How much does a vet procedure cost?
There is no official price list for veterinary care — prices are set by each clinic, which is why the same surgery can be quoted at $690 at one surgical center and $5,000 as an emergency procedure. What does exist is published data: insurer cost studies, the ASPCA's cost charts, university hospital fee documents, and clinic price lists. This site collects those published ranges, names the source under every figure, and never fills a gap with a guess.
Pet procedure cost estimator
Pick a procedure, your pet, a weight band, and optionally a state. The estimator returns the published range for that combination — by state where a published state table exists (emergency exam fees, routine visit averages, insurance premiums), by weight where a published table is weight-based (cremation), and nationally everywhere else. Where no source publishes a figure, it says so.
Used directly for cremation (published weight tiers). For other procedures the published price-driver notes appear under the result.
Published state tables exist for emergency exam fees, routine visits, and insurance premiums; other procedures show the national range.
First-year costs are the steepest of a pet's life — vaccines, spay or neuter, and supplies stack up fast. The ASPCA's published first-year totals are broken down line by line.
See first-year puppy costsAll published procedure ranges
Every procedure this site covers, with the published dog and cat figures side by side. "Not published" means exactly that: no source we could open and read publishes the figure, so we print the gap rather than a guess.
| Procedure | Dog | Cat |
|---|---|---|
| Routine vet visit / wellness exam | $56–$129 | $57–$130 |
| Emergency vet visit — exam fee | $107–$246; average $135 | $113–$260; average $143 |
| Spay surgery | $250–$525; average $465 | $50–$500; average $155 |
| Neuter surgery | $50–$500; average $315 | $75–$275.95; average $95 |
| Dental cleaning (with anesthesia) | $300–$687; average $376 | average $430 |
| Core vaccinations (set) | $34–$77 | $50–$150 |
| Microchipping | $38–$87 | $30–$80 |
| Routine bloodwork (CBC + chemistry panel) | $100–$200 | Not published |
| X-ray (radiographs) | $169–$388; average $213 | Not published |
| Ultrasound | $383–$880 | Not published |
| CT scan | $1,280–$2,941 | Not published |
| MRI | $1,811–$4,140; average $2,285 | Not published |
| TPLO surgery (cruciate ligament) | $3,500–$5,000 | Not published |
| Lateral suture / extracapsular repair (cruciate) | $1,000–$2,500 | Not published |
| Foreign body removal surgery | $2,000–$10,000 | Not published |
| Pyometra surgery (emergency) | $1,800–$5,000 | $350–$350 |
| Bladder stone surgery (cystotomy) | $586.95–$4,000 | average $2,096 |
| Cataract surgery (per eye) | $2,995–$6,845; average $3,782 | Not published |
| Cesarean section (C-section) | $500–$4,000 | Not published |
| Lipoma (fatty lump) removal — simple | $250–$700 | Not published |
| Heartworm treatment (full protocol, medium dog) | $1,200–$1,800 | Not published |
| Euthanasia — at a clinic | $110–$253; average $126 | $125–$286; average $76 |
| Euthanasia — at home | $325–$747; average $456 | $284–$653; average $318 |
| Cremation (use the weight selector) | Not published | Not published |
| Pet insurance — accident & illness premium (monthly) | average $62.44 | average $32.21 |
Why ranges here are wide — honestly
Veterinary prices are market prices. Three things move them, and every guide on this site names them: where you live (CareCredit's published state averages for a dog X-ray run from $171 in Mississippi to $383 in Hawaii), what kind of clinic (a low-cost spay/neuter clinic publishes dog spays from $285 by weight; a national chain's location list charges $457.95–$604.95 for a spay package that bundles bloodwork and monitoring), and what is included (one source's surgery price bundles diagnostics and follow-ups; another's is the procedure alone). A range that hides those differences would be easier to read and wrong.
Start with the procedure guides, check costs in your state, and read how we source figures before quoting any number elsewhere.
The difference between a planned and an emergency version of the same operation can be thousands of dollars — a planned C-section averages $1,229 in published CareCredit data; emergency versions run $3,000–$4,500.
Read the C-section cost guide