What Would Happen If Vets Posted Their Prices? One Study Has the Answer.

A peer-reviewed study audited 157 veterinary clinic websites. Only 3 posted prices. But the clinics that have embraced transparency are seeing something the rest of the industry should pay attention to.

In May 2026, a peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science did something deceptively simple: it checked 157 small animal veterinary clinic websites across eight US states to see whether any of them posted pricing information.

Three did.

That number, 1.9 percent, is not an indictment of the veterinary profession. It is a description of an inherited norm, one that made practical sense for decades and is now, quietly but clearly, starting to cost both clinics and pet owners more than it saves either of them.

The more interesting question is not why the number is so low. It is what happens when it changes.

How the Industry Got Here

The standard explanation for why clinics do not post prices is that veterinary care is too variable to quote in advance. Every animal is different. The findings under anesthesia were not in the estimate. The procedure took longer. The bloodwork revealed something unexpected.

This is true, and it matters. A responsible clinic cannot put a fixed price on genuinely unpredictable work.

But a significant share of what happens at a veterinary clinic on any given day is not variable. A wellness exam. Core vaccines. A heartworm test. A fecal panel. A routine spay or neuter on a healthy animal. A dental cleaning on a dog with no visible disease. These are standardizable services with well-understood costs in materials and time.

The industry's default has been to fold the knowable base cost into the genuinely unpredictable surgical tail and then decline to quote either one. The result is a system where the consumer finds out what something costs after the decision has already been made, not as a design choice but as an inherited practice that no one formally decided on.

Most veterinarians did not choose this system. They trained in it, joined practices that operated within it, and continued it because everyone else did too. That is how norms persist, not through bad intentions but through the absence of a reason to change.

That reason is now arriving.

What the 1.9 Percent Number Actually Measures

The 3-of-157 statistic is not primarily about pricing. It is about a specific kind of information gap and what that gap costs.

Americans spend an estimated $41 billion per year on veterinary care. Almost none of that has a price tag findable before the appointment is booked. Pet owners walk in without a frame of reference. They learn the cost at the moment they have the least ability to do anything about it.

The consequences run in both directions.

For pet owners, the Gallup and PetSmart Charities State of Pet Care study found that 52 percent skipped or declined needed care last year. Among those who declined for cost reasons, 73 percent said they were never offered a more affordable option. The conversation simply did not happen early enough.

For clinics, the same Gallup study found something worth sitting with: when pet owners were told upfront what care would cost and offered a payment plan, 64 percent said they could afford at least twice what they had initially said was their limit. The money was frequently there. The information was not.

The information gap is not protecting clinics from difficult conversations. It is preventing the conversations that would result in more approved treatment.

What Happens When Clinics Post Their Prices

The transparency-forward clinics operating today are the closest thing the industry has to a real-world answer to the question in this article's title.

Modern Animal posts its exam pricing openly and has built a following among millennial and Gen Z pet owners specifically because the experience feels legible. Small Door publishes service ranges with a stated no-surprise-bills commitment. Petfolk goes furthest, with an itemized, zip-code-specific price list covering individual vaccines, diagnostics, and procedures. Chewy's clinics post a flat sick exam fee alongside their membership cost.

None of these clinics report that posted prices created a race to the bottom or drove clients to simply choose whoever charged the least. What they report is the opposite: clients who arrive having already decided to trust the clinic before they walk through the door. Clients who show up financially prepared rather than anxious. Clients who have already done their research and chosen this clinic specifically because the information was available.

The front desk stops fielding the same call twenty times a day. The cost conversation moves from the checkout moment, when a pet is already in the back and the owner is emotionally and logistically committed, to before the appointment, when it is a planning conversation rather than a crisis one.

The practical question for most clinics is how to make that shift without rebuilding their website or overhauling their operations. That is exactly the problem the FareVet Estimator is built to solve. It lives on a clinic's existing website and lets pet parents build a real estimate for the services they are considering, seeing the total update in real time as they add services. The clinic controls what is displayed. The pet parent arrives financially prepared. Fewer cancellations driven by sticker shock. Fewer no-shows. Higher treatment approval rates on the day of the visit. The transparency is not just an ethical posture. It is a measurable operational improvement available to any clinic, not just the ones with the infrastructure of a Modern Animal or a Petfolk.

The Unbundling Signal Worth Watching

One of the more telling developments in veterinary pricing is what is beginning to happen at the edges of the dental category.

Pet dental is starting to separate from general veterinary medicine the way human dentistry separated from general medicine over a century ago: a high-frequency, partly standardizable, prevention-oriented service peeling away into dedicated businesses with posted, fixed prices. In the UK, Luna raised capital to expand a fixed-price dental-only model with full anesthesia capability. In Austin, Texas, Calm Bite offers ultrasonic cleanings at a stated flat price.

What this tells the broader industry is straightforward: when you separate the standardizable from the genuinely variable, the standardizable gets priced immediately. The market will find the price on the commodity end whether the existing industry participates or not. The clinics that participate on their own terms will be better positioned than those who have pricing surfaced for them by outside platforms or new entrants.

What Pet Owners Are Already Doing

Something has shifted in how pet owners relate to the information gap. They are not simply accepting it anymore.

In pet owner communities across the country, discussions now routinely include call-around strategies for comparing prices before booking, guides to identifying which locally-named clinic has been acquired by which corporate parent, and shared pricing data that owners pass between each other the way they used to share restaurant recommendations.

One pet owner documented calling around to neuter her dog and found a five-times price spread between the highest and lowest quotes in the same metro area. She shared the experience publicly. It was not an unusual story. The comment section filled with identical ones.

The client has changed faster than the system has. The pet owners who are arriving at appointments most prepared, most trusting, and most likely to approve recommended treatment are the ones who found pricing information before they came in. Clinics that provide that information are acquiring those clients. Clinics that do not are increasingly the ones pet owners call as a third or fourth option after they cannot find a price.

The Conversation Both Sides Need to Have

The 3-of-157 study is not a verdict. It is an opening.

Most veterinarians are not indifferent to their clients' financial reality. A Brakke Consulting survey found that 81 percent of vets said their clients are more cost-conscious than the prior year. The profession is actively discussing how to respond. The industry's own consultants are advising clinics to offer tiered treatment plans and be more flexible on payment. The will to adapt is present.

What has been missing is a practical path from the current norm to a more transparent one that does not require a clinic to rebuild their entire pricing infrastructure from scratch or expose themselves to competitive risk before the benefits are clear.

That path exists. It starts with the standardizable services, the ones that have always been priceable, and it uses tools that let clinics control how their pricing is presented rather than having it surfaced without context.

The pet owners who cannot find a price before booking are not looking for the cheapest option. Research consistently shows that price-transparent clinics do not compete on lowest cost. They compete on trust. Pet owners who find pricing information and choose a clinic based on it are not price shoppers. They are informed clients who have already decided to trust the practice before they arrive.

That is the client every clinic wants. Transparency is how you attract them.

What the Study Is Really Asking

The researchers who audited those 157 websites were not trying to embarrass anyone. They were documenting a gap and asking an implicit question: what would change if this information were available?

The answer, from the clinics that have already answered it, is that trust goes up, friction goes down, and the financial conversations that currently happen at the worst possible moment happen instead at the best one, before the appointment, when they are planning conversations rather than crisis ones.

3 out of 157 is where the industry is today. The question is where it is going, and who gets there first.