Three quotes that are not in the same units
The reason this comparison is hard to do in your head is that nobody quotes it the same way. A kennel quotes per night per dog, with a discount if they share a run and a surcharge over a holiday. A sitter quotes per day for the household, with a surcharge per extra animal that is much smaller than a second full rate. Taking the dog along is not quoted at all: it is a lodging pet fee, plus whatever the trip costs more because the dog is in it.
Converting all three to a total and a per-night figure is the whole job. Everything here is held in integer cents and only converted for display, so the section subtotals add up to the totals exactly rather than drifting by a cent as percentages get applied.
The costs people leave out of the third option
Taking the dog looks free until it is itemised. The pet fee is the visible part and it is often the smaller part.
- The vehicle. A larger rental class, or fuel for driving rather than flying because flying with the dog was not workable.
- The crate or carrier, bought once, and any transport charge for carrying the animal.
- The days you cannot take it. Almost every trip has one, and it becomes a daycare charge or a shortened day.
- Where you can eat and stay. The set of options narrows and the narrowed set is rarely the cheaper one.
The daily extras field exists for the last two, because they are recurring rather than one-off and they scale with the trip in a way the pet fee does not. Putting a realistic number in it is what makes the third column honest.
How trip length flips the answer
Short trips are dominated by fixed costs and long trips by nightly rates, and the crossover is often somewhere between three and six nights. A crate bought once and a sitter booking fee are trivial across a fortnight and significant across a weekend. A per-night kennel rate is trivial across a weekend and is the entire question across a fortnight.
This is worth checking rather than assuming, because the household habit tends to form around one trip and then get reapplied to trips of a completely different shape. The comparison at the bottom of the results shows the spread in both total and per-night terms so you can see which regime you are in.
The part that is not arithmetic
Every figure on this page is money, and money is not the deciding factor for most people who care about the answer. A dog that settles happily in a kennel and one that does not are the same price and a completely different decision. A sitter who already knows the animal is worth a premium that will not appear in any column. An older dog, a nervous dog, or one that needs anything unusual changes the shortlist before cost enters the conversation at all.
Use the totals to rule out what you genuinely cannot afford and to notice when a habit has become expensive, then decide on everything else. If the trip is being budgeted as a whole, the travel budget calculator takes these totals as one line. For the running cost the rest of the year, the pet cost calculator is the broader picture, and pet senior care covers the considerations that change the shortlist for an older animal. If you are taking the dog, the pet crate size calculator sizes the crate from the measurements carriers ask for.
Questions people ask
Is a pet sitter cheaper than boarding a dog?
It depends almost entirely on how many animals you have. Boarding is priced per animal, with a partial discount when they share, so two dogs roughly doubles it. A sitter is priced for the household with a much smaller surcharge for each extra animal, so two dogs might add fifteen or twenty percent. That means one dog often boards more cheaply and three dogs almost always sit more cheaply, with the crossover somewhere around two. Put your own quoted rates in rather than trusting that pattern, because local pricing varies more than the pattern does.
What does taking the dog on holiday actually cost?
The lodging pet fee is the number people quote and it is frequently less than half the real total. Add the vehicle difference if a bigger car or a drive instead of a flight was needed, the crate or carrier if you bought one, any transport charge, and the daily cost of the days when the dog cannot come along and needs daycare or shortens the day. This page splits those into one-off and per-day costs precisely because they behave differently as the trip gets longer. Filling in only the pet fee will make the third option look better than it is.
Why does the per-night figure not match the rate I was quoted?
Because the per-night figure shown is the total divided by the nights, and the total includes everything that is not per-night: booking fees, the bath before pickup, the crate you bought, the peak surcharge. On a two night trip those fixed items can double the effective nightly figure. That is the point of showing it that way. The quoted rate tells you what the provider charges; the all-in per-night figure tells you what the trip costs, and only the second one is comparable across the three options.
Should I book boarding well in advance?
Availability rather than price is usually what forces the decision, particularly around school holidays and public holidays, when good facilities and established sitters fill up months out. That is also when peak surcharges apply, which is why there is a field for them here. Beyond that, facilities set their own booking terms, deposit policies, cancellation rules and requirements for what they will accept, and all of that varies from one place to the next. Ask the specific facility rather than working from anything general, and ask before you need the answer.
Does this account for what is right for the dog?
No, and it deliberately does not try. Everything here is cost arithmetic on rates you supply. Whether a particular dog copes with a kennel, whether it does better with a sitter in its own house, whether an older or anxious animal should be travelling at all, and what any of the options mean for its wellbeing are not questions a calculator can weigh, and they matter more than the spread between the columns. Get the money picture here, then make the actual decision on the things this page cannot see, with your veterinarian involved if there is any reason it would not be routine.