About us

About PawCalc

PawCalc started with a simple frustration: the numbers pet owners find online are either wrong, vague, or copied from one site to the next without anyone checking them.

Ask the internet how old your dog is in human years and you will still get the old “multiply by seven” rule — a rule that has been wrong for decades. Ask how much food your dog needs and you will get a single number with no mention of weight, age, activity, or the food itself. Ask how long a breed lives and you will get one number, as if every dog of that breed lived exactly the same life.

PawCalc does it differently. Every calculator on this site is built on published veterinary formulas — the resting energy requirement (RER) method for food and calories, the size-based age charts informed by the 2019 UC Davis epigenetic study for dog age, and published breed lifespan data for lifespan estimates. Every guide gives ranges, not single magic numbers, and says where the numbers come from. You can read exactly how we work in our Editorial Policy.

What we do

PawCalc has two parts. The first is 32 free calculators: dog and cat age in human years, daily food and calories, ideal weight, puppy and kitten growth predictions, lifespan estimates, feeding schedules, exercise needs, and practical planning tools like the breed selector quiz and the pet cost calculator. Every tool runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent to a server, and there is no sign-up.

The second part is in-depth breed guides: age, food and lifespan for every popular dog and cat breed, each one 1,200+ words, written to answer the real questions owners ask — not to pad a page with keywords. The guides are being written breed by breed, and every one is checked against published sources before it goes live.

What we will never do

We will never present an estimate as a fact. A calculator result is a starting point for a conversation with your vet, not a diagnosis. We will never tell you to change your pet's diet, start a raw food regime, or skip a vaccine based on a web page. And we will never sell your data — there is no account to create and nothing to sell. Read the Disclaimer and the Privacy Policy for the full picture.

Who is behind PawCalc?

PawCalc is a small, independent project run by pet owners who got tired of bad pet maths. We are not veterinarians, and we do not pretend to be — that is exactly why every page on this site tells you to talk to your vet. Our job is to make the published science easy to use and honest about its limits. If you spot a mistake, or a number you think is wrong, please tell us on the Contact page. We would rather fix a page than defend it.

Thank you for using PawCalc — and give your dog or cat an extra treat from us. (Within the 10% treat budget, of course. The Treat Calorie Calculator can help with that.)