A routine vet year: what it costs

Battersea puts a routine vet year at £312 for a dog and £180 for a cat. Cats Protection's lines add up to £240 to £410 for a cat. The charities don't land on one number.

Those sums buy jabs, parasite treatment and a yearly check. They stop the moment something goes wrong. This page comes from charity cost tables and the Competition and Markets Authority's vet report, all checked 2 November 2026. I haven't collected bills from practices, so read these as benchmarks.

The sums, line by line

The Cats Protection total is my addition, and so is the £180: £10 x 12 plus £60. Cats Protection's page shows no date. Battersea marks its dog page as updated on 13 October 2026 and its cat page on 6 July 2026, but it calls the dog costs "costings at the time of writing" and puts no separate date on the cat costs. Cats Protection also disagrees with itself. Lower down the same page it gives £50 to £70 for the check and £50 to £80 for vaccinations.

PDSA is the dated source, with costs calculated in 2024. Its minimum monthly figures are £69, £83 and £116 for a small, medium and large dog, and £79 for a cat. Those bundle checks and boosters with food, insurance and more, so no routine vet line can be pulled out of them. Don't add them to the table above.

The first year runs higher

A puppy starts with bigger bills. Battersea lists £70 for initial vaccinations, £10 to £30 for a microchip, and £200 to £350 for neutering. That's £280 to £450. Set beside the £312 you get £592 to £762, though Battersea doesn't say whether its yearly line overlaps with the puppy's first course.

For a bought kitten, Cats Protection gives £45 to £60 for a first check, £70 to £90 for vaccinations and £20 to £30 for a microchip. Neutering is £50 to £100 for a male and £100 to £300 for a female. Those four lines come to £185 to £480. Battersea's cat page quotes £50 to £100 for neutering, with no split by sex.

Adoption changes the sum. Cats Protection and Battersea both say they cover the microchip and neutering when you rehome from them, and Cats Protection's fee, £80 to £120 for an adult cat, also includes first vaccinations and a health check.

Do health clubs pay?

Cats Protection prices a vet health club at £20 to £40 a month, or £240 to £480 a year, and says it usually covers flea and worming treatment and annual vaccines. Set that against its £240 to £410 and the answer depends on your practice. The CMA said in March 2026 that these plans can be poor value for people who don't use many of the services. Add up what you'd actually use.

That sum should get easier. Under the CMA's Order, large groups must show the standalone price of each service in a plan after 22 December 2026, and smaller businesses after 22 March 2027. The CMA vet review for pet owners has the other dates.

What the routine sum leaves out

Illness and accidents. The CMA's report says owners spent over £6.7 billion on veterinary and other services in 2024, about £390 per pet-owning household, and that cruciate surgery on a dog can cost up to £5,000, occasionally more. Cats Protection puts out-of-hours consultations at upwards of £150.

Insurance won't pay the routine part either. Which? (4 December 2025) says vaccinations, neutering and flea and worm treatment are often excluded. So this bill sits beside any premium, and what a pet insurance quote depends on covers the other half.

Figures without a date of their own age badly here. The CMA found average vet prices rose 63% from January 2016 to December 2023, against 32% for general inflation. I'd treat every routine figure on this page as a floor.

Your own practice can settle it. Cats Protection suggests asking what routine care costs each year, what a normal consultation costs and what an out-of-hours one costs. Ask your vet which treatments your pet needs, too. Then type the answers into the pet cost calculator, which starts from Battersea's lines and lets you overwrite them.