There is no price list for veterinary care in the United States. The AVMA and AAHA do not publish one. What exists is three kinds of number, and they answer different questions. This page keeps them apart and says which is which on every line.
Synchrony's 2025 cost study for CareCredit, run by ASQ360 Market Research across all 50 states and DC. The "range" beside each figure runs from the lowest state average to the highest, which is nearly always Mississippi or West Virginia to Hawaii. It is not the cheapest clinic to the dearest. The sample size is not published.
Nationwide's 3.3 million claims from 2025, from more than a million insured pets. Eight in ten owners paid this much or less in the 30 days after the diagnosis; two in ten paid more. These are the bills owners reported, not what insurance paid back.
Banfield publishes a price per hospital, last updated May 14, 2025. Its surgery prices include bloodwork, an IV catheter and fluids. Its vaccine prices do not include the office visit.
Insurers' average claims (Embrace, Trupanion, Healthy Paws) are a fourth kind. A claim is one invoice, not a whole illness, and Healthy Paws reports what it paid back rather than what the vet charged, so those figures run low. They are marked where used.
| What | Dog | Cat | Kind of number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Routine visit | $56 to $129 | $57 to $130 | Range of state averages, 2025 study |
| Wellness visit | $95, range $75 to $171 | — | National average, 2025 study |
| Office visit, Banfield | $71.95 Tulsa · $91.95 Brooklyn and Washington DC · $116.95 San Francisco | Same | List price, May 2025 |
| What owners said their last visit cost, all reasons | $220 | $202 | AVMA owner survey, 2025 |
| What owners spend on the vet in a year | $598 | $529 | AVMA owner survey, 2025 |
The AVMA figure is higher than the study's exam price because a visit is rarely just the exam. Something gets tested, injected or dispensed.
| What | Dog | Cat |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency exam | $135, range $107 to $246 | $143, range $113 to $260 |
| Overnight at your own vet, per night | $619 | $582 |
| Overnight at an emergency hospital | $1,323 | $1,144 |
| IV catheter and fluids | $130 | $121 |
| X-rays in the emergency room, 2 to 3 views | $334 | $310 |
| Sedation by injection | $146 | $123 |
| Oxygen therapy, per visit | $1,528 | $1,861 |
All national averages from the 2025 study. Trupanion's claims from 2015 to 2025 put the average claim for a dog hit by a car at $1,146 and the highest at $42,861. If you are deciding whether tonight is an emergency, the emergency page sorts the signs by how long you have.
National averages, 2025 study: dog spay $455 (range $361 to $829) and dog neuter $487 ($385 to $885), for dogs over six months. Cat spay $322 ($255 to $587) and cat neuter $212 ($168 to $385) for kittens under six months; over six months, $353 and $262. The study does not split dogs by size. Banfield does.
| Banfield list price, May 2025 | Tulsa | San Antonio | Brooklyn, Washington DC | San Francisco |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dog spay, under 6 months | $457.95 | $463.95 | $517.95 | $584.95 |
| Dog spay, over 6 months and under 50 lb | $527.95 | $534.95 | $596.95 | $673.95 |
| Dog spay, over 6 months and over 50 lb | $604.95 | $611.95 | $682.95 | $771.95 |
| Dog neuter, over 6 months | $500.95 | $506.95 | $565.95 | $638.95 |
| Cat spay, over 6 months | $374.95 | $379.95 | $423.95 | $478.95 |
| Cat neuter, over 6 months | $275.95 | $279.95 | $311.95 | $352.95 |
Those include bloodwork, the IV and fluids. A low-cost clinic is a different market: Emancipet (Texas and Philadelphia) lists $125 for any dog and $89 for any cat; York County SPCA in Pennsylvania, from January 2025, lists dog spay at $215, $280 or $315 by weight, dog neuter $190 to $215, cat spay $140 and cat neuter $110; Seattle Animal Shelter, for owners who qualify by income, $130 to $210 for a dog and $115 to $120 for a cat. Same operation, a third of the price, usually with less bloodwork and no overnight. The first-year timeline gives the ages the guidelines recommend for it.
| What | Dog | Cat | Kind of number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning under anesthesia | $388, range $307 to $702 | $375, range $300 to $682 | National average, 2025 study |
| Extraction, simple, per tooth | $78, range $62 to $142 | $99 | National average |
| Extraction, complex, per tooth | $130 | — | National average |
| Dental x-rays | $187 | $133 | National average |
| Cleaning, Banfield | $408.95 Tulsa to $590.95 San Francisco | Same | List price, May 2025 |
| Dental disease, bill in the first 30 days | $1,420 | $1,671 | 80th percentile, Nationwide, 2025 claims |
The last line is the one to plan around. A cleaning that turns into extractions is what most first cleanings after age five are, and $1,420 is what eight in ten of those bills stayed under. A year earlier the same figures were $1,284 and $1,517.
| Test | Dog | Cat |
|---|---|---|
| Complete blood count | $104 | $79 |
| Chemistry panel | $164 | $144 |
| Urinalysis | — | $54, range $43 to $98 |
| Urine culture | $78 | $94 |
| X-rays, 2 to 3 views | $213, range $169 to $388 | $158 |
| Ultrasound | $483, range $383 to $880 | $323 |
| Echocardiogram | $415, range $331 to $805 | — |
| CT scan | $1,615, range $1,280 to $2,941 | $1,144 |
| MRI | $2,285, range $1,811 to $4,140 | — |
National averages, 2025 study. The same study lists a dog x-ray at $172 on one page, $213 on another and $334 in the emergency room. The spread is in the source, not in us, and it tells you something true: the same test costs more at 11 p.m.
Surgery for an intestinal blockage: dog $4,383 (range $3,471 to $7,976), cat $2,367 ($1,873 to $4,303), national averages. The same study's emergency page puts "stomach blockage surgery" at $2,217 for a dog, which does not agree with its own $4,383, and we could not find out why. Trupanion counted 24,305 foreign-body claims in 2023, averaging $878 with the highest at $27,403; many of those were not surgery. Healthy Paws says the cost of a foreign-body emergency is up about 45% since 2020.
No national-average figure exists for gastric dilatation-volvulus surgery. Healthy Paws puts it at $2,500 to $8,000 and up, from its 2022 to 2024 claims and AAHA fee data. Trupanion's undated list gives $2,500 to $5,100. MetLife published one actual bill: a Golden Retriever in New York, November 2023, $5,900.
$3,525 per knee, range $2,793 to $6,417, national average. The CareCredit page adds that more than half of dogs go on to rupture the other knee, so read that as a price per knee, not per dog. Embrace's second quarter of 2026: cruciate claims averaged $1,436 and reached nearly $15,000, the biggest year-on-year rise of any claim type.
Fracture repair surgery $2,615 on average, with total treatment for a broken leg at $1,371 to $5,803. Splinting instead runs about $426 across roughly six weekly changes, at $71 a recheck. Healthy Paws: $1,000 to $6,000 and up.
A course of chemotherapy for lymphoma: dog $5,254 (state range $4,220 to $9,387), cat $4,269 ($3,400 to $7,655), national averages. The Veterinary Cancer Society's own figures, which CareCredit cites: $150 to $600 a dose, an oncology consult at $125 to $250, radiation at $1,000 to $1,800 for palliative courses and $4,500 to $6,000 with curative intent. Removing a lump: "around $500 and up", CareCredit citing Cornell. Healthy Paws puts the cost of cancer treatment up roughly 49% since 2020.
| Condition | First 30 days | First year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skin allergies, dog (the No. 1 dog condition for 15 years running) | $286 | $891 | 80th percentile, Nationwide, 2025 claims |
| Skin allergies, cat | $342 | $612 | Same |
| Ear infection, dog | $312 | — | Same |
| Diabetes, cat | $898 | $2,194 | Same |
| Kidney failure, cat | $727 | $1,251 | Same |
| Kidney failure, dog | $575 | $992 | 80th percentile, Nationwide, 2024 claims |
Dog diabetes has no Nationwide line. CareCredit gives $436 to diagnose, $520 to start treatment with a meter, then $182 a month; a second CareCredit page says $255 a month for a small dog and $287 for a large one. Either way that is $2,200 to $3,450 a year, our arithmetic. For a diabetic cat, insulin at $47 a month plus $27 to $62 for glucose monitoring and $23 to $52 in test strips.
Heartworm test $71 (range $56 to $128). Monthly prevention $14 a dose ($11 to $25), so about $168 a year by our arithmetic; another CareCredit page says $23 a month. Treatment once a dog has it: $1,200 to $1,800 for a 40-lb dog, CareCredit citing the American Heartworm Society. Microchip $48 ($38 to $87).
Vaccines, national averages: dog rabies $35, DHPP $42, Bordetella $38 to $39, leptospirosis $34, Lyme $50, influenza $53; cat rabies $31, FVRCP $34, FeLV $33. Banfield lists rabies at $27.72 in Tulsa and $35.38 in San Francisco, plus the office visit. Which vaccines your animal needs is its own page.
| Dog | Cat | |
|---|---|---|
| Euthanasia at the clinic | $139, range $110 to $253 | $158, range $125 to $286 |
| Euthanasia at home | $410, range $325 to $747 | $359, range $284 to $653 |
| Private cremation | $260, range $206 to $473 | $180, range $142 to $326 |
| Pet cemetery burial | $831, range $659 to $1,513 | $566, range $449 to $1,031 |
National averages, 2025 study, pages dated May and June 2026. No survey figure exists for communal cremation; PetMD's vet-written page says from about $50. When is it time? covers the decision, the procedure and who to call after.
In the 2025 study the highest state runs about 2.2 times the lowest, and it is the same pair almost every time: a routine visit is $57 in Mississippi and $127 in Hawaii; a TPLO $2,830 and $6,332; an MRI $1,828 and $4,072; a dog spay $367 and $814. On the mainland the routine visit is $94 in California and $83 in New York against $63 in Texas and $57 in Mississippi. Banfield's San Francisco office visit is 63% above Tulsa's and its dental cleaning 45% above. Embrace's highest average claims by state in the second quarter of 2025 were Washington DC $601, California $546, Washington $529, Nevada $523 and New York $521, against $404 across the company. Nobody publishes a current city-by-city table, so treat any "vet costs in your city" article without a date and a method as a guess.
The industry body NAPHIA's 2026 report, covering the end of 2025: about 6.98 million insured pets in the US, which is 4.27% of them (5.99% of dogs, 2.29% of cats). The average accident-and-illness premium was $836 a year for a dog, about $70 a month, and $435 for a cat, about $36. Accident-only cover averaged $190 for a dog and $112 for a cat. The year before it was $749 and $386.
What comes back: Healthy Paws paid an average of $392.04 per claim in 2025, up from $296.49 in 2020. Embrace's average claim in the second quarter of 2026 was $432, the median $183, the largest $40,517. Synchrony's 2025 survey of 4,861 owners put the lifetime cost of a dog at $22,125 to $60,602 and a cat at $20,073 to $47,106, and found 74% had faced an unexpected expense over $250.
We are not telling you to buy it. The arithmetic is this: $70 a month is $840 a year, against a foreign-body surgery averaging $4,383, a year of feline diabetes at $2,194, or a TPLO at $3,525 a knee. Whether that trade is worth it depends on the animal, the deductible, what the policy excludes, and whether you could find $4,000 on a Tuesday. The true-cost calculator builds the whole budget.
My Pet keeps your animal's weights, vaccine dates and vet details on your phone, and prints a one-page sheet to hand over at the desk. Nothing is uploaded.