Comparing dog food by the price on the bag is how everyone ends up confused. A S$72 bag of freeze-dried and a S$72 bag of kibble feed a dog for very different lengths of time, and a fresh-cooked subscription is priced per day in the first place. The only number that lets you compare freeze-dried dog food cost with kibble and fresh-cooked is cost per day for your dog's weight. Here is how to work it out in two minutes, with the real prices we can stand behind and rough guides for the rest.
The formula, once, on your phone
Cost per day = (bag price ÷ bag weight in grams) × grams your dog eats per day.
The first part is on the receipt and the bag. The second part is on the feeding guide printed on the pack, for your dog's weight, and it is different for every food because the foods are different. A dog may eat fewer grams of a rich freeze-dried nugget than of kibble, and far more grams of a fresh-cooked meal that is mostly water. That's why a per-kilo comparison between food types is nearly meaningless, and a per-day comparison is the whole story.
Do it with your current bag first. Most people never have, and the answer surprises them.
Freeze-dried: the numbers we actually know
These are the two freeze-dried raw meals we stock as Mitodo Picks, at the prices on our shelf.
| Product | Bag | Price | Per 100 g dry | Days per bag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steve's Real Food Freeze-Dried Raw Dog Food | 20 oz (about 567 g) | S$72 | about S$12.70 | Depends on your dog's weight, see the feeding guide on the pack |
| Small Batch Freeze-Dried Raw Sliders | 14 oz (about 397 g) | S$58 | about S$14.60 | Depends on your dog's weight, see the feeding guide on the pack |
The per-100 g figure is just the price divided by the dry weight, useful for comparing these two bags with each other and nothing else. Neither label gives a servings-per-bag number we could quote, so we won't invent one. The food swells back up when you add water, so a bag goes further than its size on the shelf suggests. The water is yours, though, so compare dry weight only. Take the dry grams per day for your dog's weight from the pack, divide the bag weight by it, and that's your days per bag. Mix-and-match bag deals on Small Batch and Steve's apply automatically at checkout, which brings the per-bag price down if you rotate proteins.
Kibble: check your own bag
We don't sell kibble and we're not going to name brands. Kibble prices vary widely, from big supermarket bags to small bags from pet shops, so check the price per kilo on your own bag. The same brand is often cheaper per kilo in a big bag than a small one.
The per-day arithmetic is simple once you have your dog's grams from the pack. For example, a dog eating 100 g a day on S$10-per-kilo kibble costs S$1 a day; on S$20-per-kilo kibble, S$2 a day. A dog eating 300 g a day on the same two foods costs S$3 or S$6.
The Singapore catch is the big bag. In our humidity an opened 12 kg bag for a 4 kg dog goes stale and soft long before it's finished, and stale kibble is the one most often left in the bowl. The saving per kilo is real only if the bag gets eaten while it's still good. For small dogs, the smaller bag is often the cheaper one in practice.
Fresh-cooked: a broad Singapore range
Fresh-cooked food is gently cooked meat, vegetables and sometimes grains, portioned and chilled or frozen. Delivered subscriptions are priced per day or per week and already do the maths for you. In Singapore they range from a few dollars a day for a small dog to several times that for a large dog, depending on the recipe and how much of the diet it covers. Home-cooked is cheaper in ingredients but costs hours every week, and balancing a home-cooked diet properly needs a recipe from a vet or veterinary nutritionist rather than one from the internet.
Fresh food also needs cold storage. A week of meals for a 25 kg dog is a serious share of an HDB fridge-freezer, and that constraint quietly decides the question for a lot of flats before price does.
Putting the three side by side
| Freeze-dried raw | Kibble | Fresh-cooked | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | A bag by dry weight | A bag by weight | Per day or per week |
| Price we can quote | S$58 (14 oz) and S$72 (20 oz) | Varies widely; check the price per kg on your bag | From a few dollars a day, more for big dogs |
| Days per bag | From the feeding guide on the pack | From the feeding guide on the pack | Already per day |
| Storage | Cupboard, sealed | Cupboard, sealed, goes stale in humidity | Fridge and freezer |
| Travel and boarding | Easy | Easy | Needs a cold chain |
| Where it usually makes sense | Small dogs, toppers, no freezer | Large dogs on a budget, big households | Owners who want cooked food and have the fridge for it |
The honest summary: freeze-dried is the most expensive per gram and the most practical per cupboard, kibble is the cheapest per day for a big dog but can go stale before a small dog finishes a big bag, and fresh-cooked sits in the middle on price and at the bottom on convenience.
The hidden costs people forget
- Waste. Stale kibble left in the bowl and fresh meals that go off are money in the bin. Freeze-dried has the least of this if you seal the bag.
- Toppers bought to rescue a bowl. If a S$1-a-day kibble needs S$1 of topper to be eaten, it's a S$2-a-day food.
- Delivery. Weekly chilled delivery adds up; check whether it's in the per-day price.
- Time. Home cooking is a weekly shift in the kitchen. Count it.
- Fridge space. Not a dollar cost, until you need a second freezer.
The middle path: freeze-dried as a topper
You don't have to choose one column. The most common pattern we see in Singapore flats is a kibble or fresh base with a few freeze-dried nuggets crumbled on top, which gets the bowl eaten and stretches a bag of freeze-dried across weeks rather than days. In a two-dog household, the 4 kg maltese can eat freeze-dried as a full meal while the 28 kg Singapore Special has it as a topper, and both bags come from the same mix-and-match order. If your dog has a health condition, is on a prescription diet or is a large-breed puppy, ask your vet to confirm any change before you make it. For how to serve and handle raw food, see our freeze-dried raw explainer.
Why Steve's is the one we use for this comparison
We chose Steve's Real Food for the Mitodo shelf because the label makes this kind of maths possible. The price is S$72 for a 20 oz bag, the 80/15/5 split (80% meat, organs and bone, 15% produce, 5% superfoods) is printed on it, it's formulated to meet AAFCO nutrient profiles for all life stages (except the Whitefish recipe, which is for supplementary or intermittent feeding alongside other complete foods; check the pack), and the feeding guide is on the pack where you can read it before you buy. It comes in beef, chicken, turducken, pork, turkey and whitefish, and Steve's says every batch is tested for salmonella and other bacteria before it ships. We'd rather give you a number you can check than a claim you can't.
Tonight, pull out your current bag, find the price on the receipt and the grams per day on the feeding guide, and do the division. You'll have your real number in two minutes, and every comparison after that gets easy.