How we get prices

The Pet Bill exists for one reason: to let pet owners compare what vets charge. That is also the point of the CMA's new rules. The Order makes practices publish their prices in one standard format (Article 7 and Schedule 1), and the CMA's final report expected others to build on that information: "Over time, that competitive intensity should increase as other parties seek to use the information to develop third-party comparison tools and services alongside the Find a Vet platform" (Final report, Part B, paragraph 3.167). The report also foresaw services gathering prices directly from practice websites, provided they do not mislead (paragraphs 3.320 to 3.321). We take the published lists and put them side by side, accurately and with their sources.

Why practices are publishing prices now

The standard price lists come out of a competition investigation that took more than three years. The dates below are from the Order's own background section and the CMA's case page.

Each duty starts on the working day after the compliance date written in the Order (Art. 3(1)), which is why the start dates fall on the 23rd. The Order also makes practices send their price lists to the RCVS for its Find a Vet service, but not until 23 September 2027 at the earliest (Art. 3 and 10). Until then, the lists exist only on each practice's own website, which is why we collect them.

Where the prices come from

Every price on this site comes from the practice's own website: the price list page the practice publishes for its own customers. Next to each price we show the date we last checked it and a link to that page, so you can always see the original.

We find practices through the vet groups' own practice finders and through the practices' own websites. To find the websites of independent practices we may use OpenStreetMap, but we take nothing else from it. We do not copy data from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons' Find a Vet service.

We publish facts only: the service, the price, the pet it applies to, the date and the source. We do not copy a practice's wording, layout or photos, and we never publish the names of individual vets.

Before we collect anything

Before we read a single price from a website, we check that site's terms of use. We save a dated copy of the terms, and if they forbid automated collection or commercial reuse of the content, we do not collect prices from that site at all. Those practices' pages say so and link to the practice's own price list instead, and any prices we collected from that site earlier come off too. When a site's terms change, we check them again.

We also follow each site's robots.txt file. Our crawler identifies itself as ThePetBillBot, with a link to this page, makes no more than one request every two seconds to any website, and never logs in or tries to get around any block or bot protection.

How we read and check prices

We read prices only from price lists in the standard format the CMA Order sets out. A price is a single figure in pounds and pence, including VAT. Ranges ("£80 to £120"), "from" prices, "price on application" and "free with plan" are not prices, so we leave them out rather than guess.

If a practice's latest price for something is more than three times, or less than a third of, the typical UK price for the same treatment and pet, we hold it back for a person to review. On the practice page it shows as "under review" until then. We never show an older price as if it were current.

Each pin on the map is coloured against the area average: the median of published prices within 5 miles, widened in 5-mile steps up to 25 miles until at least five practices are included. With fewer than five, we show no average. Town pages and town-by-treatment pages only appear once at least five practices in that town have published the price.

How often we update

We re-check every practice weekly, and daily from 23 to 31 December 2026, because the large vet groups must publish from 23 December 2026 and many will publish over the following days. Smaller practices must publish from 23 March 2027.

Price history starts on the first day we see a price. We never back-fill earlier prices.

Corrections

If you think a price is wrong, email [email protected] with the practice name and the price. We check it against the practice's own page and correct it at the next update. Practices can use the same address to send us a corrected price.

Opting out

Any practice can ask to be removed. Email [email protected] from the practice or its group, naming the practice and its website. We will:

1. take the practice and its prices off the site at the next update;
2. add the website to a permanent do-not-crawl list, which our crawler checks before every single request; and
3. never collect from that website again unless the practice asks us to.

Our independence promise

• No practice pays to appear, to rank higher or to be shown more prominently. The cheapest-first order is never for sale.
• Ads are always labelled as ads. They never appear inside a price list, between practices in a results list or styled to look like a listing, and there are none on this page.
• We do not sell practices' price lists. If we ever offer data, it will be our own aggregated figures, such as town medians, never one practice's list.

What we cannot promise

A listed price is what a practice says it typically charges. Every price list has to say that prices may go up in more complex or complicated cases (CMA Order, Art. 7(2)(l)). Always confirm the price with the practice before treatment.

Sources

• Competition and Markets Authority, The Veterinary Services Market Investigation Order 2026, published 22 September 2026: background paragraphs 1 to 6, Article 3 (dates), Article 7 (price list), Article 10 (Find a Vet) and Schedule 1.
• CMA, Veterinary services market for pets: case page, for the provisional decision (15 October 2025) and the Order's publication.
• CMA, Final decision report, Part B (remedies), 24 March 2026, paragraphs 3.167 and 3.320 to 3.321.
• CMA, Veterinary services for household pets: summary of the final report, 24 March 2026.

Map and postcode data

• Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026.
• Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026.
• Source: Office for National Statistics, licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0 (ONS Postcode Directory, August 2026; Northern Ireland postcodes are not used).
• Town names and locations: OS Open Names. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2026.
• Map tiles: OpenFreeMap. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence. We use OpenStreetMap only for the background map and to find practices' websites; every price comes from the practice's own site.