Is My Vet Bill Normal mascot
questions? answers —

FAQ.

How Is My Vet Bill Normal works, what we do with your data, and how you can help.

about us —

Where this came from.

It started as a thread on r/dogAdvice — pet owners sharing their invoices and asking “is this normal?” The same questions kept coming up: is dental cleaning supposed to cost $700? Is this ER fee outrageous? How does my city compare to the rest of the country?

So we built this. The site is community-run — by pet owners, for pet owners — and every comparison comes from real bills, not estimates. No vet chain runs it. No investor owns it. No ads, no premium tier, no data sales. Free forever, end of story.

The whole thing only works if folks share their bills — that's what turns one person's anecdote into enough data to actually trust. So if you've ever wondered if you got fleeced (or got a great deal!), come share what you paid.

just folks helping each other figure out what's fair →
security —

How we keep your bills private.

People on Reddit are (rightly) cautious about uploading documents anywhere. Here's exactly what happens to your bill, in plain English:

01
No third-party AI. Ever.
We run our own open-source OCR on private servers we control. Your invoice never gets sent to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other LLM provider. Not for extraction, not for redaction, not for anything.
02
Personal info scrubbed server-side
Names, account IDs, phone numbers, patient IDs, and other identifying details get stripped on our servers before the bill is processed for comparison. The cleaned version is what gets stored — the original is immediately discarded.
03
Anonymous by default
No accounts, no email signup, no tracking. Optional “your name” field on /upload only fills the wall of thanks if you choose to use it. Leave it blank and you're entirely anonymous.
04
Encrypted in transit & at rest
All uploads happen over HTTPS. Files and the cleaned data sit in an encrypted Firebase project with strict access rules — only our server-side code can read what's needed for the comparison.
05
No data sales, ever
Not to insurance companies, not to vet chains, not to advertisers, not to anyone. The community shared this data to help other pet owners — that's the only thing it gets used for.
questions? answers —

The questions we get most.

on the bench —

What we're building next

Live

Bill Checker

Upload a vet bill, get a line-by-line verdict — what you paid vs. what other pet owners in your metro paid for the same procedures.

Live

Share a Bill

Anonymously contribute your vet invoice. Names, account IDs, phone numbers, and patient details get scrubbed on our servers before anything is stored.

Live

Anonymize & Share

Drop a bill and get back a clean Markdown or PNG copy with personal info and clinic name stripped — ready to post on Reddit or save for yourself.

Live

Community Goals & Wall of Thanks

Track how close we are to 5,000 bills per state, see which breeds are most represented, and recognize the folks who shared.

Building

Price Lookup

Type a procedure ("dental cleaning," "ACL surgery") and see the range owners paid in your state. Gating launch on enough bills per region before it ships.

Planned

State & Metro Cost Breakdowns

Compare actual vet prices across states and metros — not just contribution counts.

Planned

Cost Trend Charts

Track how procedure prices change over time as the index fills in.

Planned

Insurance EOB Comparisons

Compare what insurance actually pays vs. what clinics charge.

Planned

Corporate vs Independent

Compare prices between chains (VCA, BluePearl, etc.) and independent clinics.