Mobile vs Salon Dog Grooming Prices in Australia

A note on where these numbers come from. They are the starting prices built into My Pet Groomer's starter menus — the salon menu and the mobile menu a new Australian business sees on day one, before changing anything. They are a considered starting point, not a market survey, and not advice on what you should charge. Fuel, suburb, van and speed all move the answer. Checked September 2026.

Ask a salon groomer what mobile groomers charge and you will get a number with an eyebrow attached. Ask a mobile groomer and you will get a list of everything the salon groomer does not have to pay for. Both of them are right, which is why the useful comparison is not the price. It is the price with the hours showing.

We ship two starter menus, one for each business, built to the same shape. Here they are next to each other.

The two menus, with the hours put back in

Full Groom — wash, blow dry, full clip and style.

| Size | Salon price | Booked for | Per hour | Mobile price | Booked for | Per hour | Mobile premium | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Small, up to 10kg | $75 | 1h 30m | $50.00 | $110 | 2h | $55.00 | +47% | | Medium, 10–25kg | $95 | 2h | $47.50 | $135 | 2h 30m | $54.00 | +42% | | Large, 25kg+ | $120 | 2h 30m | $48.00 | $165 | 3h | $55.00 | +38% |

Bath & Tidy — wash, blow dry, nails, ears, and a tidy of face, feet and sanitary.

| Size | Salon price | Booked for | Per hour | Mobile price | Booked for | Per hour | Mobile premium | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Small | $55 | 1h | $55.00 | $85 | 1h 30m | $56.67 | +55% | | Medium | $70 | 1h 15m | $56.00 | $105 | 2h | $52.50 | +50% | | Large | $90 | 1h 30m | $60.00 | $125 | 2h 15m | $55.56 | +39% |

Two things jump out.

The client pays roughly 40 to 55 per cent more for the van. That is the number the salon groomer's eyebrow is about.

The groomer earns almost exactly the same per booked hour — about $55 in the van against $48 to $60 in the salon. That is the number the mobile groomer's list is about. The premium is not profit. It is paying for the half hour of every booking that is not grooming.

Where the extra half hour goes

Look at the "booked for" columns. Every mobile service is booked for thirty to forty-five minutes longer than its salon twin. That is not because the clipping takes longer in a van. It is because the booking has to cover things a salon never books time for:

• Driving there. Fifteen minutes each way, if your day is clustered; forty if it is not.
• Setting up and packing down. Water, power, the table, the dryer, the hose off the client's tap.
• One dog at a time. A salon has three dogs drying while a fourth is clipped. A van has one.

That last point is the one that decides everything. In a salon, drying time is somebody else's time — the dog sits in a crate with a dryer on it while you work on the next one. In a van, drying time is your time, because there is no next one. A mobile groomer's "per hour" includes the minutes spent watching a dog dry, which is why the durations are longer and why the premium mostly evaporates once you divide by them.

The three numbers that decide whether a van pays

The menus above make the two businesses look equivalent per hour. They are not, and the difference lives in three numbers that no price list shows. Count yours honestly.

1. Dogs per day. A salon with a bather and a good drying room can move eight dogs through a day; the groomer's hands are busy for most of it. A van does one dog at a time, start to finish, travel included. Take your own booked durations from the table above and divide the hours you are willing to work: at two and a half hours per medium groom including travel, a nine-hour day is three and a half dogs. Three dogs at $135 is $405. Three and a half is not a dog. That is the mobile day, and the whole business is the question of whether it can be four.

2. Minutes of travel per dog. This is the number that separates mobile groomers who are doing well from mobile groomers who are exhausted. Two clients in the same suburb, back to back, cost you ten minutes between them. Two clients in suburbs half an hour apart cost you an hour, which is a third of a groom, which is $45 you did not earn and fuel you did pay for. The fix is not a higher price. It is booking by area: Tuesdays in the north, Thursdays on the bay. Let clients pick a day, and quietly own which suburbs each day goes to.

3. What the van costs per day, before the first dog. Registration, insurance, fuel, the loan, the generator, the water. Add it up for the year and divide by the days you actually work, not the days you could. It is very common for that number to be $80 to $120 a day. If it is, your first dog every morning is paying for the van, and your real earnings start with the second.

None of those three appears on a menu. All three are why two groomers charging the identical mobile prices can have wildly different years.

The add-on rows are where the van wins

Look at what did not change between the two menus: the add-ons. Nail trim $15, teeth $15, de-shedding $25, flea rinse $25 — the same prices whether you are in a salon or a driveway, because we ship the mobile preset with the same add-on category.

That is deliberate, and it is the mobile groomer's best-kept secret. The travel and the setup are already paid for by the groom. A de-shed added on to a mobile booking is twenty-five dollars for thirty minutes with zero driving attached — the most profitable half hour of a mobile day, by a distance. A salon has to sell add-ons to lift its margin. A mobile groomer has to sell them to make the maths work, and has an advantage doing it: the owner is standing right there, watching, and can see the undercoat coming out.

If you run a van, your per-dog revenue target should be the groom plus one add-on, every time. Say it at the door.

So which one should you be?

If you are choosing, do not choose on price. The client pays more for the van, and you keep about the same per hour; the premium is real but it is not yours. Choose on the three numbers.

A van suits someone who can cluster their days, who works alone by preference, and whose clients will pay for convenience — elderly owners, big anxious dogs, people who cannot get to a salon. Its ceiling is lower, because there is only ever one dog on the table, and its floor is higher, because the van is paid for whether or not a dog shows up.

A salon suits someone who wants a second pair of hands, a drying room doing work while they do other work, and the higher ceiling that comes with it — at the cost of a lease, a fit-out and the fixed hours that come with a door.

Plenty of groomers do both: a salon three days and a van two, with the van's days clustered where the salon's clients are not. The menus above are built to sit side by side in one business for exactly that reason.

Whatever you choose, run the numbers with the hours showing. A price list tells you what a dog costs. It has never once told anyone what an hour costs, and the hour is the thing you are selling.