Personalised kibble vs raw frozen
tails.com vs Bella & Duke on price
Dry food measured out by scoop against frozen raw blocks defrosted overnight: these two sit at opposite ends of the range this site prices, and almost everything about how they reach your kitchen is different. One ships ambient and keeps in a cupboard, the other arrives frozen and wants freezer room from the day it lands. Both build the plan around your own dog rather than selling a bag off a shelf, and both quote only at the end of a questionnaire, so the figures here come from walking each signup ourselves at six dog sizes.
- Ongoing prices at six dog sizes, past the opening offers
- The two questions that move one column and not the other
- A full year on each, and what a switch does to the first one
Ongoing prices for a neutered 14kg adult dog on typical walks. Both verified 4 Sept 2026 from the brands' own quote processes.
Six dogs, two plans, priced side by side
Each row is a dog of a size people recognise, quoted for a neutered adult walked a normal amount, at the rate that applies once any opening discount is finished. Neither brand publishes a table you could read these off, so every figure traces back to a quote we recorded inside the brand's own signup.
| Dog | tails.com Personalised kibble | Bella & Duke Raw |
|---|---|---|
| Chihuahua 3kg | £0.52 (cheaper for this dog) | £1.07 |
| Dachshund 9kg | £1.00 (cheaper for this dog) | £2.00 |
| Cocker Spaniel 14kg | £1.25 (cheaper for this dog) | £2.57 |
| Border Collie 19kg | £1.47 (cheaper for this dog) | £3.02 |
| Labrador 30kg | £1.94 (cheaper for this dog) | £4.00 |
| Rottweiler 40kg | £2.25 (cheaper for this dog) | £5.33 |
Cheaper by weight
- 2–60kg tails.com
The two columns move apart as dogs get bigger, and the reason is structural rather than commercial. A raw plan ships the water in the food and ships it frozen, so a large dog's portion is a large parcel every time; a dry plan concentrates the same meal into a fraction of the weight and posts it at ambient temperature. Scaling costs one of these formats much more than the other, which is visible in the bottom rows of this table.
A year on each, and the year you switch
Starting either plan starts a new opening offer, so the first twelve months are not what the twelve after them look like. The block below runs a complete year on each for a mid-size adult, with each offer counted at the length it runs rather than at the size printed on the banner.
- £40.19 more a month on Bella & Duke, once both are at their ongoing price
- £481.91 more a year at the ongoing prices, for the same dog
- 0 days that Bella & Duke's offer keeps its running total below tails.com's: its discounted price is already above the other's ongoing price
- £923.66 a first year on Bella & Duke with its offer, against £456.14 staying on tails.com
It reads your current plan at its ongoing rate, on the assumption you are past the offer you joined on. Where one brand's discounted daily price is still above the other's normal daily price, no number of discounted days brings the running totals level, and the block reports that instead of inventing a crossover date.
Anything cheaper than both
No brand we track comes in under both of these for this dog. That is a statement about our coverage as much as about the market: the cheaper column here is a dry food, dry is the least costly format on this site to produce and to post, and we do not yet price a second dry brand that could undercut it. It is worth rereading at another dog size, and after each round of sampling, because both can change the answer.
The two questions that only move one column
Activity is the answer both funnels take seriously, which is unusual for a pair on this site. tails.com is the most activity-sensitive brand we have sampled: holding a mid-size adult steady and changing nothing but the walk length moved the quote by more than half between the quietest option and the most active one. Bella & Duke asks the same question and spends it on the portion instead, giving a busier dog more food rather than charging a different rate for it, and the effect on what you pay is real but smaller.
Neutering is where they part company. tails.com asks, and the answer changes the quote. Bella & Duke never asks, at any point in its signup, which means a neutered dog and an entire one of the same size and habits are quoted the same figure by it. We assert that rather than assume it: the profiles behind these curves were walked in both states, and a brand that is not asking a question cannot be pricing on it. For anyone comparing the two, it means the neutering box on one form rearranges half of this comparison and leaves the other half untouched.
A puppy widens this more than an adult does
Both brands feed a growing dog more than a finished one, but not on the same slope. Bella & Duke's uplift climbs steeply with size, so a small puppy is priced a little above an adult of its weight while a large one is priced like an adult more than twice its size. tails.com raises the portion for a puppy too, and raises it considerably more gently across the same range of sizes.
The practical consequence is that this table understates the decision for anyone shopping for a big puppy, which is the point at which people choose a food and expect to stay on it for years. The calculator handles it properly, because it applies each brand's own measured puppy figures rather than one shared growth assumption, and the age band is among the first things it asks for.
Where each of these numbers comes from
tails.com bills a calendar month, so the monthly figure is the one that reaches a bank statement, and the daily column is that amount spread over an average month. We record the kibble-only plan and turn down the wet food offered alongside it during signup, because that pack steps up in jumps as dogs get bigger rather than scaling with them, and folding it in would price a different plan from the one named here.
Bella & Duke bills per delivery instead, so its daily figure is a box price divided by the days of food that box is stated to last. We take it from the signup rather than from the estimator on the brand's own site, because the ordering screen is what a customer pays and the estimator, which is offered as a quick guide, returned a lower number than the cheapest box we could buy at every size we checked. We price the delivery size the brand itself marks as its most popular, and its smaller and larger boxes work out differently per day.
Cheaper of the two for a typical 14kg adult dog
tails.com £1.25/day · £38.04/month ongoing
Take either one on its own
What tails.com costs
Prices by dog size, what the introductory offer does, and every brand we track that undercuts it.
What Bella & Duke costs
Prices by dog size, what the introductory offer does, and every brand we track that undercuts it.
Fresh food only
Raw, gently cooked and dehydrated plans compared without kibble in the ranking.
tails.com vs Bella & Duke: your questions
Is raw feeding more expensive than kibble?
For these two brands, at the sizes in the table above, the raw plan costs more per day than the personalised dry plan at every row. That is a finding about two subscriptions rather than about raw feeding in general, and raw bought in bulk from a butcher or a specialist freezer supplier is a different exercise entirely, which this site does not yet price. What the table settles is the subscription question someone is usually asking when they put these two names side by side.
Why does one of them ask about neutering and the other not?
Neutering lowers a dog's daily energy requirement by a noticeable margin, so a brand that asks can size the portion more tightly. tails.com asks and prices on the answer. Bella & Duke does not ask it anywhere in its signup, so its quote for a neutered dog matches its quote for an entire one of the same size, and we model it that way rather than applying a correction the brand itself is not applying.
Does the Bella & Duke opening offer make it cheaper to begin with?
The switching block above works this out and prints the answer rather than describing it. The mechanism behind it is worth knowing: an opening discount only reverses the ordering while the discounted daily price sits below the other brand's ordinary daily price, and when it does not sit below it, the running totals never meet. Offers on both brands have moved during the time we have been sampling them, so the figure on the page is the one to trust over anything remembered.
What does each one need from my kitchen?
Bella & Duke arrives frozen and has to go straight into a freezer, with a portion moved down to the fridge the night before it is eaten, and the space it wants scales with the dog. tails.com arrives as sealed dry food that lives in a cupboard and is scooped out at mealtimes. Neither cost lands on any bill, but freezer room is a real constraint in a small kitchen and is worth settling before price does.