What does a pet sitting business actually make?

A pet sitting business usually makes somewhere between $15 and $75 per booking, depending on whether it's a quick drop-in visit or an overnight stay, an estimate based on Rover and Indeed rate data (2025). People who do it part-time, a few clients a week, bring in a few hundred dollars a month. People who turn it into steady full-time work report somewhere around $45,000 a year on average, an estimate that varies a lot by city and hours (ZipRecruiter, 2026).

That's the headline. Now the math that actually matters.

## What you charge per job

Pet sitting is priced per visit or per night, not by the hour.

- Drop-in visits (feed, walk, play, about 30 minutes): around $15 to $30 each, an estimate (Rover rate data, 2025). - Overnight pet sitting or boarding: around $35 to $75 a night, an estimate (Indeed, 2025). - Dog walking on its own: roughly $17 to $22 an hour equivalent, an estimate (ZipRecruiter and Indeed, 2025).

Two drop-ins a day at around $25 each is about $50 before fees. Do that on weekdays and you're near a thousand dollars a month from a route you can walk.

## The fees nobody mentions up front

If you find clients through a platform like Rover, it keeps about 20% of each booking (Rover, 2025). So a $30 visit pays you around $24. You do keep 100% of any tips.

The way around the fee is to own the clients yourself: your own page, your own bookings, repeat customers who text you directly. That's slower to start and worth far more over a year.

## What changes your number

- Your city. A sit in a big metro pays more than a small town. - Repeat clients. One family that books you every workday is worth more than ten one-time jobs. - Add-ons. Overnight stays, multiple pets, holidays, and last-minute requests all pay more. - Reviews. A five-star history lets you raise your rate over time.

Nobody can promise you an income. The ranges above are what the 2025 market data shows, and the spread is wide for a reason: a weekend dog walker and a full-time sitter with repeat clients are running very different businesses.

## How to start without building a website

Most people who want to do this get stuck at the same place. They can care for animals, but they can't build a booking page, set a rate, and take payments without handing 20% to a platform forever.

That's what Totally does for you. You say "I want to pet sit in my neighborhood." Your team builds you a live site with a booking calendar, sets up the payment link, and writes the page, usually in about fifteen minutes. You keep your own clients and your own money. You approve the big decisions.

You can build it free and see the whole thing before you pay to run it.

[Build your pet sitting site free on Totally.](https://totallyco.com)