Best Dog Walking Software 2026: Real Prices and 7 Tests

Last updated October 17, 2026. Prices come from each company's own pricing page.

Disclosure: We make Porchlight (Hive Asset Group, LLC). It is in this list, and we say where it is not the right pick. Porchlight is newer than the others here.

Quick picks

What it costs at 1, 3, 5 and 10 people

Monthly price in US dollars, "as of Oct 2026," from each company's own pricing page. "People" means everyone billed, including the owner, so "3" is you plus two walkers. Per-person tools often bill only people who are scheduled in the period, and some count admins automatically, so your real number can be lower.

How we did the math:

• Porchlight: Solo $35 for the owner only. Team $79 for unlimited staff. Annual is $350 and $790. porchlight.pet/pricing
• Time To Pet: Team is $40 plus $16 per active staff member, and admins count. Solo is $50. Lite is $25. timetopet.com/pricing
• Precise Petcare: Stepped by staff count: Solo $20, 2 to 5 staff $45, 6 to 10 $90, 11 to 20 $160. The bill jumps when you cross a line, like $45 at five to $90 at six. precisepetcare.com/pricing
• Pet Sitter Plus: Solo $30. Team is $24 plus $13 per active staff member. We have not confirmed how it counts the owner, so we do not print team totals. Use the team price calculator on petsitterplus.com/pricing.
• Revelation Pets: Silver $60 and Gold $77 a month. The public page does not say what separates them or whether there is a staff limit. revelationpets.com/pricing

Per-person pricing is cheap for one walker and expensive for ten. A tool that is $50 for you alone is $200 at ten people. That is the whole story of this market, and it is why we price Team flat.

Time To Pet is well reviewed, and it is stronger in facility and boarding depth, QuickBooks integration and community. If those matter more to you than the bill, staying with it is a sound call. Precise Petcare is cheaper than Porchlight up to 5 people. Under that size, pick on the walk-note tests, not on price.

What Porchlight does for dog walkers

Everything below is in both Solo and Team:

• Recurring walks that appear on their own
• GPS check-in and check-out, with the walk route on the report card
• An offline sitter app (an installable web app, not an app store app). A full visit finishes in airplane mode and syncs later
• Report cards with photos for the pet parent
• Invoicing and payroll calculation. Payroll exports a CSV for QuickBooks or Gusto. It does not run payroll
• Boarding and daycare, if you add them later
• CSV and JSON export, and a Switch Kit that imports from Time To Pet, Precise Petcare, Pet Sitter Plus and LeashTime with a dry run and rollback

Where Porchlight is not the right pick

Porchlight is newer than the other tools here. Today it has no texting yet (it is coming soon), no app store app, and no QuickBooks sync (CSV export only for now). If one of those is a must-have, choose another tool for now and run the seven tests on it. We would rather you know before the trial.

Pick by what you are today: solo, hiring, or already a team

Don't start with a feature list. Start with the rule that fits your situation.

• You walk alone and don't plan to hire. Pick a simple tool with no staff accounts and a low flat price. Porchlight Solo is $35 a month. Skip team features until you need them.
• You run walkers or will soon. Price the tool at your headcount in 12 months, not today. A per-walker charge turns a cheap starter bill into a large one around the sixth hire.
• Your walkers work in basements, elevators or rural routes. Test a full walk offline before you commit. Nothing else on this list matters if the walk note vanishes.
• You are leaving another tool. Get your export first and run a dry run import before you cut over.

For what to look for, the roundups agree on the core. Krowdbase says to prioritize recurring-schedule management, walker dispatch, GPS-tracked visit reports, client and dog profile depth, billing and tip handling, and key and lockbox management. Gitnux's 2026 list names MoeGo for repeatable walk execution with evidence and access records, and Precise Petcare for visit-level documentation tied to each client's instructions.

Those lists tell you what exists. They don't show what the bill looks like with eight walkers or what happens to a photo taken in a basement. The next sections do.

Run these seven tests in any trial before you pay

Copy this list and run it in every tool you trial, on a real route with a real client.

1. Repeat a walk without re-entering it. Schedule one recurring weekly walk. Check that next week's walk appears on its own.
2. Reassign from your phone. Assign the walk to one walker, then move it to another while standing in a driveway. A sick walker's day should take under a minute to reassign.
3. Finish a walk in airplane mode. Turn on airplane mode, check in, write the note, take photos, check out. Turn signal back on and confirm the note, photos and route all arrived.
4. Read the report card as the pet parent. It should arrive with photos, the route, and check-in and check-out locations. Jobber's guide to dog walking apps treats the visit report as part of the core job of the app, and it is the one thing your client sees every day.
5. Invoice on your real cadence. Weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, monthly or per trip. Check how tips are handled.
6. Export everything. Export all clients and pets to CSV. If the tool won't let you, treat that as a lock-in warning.
7. Add up the real bill. Use the formula in the next section, texting included.

A tool that fails test 3 or test 6 shouldn't win on features. A missing walk note is a walk you can't prove, and a locked export is a switching cost you pay later.

Price the tool at headcount plus 3, not at today's headcount

The cheap starter bill is how per-walker pricing gets you. Use this formula and keep it:

Monthly bill = base price + (per-walker price x active walkers) + any metered texting. Yearly = monthly x 12.

Run it twice: once at your headcount today, once at headcount plus 3.

Example: say you run 6 walkers and plan to reach 9 by next fall. Time To Pet's pricing page (checked 2026-10-08) lists Team at $40 plus $16 per active staff member. That is $40 + 6 x $16 = $136 a month today and $40 + 9 x $16 = $184 at 9 walkers. Porchlight Team is $79 a month with unlimited staff, the same price at 2 walkers or 40.

At 3 walkers the two are close. At 9 the gap is $105 a month, or $1,260 a year. At 12 it is $153 a month, or $1,836 a year. The longer math is in What per-seat pricing really costs a pet sitting company, and the six-walker case is worked in What 6 Sitters Really Cost on Time To Pet Team.

Two line items people forget:

• What "active" means. Ask whether it counts anyone who logged in, or anyone scheduled that month.
• Texting. Some tools meter it on top of the monthly price. Porchlight texting is coming soon.

Skip the cheapest plan and buy for the walker count you will have

The most common mistake is choosing by the lowest advertised price. A per-walker charge grows with every hire, so the cheap plan becomes the expensive one. The second is skipping the offline test. The third is switching without a dry run, which means retyping clients, pets, vaccinations and rates by hand.

Do the no-signal walk yourself, because comparison pages skip it

The roundups list features. They don't test what happens in a basement hallway or an elevator, and that is where a note or photo disappears.

Porchlight's field app lets a sitter complete a full visit in airplane mode and sync it when signal returns. The pending queue survives a force-quit, a dead battery and a phone reboot. GPS check-in and check-out locations and the walk route are recorded offline too, and they show on the visit report card for you and the pet parent. Not every action works in real time offline, so use your worst route during the trial. More on why this matters: offline is not a nice to have. For the full picture of what is recorded and what the pet parent sees, read our guide to GPS dog walking software.

Paste this email to any vendor before you start a trial

Hi, I run a dog walking company with [N] walkers and expect [N+3] within a year. Before I start a trial, can you answer these?

• What changes between your solo, small-team and larger-company tiers?
• Is the report card (route map plus photos) sent automatically after each walk?
• Does invoicing support auto-pay and weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, monthly or per-trip billing?
• Is there a charge per walker, and does it count only active walkers?
• Is texting included or metered?
• Can I export every client and pet record if I leave?

A vague answer to question 4 or 6 is an answer.

Switch only after a dry run and an export in hand

The real cost of leaving a tool is re-entering clients, pets, vaccinations, rates and recurring schedules. A dry run shows you what the import will look like before anything goes live.

Porchlight's Switch Kit imports exports from Time To Pet, Precise Petcare, Pet Sitter Plus and LeashTime, with a dry run and a one-click rollback. How long it takes depends on how much data you have. The steps for the most common move are in How to Switch From Time To Pet: Export, Dry Run, Cutover. Porchlight also exports every table as CSV and JSON, plus a media manifest, at any time. Ask every vendor for the same.

How we compared

• Prices: Read from each company's own pricing page on October 17, 2026. Not third-party listings.
• People math: The published formula for each tool, with the owner counted. Real bills depend on who is scheduled.
• Fit: Based on price shape and what each company says its tool does. We have not run every feature of every tool.
• Our bias: We make Porchlight. If we got your tool wrong, email us and we will fix the page.

Do this in the next ten minutes

Open a note and write three numbers: your walkers today, your walkers a year from now, and the monthly price of your current tool at that second number. Then run the formula on one other tool. If the gap is more than $50 a month, you have a reason to run the scorecard.

Run the scorecard with no card and no clock pressure

See the flat price on /pricing: $35 a month for Solo, $79 for Team with unlimited staff, every feature on both plans. Moving from another tool? Start at /switch. If you want a flat price to test against, start your free 30-day trial, no card needed. Run all seven tests, including the airplane-mode walk and the CSV export, and keep whichever tool passes.

Porchlight is made by Hive Asset Group, LLC.