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Pet Costs Dogs

Maltese cost calculator

Work out what a Maltese costs across its whole life, not just what the breeder or the rescue asks. Then look at which line the money is actually made of, because on a Maltese it is the one you chose the dog for. The Maltese is an old purebred toy dog and the thing people buy it for is a pure white, floor-length, single coat with no undercoat. That coat is the appeal, and it is also the reason a Maltese carries the heaviest grooming line of the small breeds: a single silky coat mats without near-daily brushing and wants a salon groom on a tight schedule to stay a show coat at all. So the calculator totals the life, then shows you that the coat is the single largest recurring bill, larger than the insurance and larger than the vet, and that the one lever, clipping it down to a short puppy cut, cuts the exact look you paid for.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

What a breeder asks for a Maltese puppy, or a rescue fee. The Maltese is an old purebred toy breed, so a show-line puppy can run well above our default and a pet-line or rescue dog well below it. Our default is ours and editable: put in the quote you have actually been given. Watch where it lands against the grooming line below, because on this breed the coat outweighs the sticker.
The one-time start, before the dog has cost you a single month of keep. A spay or neuter, the first vet visit and vaccinations, a crate and the basic gear. A Maltese is a toy dog, so the weight-priced lines sit at the gentle end of the chart. Our default is ours and editable.
A block of group classes and housetraining help, bought early. This line is modest on a Maltese: it is a small companion dog rather than a working breed. Toy dogs can be slow to housetrain, which is why this is not zero. Our default is ours and editable.
Our default is a planning horizon, not a prediction about your dog, and not a lifespan figure we measured. Toy dogs often live a long time, so we have set a longer horizon than a big breed would get, but set it to the number of years you want to budget across. Note that this box moves the total a great deal and moves the one-time wall not at all, and it multiplies the coat line this page is about, so raising it makes the coat's share of the ledger larger, not smaller.
A toy dog eats like one, so this line is gentle, which is part of why a Maltese reads as cheap to keep. Our default is ours and editable.
Dosed by weight, and a Maltese is a very small dog, so it sits at the gentle end of the chart. Priced by a manufacturer and a clinic rather than by us.
Our default is a premium starting point rather than a quote we gathered. Zero if you plan to self-insure by saving instead. The pet insurance page is the place to argue with the idea rather than the price.
The yearly checkup, vaccinations and general care over time, averaged into one annual figure the calculator spreads evenly across the years. This is the ordinary wellness line, kept separate from the dental line below because on a toy breed the dental is large enough to deserve its own box. Our default is ours and editable.
A Maltese has the crowded small mouth of a toy breed, and toy dogs are the ones most prone to dental disease. A professional cleaning under anaesthesia, and the odd extraction, arrive in lumps rather than every year, so this box is an averaged annual budget rather than a schedule. Our default is ours and editable, and it is deliberately not tiny: your vet is the person to tell you how often this dog will need a cleaning, and that is their figure to give you rather than ours.
Set to 12 by default, roughly a groom a month, because a Maltese show coat is a single silky coat with no undercoat that mats without near-daily brushing and wants a salon visit on a tight schedule to stay long and white. This is the line this page is about. You can clip the coat into a short puppy cut and stretch the interval, which lowers this box but changes the look you bought the dog for. Raise or lower it to match how you actually plan to keep the coat.
What a salon charges for a full groom on a small long-coated white dog, a bath, a cut and a tidy. A long show coat can cost more than a puppy cut per visit. Our default is ours and editable, and it multiplies the grooms-per-year box above into the yearly coat line.
Nights the dog is somebody else's problem while you travel. Zero if the dog comes with you or a friend takes it. The dog boarding and dog sitter pages price this line on their own terms.
What a kennel or sitter charges per night for a small dog. Our default is ours and editable.
Toys, chews, a harness, poo bags, and the white-coat habits a Maltese adds: daily face wipes and tear-stain care on a white face, plus the dental chews and tooth care that go with a toy mouth. The tear-stain line is the one a puppy cut does nothing about, because it is the face and not the coat length. A small line that runs for the whole horizon, which is the shape that gets waved through.
Estimated cost
$49,250
  • Purchase or adoption (one-time)$1,500
  • Puppy setup (one-time)$500
  • Training (one-time)$150
  • Food & treats (15 yr)$6,300
  • Prevention (15 yr)$2,700
  • Pet insurance (15 yr)$8,100
  • Routine vet (15 yr)$6,000
  • Dental care (15 yr)$4,500
  • Salon grooming (15 yr)$11,700
  • Boarding & sitting (15 yr)$4,200
  • Toys, tear-stain care & extras (15 yr)$3,600
  • Total$49,250
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$38,000 to $55,000 is a breeder puppy, insurance running the whole way, a salon groom about monthly to keep a show coat, dental on schedule, and a kennel when you travel. This is where the defaults land, and the coat is the largest recurring line, ahead of the insurance and the vet.

What this assumes, and where it could be wrong

Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.

THE DEFAULTS ARE OURS; THE BREEDER, THE VET, THE GROOMER AND THE INSURER SET THE REAL NUMBER.
Every line here is priced by a person: a breeder's or rescue's asking price, your vet's fee schedule and dental rate, a groomer's charge, an insurer's premium, a kennel's nightly fee. Where you live moves all of them. We have put in figures we think are reasonable starting points for a toy-sized, long-coated white purebred, and made every one of them editable, because your quotes beat our defaults. Nothing on this page is drawn from a federal statistic, because a breed price and a groom fee are quotes rather than published measurements.
THE COAT IS THE LARGEST RECURRING LINE, AHEAD OF INSURANCE AND VET, AND THAT IS THE POINT.
At our defaults the grooming is $780 a year, which is more than the $540 of insurance and the $400 of routine vet. It is the single largest recurring line on the page. Across the 15-year horizon the coat totals $11,700, nearly eight times the $1,500 the breeder asked and close to a quarter of the whole $49,250 ledger. The purchase, the part everyone shops on, is $1,500 of that. This is not an argument against a Maltese. It is an argument for reading the white coat on the photograph as the same white coat that tops the spreadsheet, and for deciding before you buy whether you want the show coat you are paying to maintain or the puppy cut that costs less and looks like a different dog.
THE ONE LEVER IS CLIPPING THE COAT, AND IT CUTS THE EXACT LOOK YOU PAID FOR.
The grooming line has a real lever: a Maltese can be clipped into a short puppy cut, which mats far less, needs less near-daily brushing and can stretch the weeks between salon visits, so the coat line falls. But the lever is not free in the way a cheaper food is free: the floor-length white show coat is the thing that makes a Maltese look like a Maltese, and clipping it down is a choice about the dog you wanted rather than a painless saving. The buy-or-do-it-yourself question, whether you learn to groom at home instead of paying a salon, belongs to the shih-tzu page, which weighs it at length rather than us.
THE TEAR-STAIN LINE SITS BESIDE THE COAT WHATEVER ITS LENGTH, AND WE FOLD IT INTO EXTRAS.
A Maltese has a white face, and the reddish tear staining that shows on a white face is a standing cleaning habit: daily wipes and the odd product. A puppy cut does nothing about it, because it is the face and not the coat length, so it is one small line that does not move with the lever above. We fold it into the toys-and-extras box rather than pretend to price it on its own, and the dental line beside it is the other toy-breed standing bill, which we draw flat and averaged. Real ledgers are not flat, and a toy breed's dental in particular arrives in lumps, a cleaning one year and an extraction another, which we spread into one averaged annual figure rather than pretend to schedule. Your own vet is the person to tell you how often. We have not modelled the lumps and we will not invent a figure for them.

None of this says a Maltese is unaffordable, and the shape is knowable in advance, which is the good news. The purchase and the setup can be priced and paid before the dog arrives, and the line that decides the decade, the coat, can be quoted before you commit rather than met by surprise. What catches people out is choosing a Maltese for the white show coat, budgeting from the sticker they argued the breeder down on, and discovering that the first ordinary year of keep, $3,140 at our defaults, already costs more than twice what they paid for the dog. The fix costs nothing: price the grooming before you commit, decide honestly whether you want the show coat or the puppy cut, and let a standing transfer carry the $3,140 plateau every year after. That falls out of arithmetic on your own numbers rather than out of anything we claim to know about dogs.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a Maltese cost?
Two numbers answer that and people usually only ask for the first. The purchase is what a breeder or rescue asks, once, and at our defaults that is $1,500, which is the sticker people quote when asked what the dog cost. The cost is that plus the setup and more than a decade of food, prevention, insurance, vet bills, dental care, grooming and boarding. At our defaults the whole ledger totals $49,250 across a 15-year horizon. The part worth seeing is that the purchase is a small share of it, and that the white coat you bought the dog for is the largest recurring line: the grooming alone comes to $11,700, nearly eight times the price of the dog. The calculator above totals it from your own numbers rather than ours, so put your quotes in and read your figure.
Why is grooming the biggest line on a Maltese?
Because a Maltese is bought for a pure white, floor-length, single coat with no undercoat, and that coat is high-maintenance by design. A single silky coat mats without near-daily brushing and wants a salon groom on a tight schedule to stay long and white, so at our defaults the grooming runs $780 a year, ahead of the $540 of insurance and the $400 of routine vet. Across the 15-year horizon it totals $11,700, close to a quarter of the whole ledger. The coat is the appeal and the top bill at the same time, which is the one thing this page is trying to make visible before you commit.
What does a Maltese cost per year?
Set the calculator to your figures and read the per-year line, but treat it as a description of the ledger rather than a description of a year, because the money does not arrive evenly. At our defaults the yearly figure works out at about $3,283, and no year actually costs that. Year one costs $5,290, because it carries the purchase, the setup and the training on top of a full year of keep. Every year after it costs $3,140. If you want one number to plan with, use $5,290 for the first year and $3,140 after that, which is about $441 a month and then about $262.
Can I keep a Maltese's costs down?
The coat, yes, but the lever cuts the look. You can clip the show coat into a short puppy cut, which mats less and needs the salon less often, and the grooming box lets you model that. What you are trading is the floor-length white coat that made you want a Maltese in the first place, so it is a decision about the dog rather than a painless saving. The buy-or-do-it-yourself choice, grooming at home instead of paying a salon, belongs to the shih-tzu page. The dental line does not move with the coat, because it is set by the toy mouth and not the salon, and the tear-stain care on a white face does not move with it either, because it is the face and not the length. The insurance is a choice you can carry or self-insure, and the pet insurance page is where to weigh that.

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