Rover nets about $9.50 an hour: the math on Wag vs Rover

Under the assumptions below, a Rover sitter keeps about $9.48 per hour out of the house before tax and about $7.08 after it. Wag can’t be scored the same way because it doesn’t publish the share it takes from caregivers. Of the two apps, Rover is the one you can price before you sign up.

The numbers (Rover, per hour out of the house)

Inputs: the rate is Care.com’s posted pet-care rate of $147 per 8 hours (Care.com Cost of Care Report). The sitter fee is Rover’s 20% (Rover help center). We assume 80% of your time out is paid and 3 miles driven per hour out, costed at the 76-cent IRS rate in force from 1 July 2026. Tax is 15.3% self-employment tax (IRS) plus an assumed 10% income tax set-aside. All figures are rounded to the cent.

Assumptions

Swap in your own number at any step.

1. Rate. Neither Rover nor Wag publishes typical sitter rates, so this model borrows a market benchmark. Care.com’s 2026 Cost of Care Report puts pet care at $147 for 8 hours, which is $18.375 per paid hour. That’s a rate families post on Care.com. It isn’t verified pay, and it isn’t a Rover or Wag figure. Use what you would actually charge.
2. Platform cut. Rover’s help center says it takes “a 20% service fee per booking”, so sitters keep 80%. Wag’s cut isn’t published (see below).
3. Paid share. We assume 80% of your time out is paid. The other 20% goes on driving between clients, key handoffs and waiting, and nobody pays for any of it.
4. Miles. We assume 3 miles driven per hour out.
5. Cost per mile. The IRS business standard mileage rate was 72.5 cents a mile for January to June 2026. From 1 July 2026, IRS Announcement 2026-11 raised it to 76 cents. We use 76 cents as a stand-in for fuel, wear and depreciation. Of each mile, 35 cents counts as depreciation.
6. Tax. Self-employment tax is 12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare, 15.3% in total. On top of that we assume you set aside 10% for income tax. The 10% doesn’t come from a bracket table, so use your own rate.
7. Left at $0: phone, poop bags, treats, leashes, any insurance of your own, and the background-check fee Rover charges at sign-up (the amount isn’t confirmed). Each of these pulls the real number down.

Worked example: 8 paid hours on Rover in one week

At an 80% paid share, 8 paid hours means 10 hours out of the house. Total driving is 30 miles.

Your listed rates, 8 paid hours        $147.00
Rover service fee (20%)               - $29.40
Paid out to you                        $117.60
Mileage: 30 miles x $0.76             - $22.80
Net before tax                          $94.80
Self-employment tax (15.3%)           - $14.50
Income tax set-aside (10%, assumed)    - $9.48
Net after tax                           $70.82

Divide each line by the 10 hours out:

Gross:          $147.00 / 10 = $14.70
Costs:  ($29.40 + $22.80) / 10 =  $5.22
Net:             $94.80 / 10 =  $9.48
After tax:       $70.82 / 10 =  $7.08

Rover also charges owners “an 11% fee finalized at checkout” on top of your rate:

Owner pays:   $147.00 x 1.11 = $163.17
Rover keeps:  $29.40 + $16.17 = $45.57
Rover's share of what the owner paid: $45.57 / $163.17 = 27.9%
Your share before mileage: $117.60 / $163.17 = 72.1%

Rover at 4, 8 and 16 paid hours a week

Same assumptions, three workloads. Yearly figures are the weekly figure times 52, rounded to the nearest $10. For simplicity they use the 76-cent rate all year, although the first half of 2026 was 72.5 cents.

Each paid hour leaves about $8.85 after tax ($7.08 divided by 0.8). Self-employment tax applies once your net self-employment earnings for the year reach $400, and the 4-hour row gets there in about nine weeks. For how a small weekly commitment adds up over a year, see how much 5 hours a week is worth.

Two things can move these numbers. First, Rover’s FY2022 annual report says its percentage fees “are established at the time a pet parent or pet provider joined the platform,” so an older account may be on different terms. Check the fee shown in your own account. Second, California has its own setup. Rover says sitters there enter rates differently “for legal reasons specific to California.” Owners pay a marketplace fee of 25% of the rate the sitter sets, rounded to the nearest dollar, plus the 11% booking fee. Rover’s Q3 2022 filing also reports that it agreed to pay $18.0M to settle claims by California pet care providers. If you sit in California, run the numbers from your own payout screen.

Fees and terms, side by side

Rover’s Guarantee terms also say Rover “does not offer insurance to pet caregivers,” so your own liability is not covered by it. Ask your insurer whether your auto or liability policy covers paid pet care before you rely on it.

Why Wag has no hourly figure here

Wag’s FY2024 annual report says it makes money from “service fees charged to PCGs” (pet caregivers) and that caregivers pay “registration fees… to join and be listed.” It gives no percentage. Third-party sites quote commission figures, but none come from Wag, so this model doesn’t use them.

Wag’s sitter page does make an earnings claim: “Sitting dogs three times a week can earn up to $500 a month.” That’s a ceiling with no hours attached, so it can’t be turned into an hourly rate. The same page says you set your own rates, payment is released within 48 hours, and tips are 100% yours.

Until Wag shows you the cut, plug the rate the app displays into this formula:

Net per hour out = (your rate x 0.8 paid share x (1 - Wag's cut)) - (miles per hour x $0.76)

At the $18.375 rate, each 10 percentage points of commission is worth $1.47 per hour out:

Before you accept bookings, compare what the app pays you for a booking with what the owner is charged.

Who owns each app

Blackstone-affiliated funds took Rover private on 27 February 2024, for about $2.3B in cash. Wag filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 case on 21 July 2025 and came out of bankruptcy on 2 September 2025 as a private company wholly owned by Retriever LLC, its secured lender. Wag says it kept operating throughout. Before the filing it reported “over 500,000 Pet Caregivers approved” and about 445,000 platform participants transacting in Q4 2024. No changes to fees or policies under the new owner have been confirmed.

What changes the answer

Starting from the $9.48 base (net per hour out, before tax), with one input changed at a time:

Paid share and miles move the result more than the fee does. Going from a scattered route (60% paid) to a tight one (90%) adds $4.41 an hour, three times the $1.47 that 10 points of commission is worth. Boarding or sitting in your own home cuts the driving out entirely, but neither app publishes typical rates for those services, so they aren’t modeled here.

Compared with

The federal minimum wage is $7.25, and an employee earning it pays no mileage and only half the Social Security and Medicare tax. Rover’s $9.48 before tax clears it by $2.23. Many states set a higher minimum, and where the state rate is higher, workers are entitled to it, so check yours. The Bureau of Labor Statistics median is also an employee wage, and it’s $2.38 above Rover’s gross per hour out before any costs come off.

Care.com jobs have been paid outside the platform since 1 March 2026, so there’s no booking cut to model. Care.com also says it can’t enforce payment disputes, and caregivers pay an annual background-check fee unless an active Premium membership covers it. The FTC has noted that Care.com doesn’t track what caregivers are actually paid, so read its posted rates as asking prices.

For other gigs worked out the same way, see the DoorDash per-delivery math, weekend side hustles by net pay per hour and side hustles ranked by after-tax pay.

Self-employment tax and the 1099-K

The rules are the same on both apps. You’re self-employed, so self-employment tax applies once your net earnings for the year reach $400. For 2025 and 2026, the 1099-K reporting threshold is more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions. The 16-hour row above comes to about $15,290 a year in listed rates and about $12,230 after Rover’s fee, both under the threshold. You may not get a form, but the income is still taxable. Keep a mileage log with dates, because the standard rate changed on 1 July 2026 and the rate you use depends on when you drove. These figures are arithmetic, not tax advice. A tax professional can tell you how the rules apply to you.

If you want a platform whose sitter fee you can check before signing up, Rover is the one of the two that publishes it.

Sources

• Rover help center: fees
• Rover help center: fees and rates in California
• Wag sitter page
• Wag FY2024 Form 10-K
• Care.com 2026 Cost of Care Report
• IRS 2026 standard mileage rate
• CPA Practice Advisor: July 2026 mileage rate increase
• IRS Topic 554, self-employment tax
• US Department of Labor: wages and minimum wage

Verdict in one number

$7.08 an hour is what Rover leaves you after fees, mileage and tax under these assumptions. Wag can’t be scored the same way until it shows you its cut.