What a Labrador costs to feed each year

A 30 kg neutered Labrador eats about 148 kg of Pedigree Adult Complete a year. At £29.09 for a 12 kg bag, read on 2 November 2026, that comes to about £360. Move the same dog to Royal Canin Maxi Adult, at £63.99 for 15 kg, and the bill reaches about £567 on 15 kg less food.

I haven't fed any of this to a Labrador. The sums come from labels, store prices and named sources. The opinions are mine.

The sum

PDSA prints an average Labrador weight of 25 to 35 kg, so I start at 30 kg. The Merck Veterinary Manual puts a dog's resting need at 70 x kg^0.75 kcal a day and multiplies it by 1.6 for a neutered adult. That gives 1,436 kcal a day, or about 524,000 kcal a year.

Divide by the calories per kilo the store states. That's your kilos. Multiply by the kilo price and you have pounds.

Those are one-time bag prices on zooplus.co.uk, read from Portugal, with delivery left out. A UK visitor may see something different. The pounds column goes stale whenever a price moves, so work it again before you trust it. If you want the unit that makes foods like these comparable, price per 1,000 kcal is the one I use.

What moves it

The brand is one lever. Three others sit on the dog. All of these stay on Pedigree at the price above.

• Weight. At 25 kg, PDSA's low end, the sum drops to 130 kg and about £314. At 35 kg it climbs to 167 kg and about £404.
• Neutering. Merck's factor for an intact adult is 1.8. That's 1,615 kcal a day, 167 kg and about £405.
• A tendency to gain. PDSA's breed page lists Labradors as "prone to obesity", and Merck's factor for an obesity-prone adult is 1.4. That's 1,256 kcal a day, 130 kg and about £315. Whether your dog belongs in that row is a question for your vet.

So the same bag runs from about £314 to about £405 before any change of brand. You won't see that spread buying one bag at a time.

The bag disagrees with the formula

It does, and that's fine. The zooplus page for Pedigree suggests 345 to 380 g a day for a 30 kg dog, against the 407 g my sum gives. Feed by that table and the year comes to 126 to 139 kg, or about £305 to £336. Royal Canin's page says 361 g for normal activity at 30 kg, very close to the 364 g from the formula.

Merck says one animal may need as much as 30% more or fewer calories than another of the same weight. I'd use these figures to budget and nothing else. The dog's shape decides the ration.

Where food sits in the whole bill

PDSA's minimum for a large dog is £116 a month, calculated in 2024, with food and insurance included. That's £1,392 a year. Its Labrador page prints £105 a month, with no date beside it. At the prices above, Royal Canin would take about 41% of that £1,392, and Pedigree about 26%. That sets today's prices against a 2024 total, so it's rough.

Battersea's cost page, updated 13 October 2026, allows £120 to £600 a year for food and says about £1,800 to £2,000 for a dog overall. It calls the table an approximate guide "at the time of writing", so the figures carry no date of their own. Its footnote assumes £24 for a 12 kg bag, which is £2 a kilo. Set that next to Pedigree's £2.42/kg and Royal Canin's £4.27/kg.

Then there's the carrying. On these sums Pedigree means about 12 bags a year at 12 kg, and Royal Canin about 9 at 15 kg.

To swap in your dog's weight, use the pet cost calculator, where you can overwrite any amount. For the foods themselves, I've ranked them in best-value dry food for large dogs.