In general, does commercial food or a home diet cost more?

There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you a flat one is oversimplifying. It depends on the animal's size, the ingredients chosen, the quality of the commercial product you compare against and the value you place on your time. In many cases a complete home diet, with supplements and consultation counted in, lands close to a good mid range commercial food, but the result varies a great deal from one situation to another. The only way to know is to work out the cost per day with your own numbers.

Why should I include the consultation cost in the comparison?

Because a safe home diet must be formulated by a vet skilled in nutrition, and that formulation is a real cost, exactly as the food is. Leaving it out means comparing an incomplete, potentially harmful home ration against an already balanced commercial food: an unfair comparison. The good news is that it is a one off cost, which divided over a year weighs little per day.

Does preparation time really count as a cost?

In pure wallet terms no money leaves your account, so you could leave it out of the sum. But if you are deciding honestly, the time you spend on shopping, preparation and cleaning has a value and should at least be considered, especially if it recurs every day or week. You can keep it as an item separate from the monetary cost, so you see both without mixing them. For some households time is the deciding variable, more than price.

Can I switch to a home diet just to save money?

Saving is not a good sole reason to change diet, and in many cases it is not even real once every item is counted. The choice between commercial food and a home diet must start from the animal's health and needs, discussed with the vet, and only then do you weigh the cost. If budget is the real concern, it is often better to optimise the current option, for example by comparing brands of equal quality, before overturning the feeding entirely.

Budget and expenses40 minLevel: IntermediateUpdated on August 20, 2026

Comparing the cost of commercial food and a home diet

What feeding a dog or cat really costs: how to work out the daily cost of kibble, wet food and a home diet, hidden items included, for an honest comparison.

Audience: Pet owners
Species: Dog, Cat
Scope: Valid everywhere, Italy, European Union

What you need before you start

Il peso attuale dell'animale e la sua razione giornaliera in grammi
Gli scontrini o lo storico degli acquisti di cibo degli ultimi due o tre mesi
Un foglio di calcolo o il registro spese dell'app per annotare i costi

Ask around whether it costs more to feed a dog on kibble or on a home cooked diet and you will get opposite answers, often confident and nearly always wrong. The reason is that almost nobody does the sum in full: they compare the price of a bag of kibble with the price of meat, and stop there. But the true cost of a diet includes items that never appear on the receipt, such as the supplements a home ration cannot do without, the time you spend preparing it, and the professional input needed to formulate it safely. This guide does not tell you which diet to choose, because that decision concerns the animal's health and belongs with the vet. What it gives you is a method to work out the real daily cost of each option, put the numbers on the same footing, and decide with your wallet in hand instead of by ear.

Why the naive comparison is almost always wrong

The most common mistake is comparing the price of a kilo of kibble with the price of a kilo of meat, as if they were the same thing. They are not: a kilo of dry kibble makes far more rations than a kilo of fresh meat, which is mostly water. The honest comparison is not on the price per kilo of the product, but on the cost of one day of complete feeding.

The price per kilo of the product says little: what counts is how many grams that animal needs per day.
Fresh meat holds a lot of water, so for the same weight it feeds less than dry food.
A home diet without supplements is incomplete, and the supplements are a fixed cost to include.
Deals and large formats can change the real cost of kibble by as much as thirty per cent.
Preparation time has a value, even if it never passes through the card reader.

The method: from cost per kilo to cost per day

The right unit for comparison is the cost of one day of food for your specific animal, with its weight and its needs. Once you have that number for each option, the comparison becomes immediate and you can also project it onto the month and the year.

Find the daily ration in grams
For commercial food, start from the table on the pack by weight, or better from the requirement worked out with the vet. For a home diet use the grams stated in the professional formulation, not a guess by eye.
Work out the cost of a single ration
Divide the pack price by the grams it holds, then multiply by the grams in the ration. For the home diet, add the cost of each recipe ingredient times the amount used in one day.
Add the supplements to the home diet
A complete home ration nearly always includes mineral and vitamin supplements and sometimes fatty acids. Work out the daily cost by dividing the pack price by the doses it contains.
Bring everything to the same period
Multiply the daily cost by thirty for the month and by three hundred and sixty five for the year. It is over the long run that the differences become clear and the decisions really weigh.
Add the hidden items, even estimated
Budget the preparation time, any initial nutrition consultation and storage costs such as freezer space. They need not be accurate to the cent, but they cannot be missing.

A worked example to show the method

The values below are purely indicative and only serve to show how the comparison is built: real prices vary from country to country, brand to brand and over time. Substitute your own numbers and redo the sum with your animal's ration.

Illustrative example of a daily cost comparison for a medium sized dog. Made up values for teaching only, not real prices. Always redo the sum with your own data.
Item	Dry	Wet	Home cooked
Ingredient or product cost per day	Low	High	Medium
Supplements needed	Included in the product	Included in the product	Extra cost to budget for
Preparation time	Almost none	Almost none	Significant, to be valued
Formulation consultation	Not needed	Not needed	One off initial cost
Storage	Simple, at room temperature	Fridge after opening	Freezer and portioning

The hidden items that change the verdict

When two options look close on ingredient cost, it is the hidden items that decide. Ignoring them makes the home diet look cheaper than it really is, or premium kibble dearer than it needs to be. Budgeting them, even as an estimate, gives back the true picture.

Time for shopping, preparation and cleaning, which with a home diet is recurring and must be valued.
The initial nutrition consultation and any later revisions of the recipe.
Waste and offcuts, more frequent with fresh ingredients than with dry food.
Storage costs, such as freezer space and containers for portioning.
The price swings of fresh food, which move more than the price of a bag of kibble.
The cost of missed deals: kibble is bought in large formats and on offer, meat far less so.

How to save safely in each option

Whatever diet you choose with the vet, there are honest ways to keep the spend down and ways that look like savings but are risks. The difference is never touching the completeness and nutritional safety of the ration.

Buy dry food in large formats only if you use it before it loses quality, otherwise the saving is fake.
Compare the daily cost between brands of equal quality, not the bag price, which depends on weight.
In a home diet, do not drop the supplements to save: it is the shortcut that does the most harm.
Always weigh the rations: measuring by eye wastes food and money and shifts the animal's weight.
Revise the ration when weight changes, because overfeeding is a waste and a risk at once.
Be wary of home diets found online and never validated: they cost little and can cost a lot later.

Frequently asked questions

In general, does commercial food or a home diet cost more?: There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you a flat one is oversimplifying. It depends on the animal's size, the ingredients chosen, the quality of the commercial product you compare against and the value you place on your time. In many cases a complete home diet, with supplements and consultation counted in, lands close to a good mid range commercial food, but the result varies a great deal from one situation to another. The only way to know is to work out the cost per day with your own numbers.
Why should I include the consultation cost in the comparison?: Because a safe home diet must be formulated by a vet skilled in nutrition, and that formulation is a real cost, exactly as the food is. Leaving it out means comparing an incomplete, potentially harmful home ration against an already balanced commercial food: an unfair comparison. The good news is that it is a one off cost, which divided over a year weighs little per day.
Does preparation time really count as a cost?: In pure wallet terms no money leaves your account, so you could leave it out of the sum. But if you are deciding honestly, the time you spend on shopping, preparation and cleaning has a value and should at least be considered, especially if it recurs every day or week. You can keep it as an item separate from the monetary cost, so you see both without mixing them. For some households time is the deciding variable, more than price.
Can I switch to a home diet just to save money?: Saving is not a good sole reason to change diet, and in many cases it is not even real once every item is counted. The choice between commercial food and a home diet must start from the animal's health and needs, discussed with the vet, and only then do you weigh the cost. If budget is the real concern, it is often better to optimise the current option, for example by comparing brands of equal quality, before overturning the feeding entirely.

What to do next

Stop comparing the price per kilo and work out the cost of one complete day of food for your animal, ingredients and supplements included. Bring the number to the month and the year, add the hidden items such as time, consultation and storage and, better still, log the real spend for two months. Then decide the diet with the vet, not with the calculator alone.