What to charge for a mobile groom in 2026

Every week someone asks our support line what they should charge. We are a software company, so the honest answer is that we do not set your prices. But we do see what 1,140 vans charge, and what happens to their calendars when they change it. Here is what the numbers say.

Price the stop, not just the dog

A salon charges for the groom. You are also charging for the drive, the generator, the water you carried and the fact that the dog never sat in a crate. Most mobile groomers who struggle are charging salon prices plus ten dollars, and the ten dollars does not cover a single leg of the route.

Work it out once. Add up a month of fuel, insurance, van payment, supplies and card fees, and divide by the stops you actually completed. For a one-van business doing 26 stops a week, that number lands between $31 and $38. That is what it costs you to open the door in someone’s driveway before you have picked up a brush.

What vans are charging

Across Bramble in the first half of 2026, the middle of the range looked like this:

Prices run about 12% higher in metro areas where parking is hard, and lower where the drives are long but the driveways are easy. If you are more than $15 under these, you are probably the cheapest van in your town, and the cheapest van gets the clients who cancel.

Raise prices on a date, not a dog

The worst way to raise prices is one awkward conversation at a time. The best way is a date. Tell everyone, six weeks ahead, that from the first of the month a full groom is $104. Put it in the reminder text. Then stop talking about it.

When groomers on Bramble raise a service by $8 this way, they lose about one client in forty. The other thirty-nine pay it, and most do not mention it.

Charge for the things that cost you time

• Matting. A flat fee per fifteen minutes, quoted before you start, with a photo.
• Late cancels. Half the service inside 24 hours. Almost nobody is charged it twice.
• The second dog. A discount on the second dog at one stop is fine. It is one drive. Ten dollars off, not a quarter of the price.

Let the tip button work

We will say it plainly, because it surprised us: when payment moved from cash and checks to a tap on the phone with a tip screen, tips rose by an average of 23% in the first month. People are generous when there is a button. Bramble never takes a fee on the tip itself, and you should be wary of any tool that does.

Price the stop, raise on a date, charge for the hard parts and let people tip. That is most of it.