Data
UK dog grooming benchmarks, 2026
When owners book, what walks in, how often dogs come back and whether reminders work, from anonymised GroomRules bookings. Plus the 2026 UK price and market figures from other sources, each named and dated. Every section states its sample size.
By Owen Fleming, founder of GroomRules · Published
Three fifths of online grooming bookings are made when the salon is shut. Two thirds of the dogs booked have coats that mat. Regulars come back every seven weeks, a week later than the six-week default. One recall email in four turns into a booking. Those are the headline numbers from GroomRules bookings between February and October 2026, and they are below with their sample sizes, because the samples are still small.
Nobody publishes UK grooming data from real bookings except the software companies, and each of us sees only our own customers. So this page separates two things: what we can see on GroomRules, with the number of bookings behind each figure, and what other sources published in 2026 about prices and the market. Quote either, with a link. The platform figures are updated every quarter; the next update is due in January 2027.
When owners book
Sample: 121 bookings made by dog owners through GroomRules booking links, February to 12 October 2026, UK local time.
| Measure | Share of online bookings |
|---|---|
| Made outside Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm | 60.3% |
| Made after 6pm | 33.9% |
| Made between 9pm and 7am | 23.1% |
| Made at the weekend | 31.4% |
| Made less than 48 hours before the appointment | 14.9% |
| Typical gap between booking and appointment | 6 days (median) |
| Held for the groomer's approval before confirming | 55.4% |
- Mon12.4%
- Tue10.7%
- Wed11.6%
- Thu10.7%
- Fri23.1%
- Sat13.2%
- Sun18.2%
- Midnight to 7am4.1%
- 7am to 9am4.1%
- 9am to midday24%
- Midday to 2pm12.4%
- 2pm to 5pm18.2%
- 5pm to 9pm18.2%
- 9pm to midnight19%
The pattern matches what the owner's side of the trade would guess: people book the dog in the evening, after work and after the dog has been walked, and on Friday and Sunday when the week is being planned. Tuft puts the same figure on its own platform at 49%, on its homepage. A groomer who only takes bookings by phone or WhatsApp during the day is answering about half of the demand.
More than half of the online bookings in this sample were held for the groomer's approval rather than confirmed on the spot. That is a setting on each booking link, and it says something useful: online booking in grooming is different from online booking for a haircut, because the groomer wants to see the dog's details before committing a slot.
What walks in
Sample: 680 bookings with a breed recorded, from a small number of salons, so the order below is indicative rather than national.
- Cockapoo11.9%
- Cocker Spaniel9.7%
- Shih Tzu7.8%
- Yorkshire Terrier5.4%
- Labradoodle4.6%
- Westie3.5%
- Springer Spaniel3.1%
- Toy Poodle2.6%
- Mixed breed2.6%
- German Shepherd2.5%
- Jack Russell2.4%
- Border Collie1.6%
- Long36.5%
- Curly30.9%
- Short9.7%
- Double8.5%
- Wire7.9%
- Medium6.6%
- Small43.3%
- Medium42%
- Large13.8%
- Extra large0.5%
- Toy0.3%
Long and curly coats together are 67% of what is booked. Those are the coats that mat, the coats that need the shortest intervals, and the coats where a matting charge is most often argued about. Small and medium dogs are 85% of bookings; large dogs 14%; giant breeds barely register. If you are setting a price list, those two facts say where the money is. It is in the doodles and spaniels that come back every four to six weeks.
How often dogs come back
GroomRules carries a default recall interval for 231 breeds, which groomers can change. The defaults average 6.9 weeks. Then there is what dogs actually do.
| Default interval | Breeds on that interval |
|---|---|
| Every 4 weeks | 12 |
| Every 5 weeks | 1 |
| Every 6 weeks | 122 |
| Every 8 weeks | 77 |
| Every 10 weeks | 16 |
| Every 12 weeks | 3 |
| Coat type | Breeds | Median default interval |
|---|---|---|
| Short | 69 | Every 8 weeks |
| Long | 58 | Every 6 weeks |
| Wire | 36 | Every 6 weeks |
| Double | 27 | Every 6 weeks |
| Curly | 23 | Every 6 weeks |
| Medium | 18 | Every 6 weeks |
Sample for the next figures: 74 repeat visits across 64 dogs that had at least two completed grooms on GroomRules by 12 October 2026.
| Measure | Days |
|---|---|
| Median gap between a regular's grooms | 49 (7 weeks) |
| Middle half of regulars | 41 to 58 (about 6 to 8 weeks) |
So the dogs that do come back come back about a week later than the six-week default most of their breeds carry. A week of drift on a six-week cycle is one lost groom per dog per year. On a hundred regulars at £50, that is £5,000 that recall reminders exist to recover.
Do recall reminders work?
Sample: 165 recall emails sent by groomers on GroomRules by 12 October 2026, matched against the bookings that followed.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Recall emails sent | 165 |
| Led to a booking | 41 (24.8%) |
One email in four becoming a booking, with no follow-up text in this sample, is the figure to beat. Text recalls were not in this sample. They are being measured now, and the next edition will say whether they do better.
What a groom costs in 2026
GroomRules does not publish price data yet, because most of ours comes from too few salons to call a benchmark. Two other platforms published UK figures in 2026 from larger samples, by different methods.
| Full groom | Tuft: average of 15,029 bookings, Jan to Feb 2026 | GroomSlot: median of 483 listed prices, Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Extra small | £42 | |
| Small | £48 | £40 |
| Medium | £55 | £50 |
| Large | £63 | £60 |
| Extra large | £76 | |
| Puppy introduction | £29 to £40 | £36 (mean) |
| Nails only | £13 to £21 | £10 to £15 |
London and the South East run 15% to 40% above these. Mobile grooming charges £5 to £25 more than a salon. Sources: Tuft and GroomSlot. Both are vendors' own platform data.
The market
| Figure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Dogs in the UK | 10.2 million, owned by 27% of adults | PDSA PAW Report 2026 |
| Pet groomers listed in the UK | About 15,000: roughly 12,500 in England, 1,200 in Scotland, 800 in Wales. Directory counts, not an official figure | Rentech Digital and poidata.io business listings, 1 April 2026 (15,037) |
| Groomers reporting joint or muscle pain | 84%; back pain 79% | IGS Global Groomer Health Study 2025 to 2026, just under 4,000 groomers |
| Licensing | Not required in any UK nation; Scotland and Wales consulting | 2018 and 2021 Regulations; gov.scot; gov.wales |
Put those together and the arithmetic is simple. Ten million dogs, a good share of them with coats that need a professional every six to eight weeks, and about fifteen thousand listed groomers to do it. Demand is not the problem in this trade. Keeping the diary full without losing a week per dog per cycle is.
How this was measured
Platform figures come from the GroomRules production database on 12 October 2026. Internal test accounts are excluded. "Online bookings" are bookings a dog owner made through a groomer's booking link; bookings the groomer typed in are excluded from the timing section. Times are UK local time. Breed and coat figures use the breed the owner or groomer recorded on the booking, matched to the GroomRules breed table of 231 breeds. Repeat gaps count consecutive completed grooms for the same dog at the same groomer more than seven days apart. Recall figures count recall emails logged against the booking that followed, if any. No individual dog, owner or groomer can be identified from anything on this page.
The samples are small and most bookings come from a small number of salons, which is why each section says how many bookings sit behind it. The page is updated quarterly as the sample grows. External figures are from the named sources and were read on 12 and 13 October 2026. You may quote any figure on this page with a link to it; the data is published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. If you run a grooming business and want to contribute anonymised figures to the next edition, email owen@groomrules.com.
Want your own numbers? Every GroomRules account shows when its clients book, which breeds it grooms most and how long regulars leave between visits. See what the app records.