Myth no. 4: Raw food is too expensive

(The prices in this article have been updated last in July 2025)

Yes, I have heard this many times before: "Isn´t it super expensive to feed raw?" or "Isn't it much more expensive than ready-made food?" This questions comes up especially often when referring to big dogs.

My simple answer is: No, it is not.

I did the math and compared the costs, although comparing them is actually not that simple, because every food type is composed differently and therefore the assessment is difficult. Nevertheless, it can be done.

I am starting with the results and in the following you can get into the details:

I have checked for you if raw food (BARF) is expensive...

Let's take a look at the costs for the BARF rations for the 28 kg dog that I mentioned in my post about protein (Myth no. 3: Too much protein in BARF!?!?). That dog gets ca. 720 g of BARF a day (2,5 % of his body weight).

The prices are from the Icelandic supermarkets Bónus, Krónan and Nettó, but also for some products from Minimarket and Fiska.is (no, I do not shop the ingredients in Hagkaup).

Strictly speaking, you would have to add the electricity costs for storing the food in a freezer or fridge, but then we would also have to calculate some kind of storage fee for keeping the ready-made food…so let's not go crazy😉

I have not chosen the cheapest products only for calculating the costs of raw feeding. For the meat, which is by far the most cost driving factor in the calculations, I calculated an average per-kilo-price of 1.815 ISK. The per-kilo-prices for the meat range from 811 ISK to 3.089 ISK (no, lamb prime steak is not on that list), depending on whether you choose minced meat (hakk) or meat pieces/chunks, fresh or frozen. Frozen hakk is cheapest.

Also, in Iceland, lamb and foal are high quality meats as the animals live outside the whole time before being slaughtered. That means that – if these types of meat are being fed, an addition of fish oil is not needed to level out the omega 3-omega 6-ratio. I calculated the fish oil anyways as it typically belongs to a BARF ration as in most other countries.

Monthly costs for BARF (excl. cereals or dairy)

Monthly costs for BARF (incl. cereals, but no dairy)

So home made raw food will cost you something between 29.000 and 31.000 ISK per month for a 28 kg dog, given that you are not using the cheapest available products.

Monthly costs for dry food

The monthly costs when buying big packages are between 6.000 and 22.000 ISK.

I also calculated the prices for the same products when bought in smaller packages and with a range from 21.000 to 30.000 ISK they are considerably higher.

Monthly costs for ready-made raw food

So ready-made raw food is about 36.000 ISK to 54.000 ISK.

If you find other foods like this somewhere, send me a message and I will add it to the list :)

Monthly costs for wet food

The monthly costs are between 14.000 and 140.000 ISK (!!!). Now let's be fair and erase the 140.000 ISK and the 14.000 ISK as I assume you would buy neither the crazy expensive stuff on a regular basis, nor give your dog the absolute cheapest can food from Bónus. So we are looking at numbers between 57.000 ISK and 97.000 ISK. Still pretty crazy if you ask me.

As you can see, feeding with wet food is significantly more expensive than feeding with dry food and also – would you have guessed that? - much more expensive than home made BARF.

The price difference is only logical, because wet food often contains more animal ingredients than dry food, but unlike raw meat, it is processed and the processing itself can make it quite expensive.

Critical Consideration

The composition of the food

As you can see above, there are big price differences between food types – mostly because of how much meat they contain. Meat is the most expensive ingredient, so cheaper foods usually contain less of it and rely more on carbohydrates. A fair cost comparison only works when you compare similar ingredients, especially the amount and quality of animal components.

BARF usually contains 70–80% animal-based ingredients, while dry food has just 30–50%, and canned food anywhere between 12% and 70%. But even then, the quality matters: Is it real meat or cheap by-products? You could make a super cheap BARF meal by using mostly rice – but that’s not what BARF is about.

Declarations on the packaging

Even expensive ready-made food can be misleading. Why? Because some manufacturers calculate meat content as fresh weight, but plant content as dry weight – which makes it look like the product has more meat than it really does.

Example: 800 g of raw meat and 200 g of dry millet = 80% meat by weight. But once the meat is dried, it’s only 300 g, so the true ratio is closer to 60%. This trick helps save money while still legally advertising “high meat content.”

With BARF it is the other way around: Because vegetables/fruit contain even more water than meat, 200 g of vegetables/fruit and 800 g of meat result in a ratio of 91% meat to 9% (ca. 80 g) vegetables/fruit in dry matter.

On top of this, it is often unknown which animal components are being used in ready-made food. Even if the manufacturers name the ingredients in detail, they are not always really nutritionally useful for dogs, e.g. it says “chicken" on the package, but it could mean chicken feathers processed into low-grade protein powder. Not very nice, huh?

BARF can only be compared to so-called “high-meat-content wet foods”, where you really know which ingredients have been processed and with which you can ensure a really high meat content in the food. But as you saw above, feeding canned wet food is much more expensive than BARF...

Can good food really be cheap?

If a product claims high meat content and still costs less than fresh meat, something is just not right. Food manufacturers have costs on top of the ingredients, e.g. for processing, packaging, logistics, marketing and their profit. Retailers also add their own markup.

So how could it even be possible that the price of any ready-made food of any type could be lower than the price of home made fresh food? It is not possible. And it allows only one conclusion: Low meat content in the ready-made food.

Conclusion

The monthly costs with BARF are no higher than with a ready-made food, at least if you use the right basis for comparison. Instead of just looking at the costs, what you should consider are the ingredients.

Dogs thrive mainly on meat and animal components. They also eat other food components, of course, but animal components should make up the main part of their diet.

This can only be guaranteed if you feed high quality ready-made wet food and that is more expensive than BARF

I think, for our dogs and their health, we should all do BARF! :)