Data sources
Prices can come from public practice websites, published price lists, practice submissions, user submissions, email or phone confirmations, and imported datasets. Public pages prefer source URLs where display rights allow them.
Compare Vet Pricing
Methodology
CompareVetPricing is built around source-backed observations, explicit quality gates and indexation control. The database is the product; public pages are views over that evidence layer.
Checked dates
Public pages show checked dates or snapshot dates where available. Older prices can remain visible with caveats, be excluded from medians, or be prioritised for recheck depending on the page type.
Provider verified vs source backed
Provider or practice verified data means a practice or representative has submitted or confirmed an update. Source-backed data means a public source supports the observation. Both still need review before affecting public comparisons.
Missing data
Missing prices are not estimated. A practice can remain listed with contact details while the unavailable price is labelled, omitted from calculations, or queued for source review.
Publishable is not the same as statistical
Some prices can be shown with caveats but excluded from medians. Statistics use prices that pass source, confidence and comparability checks.
Source evidence
Each observation carries source method, source confidence, publishability and evidence metadata. Unverified user reports do not enter core statistics until independently reviewed.
Comparability
Procedure prices are separated by species, procedure code and, where relevant, weight band or inclusion assumptions. Low-comparability prices can remain visible with caveats but stay out of core medians.
Medians before averages
Public pages lead with medians and percentile ranges because routine-care prices can include outliers and different inclusion assumptions.
From-prices and ranges
From-prices are counted separately and excluded from medians by default. Range prices can be represented by midpoint only when comparable.
Outlier handling
Outliers are checked for source errors, species, weight band, units, inclusions and treatment scope before they are included in medians or local ranges.
Freshness and demotion
Statistics exclude prices older than 365 days unless revalidated. Page indexation, sitemap inclusion and recrawl priority can use stricter freshness gates, commonly 180 days, depending on the page type.
Publishability and page gates
Practice, city, procedure, group and report pages pass through central indexation gates. Pages can be indexable, index candidates, or noindex depending on sample size, source quality, freshness and canonical state.
Ownership and transparency
Ownership labels are confidence-weighted dataset fields, not legal findings. Unknown ownership is tracked separately and never counted as independent.
Limitations
CompareVetPricing does not rate clinical quality. Prices can change and may vary by pet size, medication, diagnostics, emergency status, complications and what the practice includes.
Corrections
Practices and owners can report errors. Corrections create review tasks and new auditable observations rather than overwriting history silently.
Commercial firewall
Commercial partnerships do not affect practice rankings, price comparisons, transparency scores, data reports or methodology. Paid placements, if introduced, will be clearly labelled and separated from organic price rankings.
Current aggregate reports are available in the data hub. Corrections and disputes can be submitted through the corrections page. Individual practice prices should always be confirmed with the practice before booking. The data ethics page explains no-pay-to-rank, privacy and responsible-use commitments, and the commercial disclosure explains revenue safeguards.