Trends & Reports
The State of Pet Parenting in 2026
Updated July 28, 2026
By Morgan Reyes
The Short Answer
Your animal is one of roughly 87 million dogs or 76 million cats in American homes, and the money spent on them last year came to $158 billion. Which is a number so large it stops meaning anything, so this page breaks it into the parts that do.
Three things are worth knowing up front.
Most of that money is not toys. Food and treats take $68.3 billion and veterinary care takes $41.0 billion. Those two are two thirds of the total.
Spending hit a record in the same year a fifth of owners cut back. 22% reported spending less than the year before, up ten points. Both facts are true and the reason they coexist is the most useful thing here.
Cats get meaningfully less care than dogs, and the gap is not about how many there are. 28.0% of cat owners spent nothing at all on veterinary care last year, against 16.1% of dog owners.
Every figure on this page is dated and attributed, because almost nothing else about this topic is.
Where the $158 billion actually goes
Two categories account for about two thirds of it, and neither is discretionary.
Here is the 2025 breakdown from the American Pet Products Association's 2026 State of the Industry Report, released 26 March 2026:
| Category | 2025 spend |
|---|---|
| Food and treats | $68.3B |
| Veterinary care and product sales | $41.0B |
| Supplies, live animals, over-the-counter medication | $34.4B |
| Other services | $14.3B |
| Total | $158.0B |
That reconciles exactly, which is worth checking rather than assuming.
For 2026 the association projects $165 billion, with growth near 4.4%. And roughly half of that growth is attributed to price increases rather than to more pets or more spending per pet. So a headline about the industry "growing" is partly a headline about inflation.
Two arithmetic problems on the association's own published pages, since we went looking:
The 2026 projected category figures sum to about $162.6 billion, against a stated total of $165 billion. And the Industry Trends page captions a figure as "$158 billion spent on pets in 2024" underneath a heading reading "2025 ACTUAL SALES." Neither is a scandal, and both are the kind of thing that gets copied outward without anyone noticing, which is part of why the same number turns up attached to three different years.
Record spending and owners cutting back, at the same time
22% of owners said they spent less on their pets in 2025 than the year before. That is up ten points on 2024. In the same year the total hit a record.
In plain terms: the aggregate went up while a growing minority of individual households went down.
Those are not contradictory, and the resolution is the honest story of this year's data. A record total carried partly by price increases, and partly by owners who can absorb higher costs continuing to spend, is a different phenomenon from broad-based enthusiasm. It means the average is being pulled up while the median household gets squeezed.
The association's own July 2026 dog report adds a detail in the same direction: spending on vitamins and supplements moderated. Which is the category you would expect to soften first when a budget tightens, because it is the most discretionary thing in the basket.
We flag this because the "pet humanization" framing you will see everywhere tends to imply a one-directional trend of people spending ever more on animals they increasingly treat as family. The bond part looks real. The spending part now has a visible counter-current in it.
Households are not animals, and the two get confused constantly
53% of US households have a dog and 39% have a cat, out of roughly 95 million pet-owning households. Those are household figures.
This distinction matters more than it sounds, because an earlier version of this page got it wrong. It said the percentages "work out to about 71 million dogs and 53 million cats." They do not. 71 million is dog-owning households, not dogs, and the difference is tens of millions of animals in both cases.
For animal counts, the AVMA's 2025 Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook puts the US population at about 87.3 million dogs and 76.3 million cats.
Notice what that does to the usual framing. On households, dogs lead 53% to 39%, which sounds decisive. On animals, it is 87 million to 76 million, which is much closer, because cat-owning households more often have more than one cat.
So "America is a dog country" is true of households and considerably weaker as a claim about animals. That matters for what gets written about, funded, and stocked.
The gap between dogs and cats that nobody prices in
28.0% of cat owners spent nothing at all on veterinary care in the past year. For dog owners the figure is 16.1%.
That is the AVMA's 2025 Sourcebook, and it is the single number that best captures the thing this newsletter exists to address. Nearly twice the share of cat owners spent literally nothing.
It is not an ownership-numbers problem. As above, the populations are within about 11 million of each other.
The same Sourcebook adds a detail that makes it stranger: 83.4% of owners report having a regular veterinarian, but only 69.4% actually visited one. Having a vet and using one are different things, and the gap between those two figures is where a lot of preventable problems live.
We are going to cover the size, causes and cost of that gap properly on its own page rather than in passing here, because it deserves better than a paragraph. What is worth saying now is why it recurs throughout this site: cats conceal illness well, and a species that gets seen less often by a professional while hiding symptoms more effectively is a species where slow nutritional and dental problems go unnoticed. That is why our cat nutrition checklist exists, and why it leads on what a label can and cannot tell you.
Where these numbers actually come from
Almost every pet-spending figure you will ever read traces back to one trade association, usually without saying so.
The spending totals on this page are the American Pet Products Association's. They are built from retail sales data, syndicated consumer panels and the association's own National Pet Owners Survey, with modelling applied to produce the headline figures. That is a legitimate methodology and it is a trade body measuring its own industry, which is worth knowing when you read a growth projection from it.
Ownership and animal-population counts come from the AVMA's periodic Sourcebook, which is a different organisation using a different instrument. The dog-versus-cat care gap is measured by both the AVMA and the CATalyst Council, and where those two overlap they agree closely: the AVMA puts the cat population at 76.3 million, and CATalyst's own household survey lands at approximately 76 million. Two organisations, two instruments, one answer, which is the strongest form this kind of number takes.
What you should distrust is any pet statistic presented without a year attached. The undated aggregator pages that dominate search results on this topic recycle figures across reporting years, which is how a 2024 number ends up captioned as 2025, and occasionally how it ends up in an AI-generated answer as current.
We went looking for the primary sources behind the figures on this page, and found two arithmetic errors on the industry association's own public pages: projected category figures that sum to about $162.6 billion under a stated $165 billion total, and a "$158 billion spent on pets in 2024" caption sitting under a "2025 ACTUAL SALES" heading.
Neither changes the picture. Both illustrate why we date every number and name its source.
And it is worth being direct about one term. "Pet humanization" has no owning body and no instrument behind it. It is a trade construct, repeated because it is useful shorthand. The underlying phenomenon looks real in the survey data on how owners describe their animals. The word is not a measurement, and we are not going to treat it as one.
FAQ
How much do Americans spend on pets?
$158 billion in 2025, $165 billion projected for 2026, per APPA's 2026 State of the Industry Report released 26 March 2026. The category breakdown is above.
How many US households have a pet?
About 95 million, 53% with a dog and 39% with a cat. Those are households. For animals, roughly 87.3 million dogs and 76.3 million cats.
Are pet owners spending more or cutting back?
Both. Record total, and 22% of owners spending less than the year before, up ten points. Why those coexist.
Do cats get less veterinary care than dogs?
Yes, substantially. 28.0% of cat owners spent nothing on veterinary care last year against 16.1% of dog owners, and the populations are far closer than that ratio implies.
Where do these numbers actually come from?
Mostly one trade association, plus the AVMA for populations. The methodology, and what to distrust.
Bottom line: $158 billion in 2025 and $165 billion projected for 2026, but roughly half of that growth is price rather than volume, and 22% of owners spent less than the year before even as the total set a record. Dogs lead cats 53% to 39% of households, which is much closer on animals at about 87 million to 76 million. And the number that matters most on this site is the one that has nothing to do with money going up: 28.0% of cat owners spent nothing at all on veterinary care last year, against 16.1% of dog owners. Every figure here is dated, and any pet statistic you meet without a year attached is worth distrusting.
Keep reading
- The Cat Nutrition Essentials Checklist. What the care gap means in practice, starting with what a cat's body cannot make.
- Read Any Pet Food Label in 60 Seconds. Where most of that $68.3 billion goes, and how to read what you are buying.
- How We Research and Fact-Check Every Guide. Including several occasions this site got something wrong, one of them on this page.
A dedicated page on the cost of veterinary care, and one on the feline care gap in depth, are planned and not built. This page states the gap and stops there rather than half-covering it.
A Note on Scope
This page reports industry and ownership statistics. It is not veterinary advice and it makes no health claims about any individual animal. Spending figures are estimates produced by a trade association using survey and retail-panel methods, and projections are projections. Where a number here differs from one you have seen elsewhere, check the year attached to both before assuming either is wrong.
Sources
Image credits
- “A dog and cat sitting together on a sunny day, enjoying each other's company.,” MEHMET KAYNAR / Pexels, Pexels License
- American Pet Products Association, 2026 State of the Industry Report, released 26 March 2026, drawing on the 2025 National Pet Owners Survey. The $158B total, the four-category breakdown, the $165B projection and the inflation share.
- APPA 2026 Dog Report, 22 July 2026. Dog-owning household growth, wallet-share split, and the finding that vitamin and supplement spending moderated.
- AVMA 2025 Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook, reported by JAVMA News. Animal populations, the 16.1% and 28.0% spent-nothing figures, and the gap between having a vet and visiting one.
- CATalyst Council feline market insights. Independent corroboration of the cat population figure, and the medicalization gap covered in depth on a page still to be written.