | Day price floor |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 min | $40.16 |
| 2 | 100 min | $80.32 |
| 3 | 150 min | $120.48 |
Three visits a day put 60 minutes of driving into that day, and the day floor is $120.48. If visits share a route with other clients, the drive per visit shrinks and so does the floor - but that is a fact about your schedule, so put it into the minutes rather than into a discount.
Extra pets work the same way. If each extra pet adds 10 minutes - a second feeding, a second litter box - it should add $7.29 at the floor. A $5 flat add-on pays $30.00 an hour for those minutes, under the floor.
Pet sitting rates per night
An overnight stay is the case where hours mislead the most. In the example, the sitter is on duty 12 hours, from arrival to leaving, but only 3 of those are active care: walks, feeding, medication, cleanup. The other 9 are standby - you are there and not free, but not working.
How much to charge for standby is your choice. At 25% of the floor:
- Active care, 3 hours at $43.75: $131.25
- Standby, 9 hours at 25% of the floor: $98.44
- Travel, round-trip time and miles: $17.78
- Overnight floor: $247.47, or $20.62 per hour on duty
| Standby hours paid at | Standby pay | Overnight floor | Per hour on duty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% of the floor | $0.00 | $149.03 | $12.42 |
| 25% of the floor | $98.44 | $247.47 | $20.62 |
| 50% of the floor | $196.88 | $345.91 | $28.83 |
Now take an illustrative price of $120 a night. Counted against the 3 active hours, it looks like $40.00 an hour of care. Counted against the 12 hours you are actually committed, it is $10.00 an hour of your time. And it is below even the $149.03 floor that pays nothing at all for standby. Which hours you count decides whether a night pays, so decide your standby share before you quote.
How these were calculated
The hourly floor is (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + yearly costs) / (paid hours a week x working weeks). The visit floor is floor x (pet minutes + round-trip drive minutes) / 60 + miles x cost per mile + supplies. What a price pays per hour is (price - driving cost - supplies) / visit hours. The day floor is visits x visit floor. The overnight floor is active hours x floor + standby hours x floor x standby share + floor x drive minutes / 60 + driving cost. Every figure on this page was computed twice: once by the code behind the product below, and once by an independent program that pays the visit minute by minute and the night hour by hour. The two agree to the cent. All incomes, hours, minutes, miles, costs and prices are illustrative inputs, not market rates. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.
To run this on your own hours, drive times and costs, the pack below has seven linked calculators, including multiple pets, solo and group dog walks, holiday premiums and whether a week’s schedule fits your hours.