The problem we noticed

Spend an hour researching pet insurance and a pattern becomes obvious: nearly every "calculator" is a quote form, nearly every "best of" list is ranked by who pays the highest affiliate commission, and nearly every "expert review" carefully avoids ever telling you to skip insurance entirely.

That last part is the tell. Pet insurance comparison sites typically earn $50–$150 per policy sold through their affiliate links. That's a substantial commission, and it creates a structural reason to recommend insurance regardless of whether the math works for your specific dog. The result: families pay $40,000+ in lifetime premiums for a healthy mixed-breed dog who would have been better served by a savings account.

We built PetCareMath because we wanted the answer to "is pet insurance worth it for my dog" to come from honest math, not from the financial incentives of whoever's writing the article.

What makes us different

Our editorial promises

What we will and won't do.

  • We will never sell insurance, broker policies, or earn commission on policy sales
  • We will never partner with an insurer in any capacity that affects our editorial output
  • We will tell you to skip insurance when the math says skip — even though that loses us a click
  • We will publish our methodology and data sources openly
  • We will update our calculations quarterly with the latest industry data
  • We will never use AI-generated reviews, fake testimonials, or invented case studies
  • We will fund this site through display advertising only

Our position is not anti-insurance. We frequently recommend insurance — for Bernese Mountain Dogs, Golden Retrievers, French Bulldogs, and other high-risk breeds where the math genuinely favors coverage. The difference is that we recommend it when it makes sense and recommend against it when it doesn't, with the math shown either way.

How the site is structured

PetCareMath is built around calculators first, content second. The flagship tool is the "Is pet insurance worth it?" calculator, which takes your dog's breed, age, region, coverage preference, and savings discipline, then runs the actual expected-value math and shows you the result.

Around that core, we publish:

  • Breed-specific analyses — full economic breakdowns for 30+ popular breeds, each with embedded calculators and breed-specific health risk profiles
  • Procedure cost guides — what specific treatments actually cost in 2026, by region
  • Research and methodology — how we calculate, what data we use, what the limitations are
  • Long-form guides — context around questions like pre-existing conditions, when to enroll, and self-insurance discipline

How we make money

PetCareMath is funded entirely through display advertising — primarily Google AdSense in our early stages, with plans to graduate to a publisher network like Mediavine or Raptive once we hit their traffic thresholds. Display ads are the only revenue source on this site.

We chose this model deliberately. Display advertising is content-agnostic: an ad network doesn't care whether we recommend insurance or recommend against it, so we have no editorial incentive to skew our analysis. Compare this to affiliate models, where every "skip insurance" verdict means lost commission revenue — that creates a slow editorial drift toward always recommending the affiliate-paying option, which is exactly the problem we built this site to solve.

We may eventually add ethical, non-conflicting affiliate links — for things like CareCredit, pet emergency funds, or dedicated savings accounts. We will never add insurance affiliate links, because that would compromise the entire reason this site exists.

Our data sources

We use only published, attributable data. Our primary sources include:

  • NAPHIA (North American Pet Health Insurance Association) — annual State of the Industry reports for premium and claims data
  • AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) — pet population studies and veterinary cost surveys
  • OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) — breed-specific health screening database
  • Morris Animal Foundation Golden Retriever Lifetime Study — 3,000+ dogs tracked since 2012, the largest prospective canine health study
  • Peer-reviewed veterinary literature — for breed-specific condition probabilities and treatment cost ranges
  • BLS healthcare cost data — for regional vet cost adjustments
  • Consumer Reports — for policyholder outcome surveys

Full source citations are on our data sources page. Our complete calculation methodology is on our methodology page.

Who we are

PetCareMath is a small independent publication. The site is operated by a one-person editorial team with the help of veterinary professionals who review our breed-specific data and methodology. We are not veterinarians, and nothing on this site constitutes veterinary or financial advice — it's analysis to help you make your own decisions.

We're based primarily in the United States but our analysis covers the US, UK, Australia, and Western Europe — these are the regions where pet insurance is sufficiently mature to model accurately. We're working on expanding coverage to additional markets.

Get in touch

We welcome feedback, corrections, and questions. If you spot an error in our data or analysis, please contact us — we update our methodology in response to verified corrections, and we credit researchers and veterinary professionals who help us improve our work.

For media inquiries about our research, see our research page for available datasets and citation formats.