Cat litter: what each type costs

A 40 x 30 cm tray takes 8.4 litres of clay at the 7 cm the Pets at Home label asks for. The same tray takes 4.8 litres of paper at 4 cm. The price on the bag hides that gap.

I haven't poured any of these. Everything here comes from store listings, labels and two charities, and prices were read on 2 November 2026. The list above runs from the lowest cost per fill to the highest on those prices. The tray size is my assumption, so swap in yours. Battersea says a tray should be at least 1.5 times your cat's length from nose to base of tail, and warns that many labelled "large" are still too small.

The sum

Litres per fill is 40 x 30 x depth, divided by 1,000. Cost per fill is the price, divided by the litres in the bag, times the litres per fill. The last column is 52 full changes, which is what Cats Protection's "at least once a week" comes to.

The wood bag is sold by weight. I got its litres from zooplus.co.uk, which lists 20 litres as about 8.6 kg of the same litter.

Those yearly figures are a yardstick, and they can miss either way. Cats Protection wants a full refresh at least weekly, in advice with no date on it, and says non-clumping litter needs refreshing more often, so the paper, mineral and silica rows could run higher. The makers don't all agree. Catsan Ultra's label says about two weeks, which cuts my figure to 26 fills and £280. Silica's label says only "at regular intervals", with occasional shaking in between.

Wood is the odd one. The zooplus page says a 10-litre bag can last up to 7 weeks. Take that at face value and a cat gets through about 74 litres a year, or 2.5 of the bags above, about £81 at the price read on 2 November 2026. It's a store's statement with no test behind it, so treat £81 as the best case and £338 as the weekly-change figure.

For scale, Cats Protection puts litter at £20 to £30 a month, undated. That's £240 to £360 a year. It also says ideally two trays, and every sum above is for one.

What I'd do with this

Buy wood in the biggest sack. Pets at Home's bag works out at £2.52/kg, while zooplus.co.uk listed the 40-litre sack (about 17.2 kg) at £30.29 on 2 November 2026, which it prints as £0.76 a litre. Same 6-litre fill: £4.54 instead of £6.51, at those prices. Pets at Home's 20-litre Catsan Hygiene, at £12.89 that day, also beat two of the £7.39 bags on that day's prices.

Question the depth on the clay. Battersea, on a page updated 17 July 2026, asks for at least 3 to 4 cm, and the label asks for 7. At 4 cm the own-label clay fill falls to £2.20, under the paper's £2.95, with the bags at £6.89 and £12.29. Bag makers don't lose sleep over you using more bag. I'd still expect a clumping litter to want some depth, so go down in steps and watch what happens.

Check your kitten first. The own-label clay rules kittens out, silica starts at 16 weeks and wood isn't recommended under 3 months. Paper, Catsan Ultra and Catsan Hygiene are the three listed for them.

One flaw worth knowing: the Sanicat page has a bullet saying "Ultra clumping" and a feature line saying "Non-Clumping". Pets at Home's name for it settles the matter. It doesn't clump.

Battersea also says to stick with one litter once your cat uses it confidently, so a price-led switch has a catch. Sanicat's page suggests moving over four weeks, from 20% new to 100%.

Litter sits among the setup costs in our first-year cat kit, and the bill lets you overwrite the line with your own figure. All six are on the litter page. If you're also pricing up meals, see dry cat food by value.