Price Lists on Vet Practice Websites – How Can You Use Them for a Fair Comparison?

Joe Dunne BVMedSci (hons), BVM BVS (hons), MRCVS

If you follow the inner workings of the veterinary industry, or have just caught it on the news, you might have heard of the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) recent provisional report and recommendations for veterinary practices. The CMA is a government body who “…help people, businesses and the UK economy by promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair behaviour.” Their investigation into the veterinary industry has led to several recommendations which, they argue, will encourage transparency with pricing, provide enough information for pet owners to make appropriate decisions, and ensure regulation is up to date. As of the publishing in October 2025, these recommendations are not mandatory, but this is expected to change in 2026.

We’ve detailed the recommendations in another article, but the topic for today is the recommendation for practices to start publishing price lists. Is this a good idea? Are there any downsides? How could a potential pet owner use them to find the best care for their pet?

Why Price Lists?

You may ask why price lists are one of the CMA’s recommendations. From their report, they found that when their report began two years ago, only 16% of 2552 vet practices had pricing information on their website. It has increased since, but still only 59% of the surveyed 1184 first-opinion practices include pricing information. Furthermore, this information is often limited to basic services, and rarely includes common procedures such as dentistry, diagnostic tests and imaging. The information that is available was also reported to be difficult to locate in many instances.

In short, this lack of price information (as well as all their other findings), has led the CMA to argue that the veterinary market is not working well, potentially leading to higher costs and a more limited choice for owners. A price list of 48 standard services (ranging from first consult to neutering to x-ray to euthanasia to cataract surgery) published online and in-practice, kept up-to-date, with detail of variation, would help remedy these issues.

What Are The Advantages of Price Lists?

There may be several advantages to having price lists available to owners.

To start, they provide a good rough guide for how much veterinary care costs in general, particularly useful for people wanting to have a pet for the first time. If you have never owned a pet before, you can be forgiven for being unsure how much a vaccine costs – is it £10 or £140? If you need to get them neutered, what sort of ball-park figure should you expect? Knowing roughly how much a pet may cost will help determine if you can afford the pet, if you might need to save or budget differently, or just to know what the potential outgoings might be.

The primary advantage, and one of the goals of the CMA, is to encourage owners to ‘shop around’ to find the right price

The CMA do indicate that the majority of owners pick a practice based on location or perceived quality, but they also argue more transparent pricing may help guide cost-conscious owners towards cheaper practices. This will hopefully save them money. Furthermore, they argue this openness will encourage competition between practices to keep prices lower, making the veterinary industry cheaper overall.

Price lists are also a way for vet practices to be transparent

The CMA frequently indicate that trust in your vet is important, as owners cannot be expected to understand why something costs the way it does – if this trust is broken by prices that are perceived as being unfair, the partnership between owner and vet may break down, leading to worse care for their animals. By being upfront about their costs, a practice can indicate to their clients that they can be trusted in all aspects of their pets’ care.

Price lists may also help veterinary practices

For business owners wanting to set their prices appropriately for the area they are in, being able to quickly check nearby practices’ price lists can provide a guide for them. If the CMA’s optimistic outlook is to come true, this may also lead to lower prices with practices setting their prices lower to encourage more clients.

What Are The Disadvantages of Price Lists?

Despite the above advantages, there may be disadvantages to having price lists, or at least caveats when owners use them to judge a practice.

Primarily, is the fact that these lists are guides, not quotes

The actual cost you may pay for your individual animal may be higher (or lower). Veterinary care can be highly variable, and a simple spay, for example, may be entirely different and incur different costs between animals. Larger animals need more drugs and equipment, older animals may require advanced monitoring, rarer breeds may require specialist knowledge, health conditions may alter the costs of other procedures. Simply put, the price will rarely be identical between pets. The CMA do want practices to accommodate for this as far as possible (such as listing all prices in weight brackets, for example), but to include every nuance would render a price list illegible.

It is also important to consider that cheaper may mean different (though not necessarily inferior) care, and vice-versa

The CMA note that quality is hard to assess, and currently many owners judge a practice via online reviews or personal recommendations from family or friends. While price may aid in this decision, it can be easy to be misled by cheaper prices. One practice may offer a cheaper procedure because they choose not to include a routine pre-surgical blood test, or less post-operative checks are included. The care is not inferior, just different, and if you are wanting a specific level of care, prices may need to reflect that. This is more obvious when considering the different types of practice, charity vs first opinion vs referral. Each can perform a neutering, but offer different levels of care with prices that reflect this. A simple price list hides these nuances. The CMA sums this up by saying, “[owners] also are unlikely to be in a position to decide whether their requirements may be satisfied by paying less for a service that may be of lower quality in some ways, though still professionally competent.”

There is also a concern that shopping around between practices may result in inconsistent care

It is the right of a client to choose whatever practice they want to care for their animal, and there is no reason an owner could not use price lists to select various practices for different procedures to keep costs low. A veterinary practice is responsible for obtaining clinical records from other practices to ensure they have the complete history. However, in reality this is not as simple as it sounds – there is no centralised pet database, and details are usually transferred manually. If there are technical errors, the client does not inform the vet they have seen a different practice, or the other practice is closed at the time, history can be incomplete – this can lead to critical information, such as previous disease, drug-allergies or habits, being missed. The CMA points out that many owners choose to stick with a practice they like long-term, despite price rises, so this issue may not be significant. Nevertheless, it should be a consideration for owners that multiple vets may mean less consistency for their animal.

Anyone using a price list to try and estimate costs for their pet should also consider that a veterinary professional is the only person who can accurately determine what sort of care their pet needs

Experienced owners may have an idea, but as medicine develops, disease treatment changes or new techniques are introduced, a price list may not help an owner who doesn’t know what their pet would even need. The CMA does note this, stating “…it is difficult for pet owners to know in advance which treatments their pets will need…” indicating a flaw with relying on price lists alone to determine costs. For example, a owner of a dog with vomiting may not know their dog might need a blood test, and thus assume their costs will be lower.

Finally, there is the consideration of costs, time and financial, to a practice implementing and keeping a price list up to date

Some practices when giving feedback to the CMA noted that if they have a limited administrative team, additional management of a price list would be difficult. However, the CMA argue that as 98% of practices already have a website, adding an additional page would incur little cost (and those 2% of practices without a website would not be expected to introduce one). The CMA also postulate that they or the RCVS could publish standard templates practices could use to minimise further workload. Nevertheless, for already busy practices, time will have to be taken to implement an up-to-date price list should these measures be made mandatory.

Final Thoughts

As of now, the CMA findings are just recommendations, but their final decision is to be made in early 2026, which may lead to changes, like price lists, being made mandatory for veterinary practices. On the whole, this is likely to be a good thing, stimulating competition and hopefully lowering prices for owners, as the CMA argues. But owners must be cautious to use them as a rough guide and not an estimate – as always, if you are unsure we recommend speaking to your vet, discussing financial concerns with them, and requesting a more accurate estimate. We also recommend having comprehensive insurance for your animal if you can, or at least set money aside for emergencies. Remember that the vast majority of vets you see are not trying to squeeze money out of you, and should offer you a range of options where possible. However, this may mean that finances might limit your options.

No one likes to think of money when they are worrying about their sick pet, but we must be pragmatic. We hope that the CMA’s recommendations will start to address the lack of financial transparency within the veterinary industry and ensure that we remain a well-trusted caring industry.