How we collect vet prices
Last updated 29 September 2026
The short version. Every practice price on PetCare Atlas comes from the price list that practice publishes on its own website. We show the figure, the page it came from and the date we read it. We never estimate a practice’s price. Practices are listed by distance or by name. Price never changes the order.
Where the prices come from
Many UK practices publish a price list on their website. The Competition and Markets Authority’s 2026 Order requires practices to publish one in a standard format. We read those public pages. We do not use prices that need a login, a quote request or a phone call.
How we read a price list
A program visits the practice’s website, finds its prices page and reads each priced line. It identifies itself as PetCareAtlasBot, follows each site’s robots.txt and asks for at most one page a second. Where a practice is listed under its group’s front page, we find the practice’s own page and accept it only if it shows the practice’s postcode. Some price lists are PDFs, and some tables are built by script; we read those too, under the same rules.
Some groups publish one price list for all their practices. We use it for a practice only when the group’s website shows that practice’s postcode and the list does not say prices differ between practices. The practice’s page then says the prices are the group’s list.
Our program did not read every price here. CVS’s website asks automated readers not to load its price tables, and our program respects that. Prices for CVS practices are collected for us by a separate tool, from each practice’s own page on CVS’s website, and read again about once a month. The date beside each of those prices is the day that reading was taken. They are matched and checked the same way, and each practice’s page says where they came from.
Where our program is not allowed to read a practice’s price list, or cannot, one of us may open the page as any visitor would and copy the prices in by hand. Those prices go through the same check before they appear.
Each line is matched to one of the 36 services the Order defines, such as a first consultation, a booster vaccination or a spay. Where a practice prices by species or weight we keep the Order’s categories: cat, and dogs under 10 kg, 10 to 25 kg, 25 to 40 kg, 40 to 60 kg and over 60 kg.
A line we cannot match with confidence is left out. Every line is checked against the words on the practice’s page before it appears, and a vet reviews a sample every week.
What a price here means
A plain figure is the price the practice published. “From” means the practice published a starting price. A range means the practice published a range. A price often leaves out blood tests, medicines to take home or follow-up visits, so ask the practice what is included.
The date beside a price is the day that price list was last read. Practices change their prices. The practice’s own website is the authority. When a list is read again, a price it no longer carries is taken off this site.
The figures for the whole country
The prices pages sum up what practices charge for each service. The middle half is the range between the price a quarter of practices charge less than and the price a quarter charge more than. The middle price is the one half charge more than. “Nine in ten” leaves out the lowest and highest twentieth, so one referral hospital or one misread line does not stretch the scale.
Only exact prices count. A “from” price or a range does not say what the practice charges, so it is left out of these figures. A practice is counted once: two listings that read the same price list at the same address are one practice. We show a figure only once 30 practices publish a price for that service, and a comparison for a town only once three practices there do.
What we leave out
Insurance products, medicines and food. Health plan benefits, apart from the monthly plan cost the Order lists. Anything we could not match to a defined service.
If a price is wrong, or you run the practice
Email [email protected] with the practice name and the correct figure or page. We correct or remove a price within five working days. You can also claim your listing and tell us directly. If you would rather we did not read your website, block PetCareAtlasBot in your robots.txt and we will stop.
Who runs this
PetCare Atlas is operated by Concierge Vet LTD, company number 14501259, which also provides veterinary services. No practice can pay to appear higher. Prices never affect the order of search results.