← Dog walking & pet sitting rate calculator
Rover is a marketplace: an app and website where pet owners search for a sitter or walker nearby, message them, book a visit, and pay through Rover's own platform, and where a sitter or walker builds a public profile to be found. It sets the terms of that marketplace itself — its own booking flow, its own payment handling, its own policies for who gets listed. Per Rover's own Help Center, that includes a service fee taken from the sitter or walker's earnings (a standard 20%, dropping to 15% or 10% at higher lifetime booking totals with a client; 25% in California) plus a separate booking fee of up to 11% (capped at $50) charged to the pet owner. This calculator applies none of that — it is for pricing a visit or client relationship directly, on or off any marketplace.
That makes Rover the right tool for finding clients or a sitter in the first place. This calculator answers a different question, for walkers and sitters who already have a client — whether found through Rover, a referral, a flyer, or years of word of mouth: what should this specific visit cost, and does the whole route add up to a living?
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| Find a new dog-walking or pet-sitting client, or a sitter for my own pet? | Rover's marketplace, or another way of finding clients. |
| Book, message, and collect payment for a visit through a shared app? | Rover or a similar booking platform. |
| How much does Rover's own service fee and booking fee take out of a booking? | Rover's published fee schedule — this calculator charges no platform fee of its own. |
| What should I charge for this specific walk once drive time, extra pets, and overhead are counted? | This calculator's per-visit price. |
| How do I price an overnight stay so being on call all night isn't free? | This calculator's on-call-hours field — a flat per-night rate usually skips this. |
| Does my whole recurring client list add up to my monthly income goal? | This calculator's route revenue rollup — a marketplace app prices one booking at a time, not a route. |
This tool needs no account, no listing, and no client-matching: it is a static page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and your client list and prices stay on your device — nothing is uploaded anywhere, and refreshing the page clears the route table on purpose.
They answer different questions. Rover is a marketplace: it helps a pet owner find a sitter or walker (or a walker find new clients) and runs the booking, messaging, and payment through its own app and its own fee structure. This calculator has no listings, no booking, and no client-matching at all — it is for a walker or sitter who already has their own clients (found through Rover, referrals, or anywhere else) and wants to price a visit from real time, drive, mileage, extra pets, and overnight on-call hours, then check whether that whole route clears a monthly income goal.
Per Rover's own Help Center ("What are the service fees?"), the standard service fee taken from a sitter or walker's earnings is 20% (so a provider keeps about 80% of the booking amount), dropping to 15% or 10% at higher lifetime booking totals with a client, plus a separate booking fee of up to 11% (capped at $50) charged to the pet owner on top of the provider's rate. California has its own fee schedule (25%). These figures come from Rover's published policy, change over time and by state, and are not applied anywhere in this calculator — check Rover's current Help Center article for your own situation.
No, and it is not trying to. This tool does not list you to new customers, does not process payment, and does not handle insurance, background checks, or booking messages the way a marketplace app does. It only prices a visit and rolls a client list into monthly revenue. Plenty of independent walkers use a marketplace app to find clients and a separate rate calculation to decide what to charge them once found — this is the second half.
No. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Rover Group, Inc. Rover is a trademark of Rover Group, Inc., named here only to describe what this calculator is for and is not.