Puppy Shots Cost in 2026: $40 to $475 for the Series

A puppy vaccination series costs $40 to $475 in the United States, and $291 is the typical price. Regionally the typical price runs from $40 in Loudoun County, Virginia low-cost clinic to $291 in the Northeast — a 7.3x spread for the same procedure.

Three visits, not three shots — and the venue sets the price

Loudoun County, Virginia charges $10 a dose for DHPP and $10 for rabies, so the core puppy course costs $40 there. Tequesta Veterinary Clinic in Florida publishes fees that total $475 for the same schedule. Twelve times the money, the same antigens.

The reason the answer is a range and not a number is that a puppy series is a schedule, not a product. It is at least three appointments spread over eight to ten weeks, and each provider prices the appointment differently.

Four venues, each with its own published total:

• County or municipal clinic: $40 to $80. Loudoun County at $10 a dose; Fairfax County, Virginia at $20.
• Retail vaccination clinic, à la carte: $254 to $340. Tractor Supply's PetVet, summing each location's own three published puppy-visit prices.
• Retail vaccination clinic, bundled: $269 to $289. Petco Vetco's Puppy Bundle.
• Private practice: $474 to $475. Tequesta in Florida and Love City Vet in Philadelphia, from their own published exam and vaccine fees.

What the schedule actually requires

The 2022 AAHA canine vaccination guidelines specify at least three doses of the core combination vaccine between 6 and 16 weeks of age, given 2 to 4 weeks apart, plus rabies. That is the minimum, and it is why nobody can price this as one visit.

AAHA also prefers finishing at 18 to 20 weeks where parvovirus risk is high, because maternal antibodies can persist to 13 to 15 weeks and block a modified-live vaccine. A fourth dose is a real possibility, not an upsell.

That fourth DHPP dose costs $10 at Loudoun County, $15 in Montgomery County, Maryland, $41 to $50 at PetVet and $46 to $60 at Vetco depending on whether leptospirosis is in the vial.

AAHA is blunt about what stopping early does: finishing the series too soon is a likely cause of most vaccine failures. It is the one line item on this page where the cheap choice is also the wrong one.

The exam fee is the whole private-practice premium

Retail vaccination clinics fold a vitals check into the visit price and charge nothing separately. Private practices bill it every time. Love City Vet publishes $78 per wellness exam; Tequesta publishes a $74 new-patient consultation and $48 for each puppy progress exam after it.

Three visits at those rates is $170 to $234 of consultation before a single vaccine is drawn up. On a $474 series that is roughly half the bill.

Which is the honest way to read the gap between a $269 bundle and a $475 practice series. You are not paying twice as much for vaccines. You are paying about the same for vaccines and roughly $200 for three examinations of a growing puppy by a veterinarian who will keep the record.

Whether that is worth $200 is a real question with no default answer. It is worth more for a shelter puppy with no history than for the third puppy from a breeder you have used before.

Petco publishes its own bundle discount, and it is $162

Vetco's Chicago menu prices the three-visit Puppy Bundle at $269 and states that buying the same components à la carte costs $162 more, or $431. In Garey, California the bundle is $289.

The bundle covers three visits 2 to 4 weeks apart with rabies, three DHPP doses, two leptospirosis doses, Bordetella, two dewormings and a fecal test.

A 38% discount published by the seller is unusual enough to be worth acting on. If you are already going to a retail clinic and the puppy needs the standard schedule, buying the components separately is simply a mistake.

The condition is completion. A bundle abandoned after two visits — because you moved, or found a vet you preferred — has bought two visits at bundle prices, which is fine, and nothing else.

A puppy that starts late costs less

The series price is driven by the age at the first visit, and no incumbent page says so. AAHA's window opens at 6 weeks and closes at 16, so a puppy first seen at 6 weeks needs four or five doses and one first seen at 10 weeks needs three.

At PetVet's $41 to $50 a dose, that difference is $41 to $100. At a county clinic it is $10 to $20.

This is not a reason to delay. Between 6 and 16 weeks the puppy is in the exact window where maternal antibodies have faded and the vaccine has not yet taken, which is when parvovirus kills them.

It is a reason to stop treating a quoted series price as fixed. A shelter puppy adopted at 11 weeks with one dose on its record is a materially cheaper course than the number on a clinic's puppy-package page.

How much are puppy shots at a low-cost clinic?

$40 to $80 for the whole core series, against $254 to $340 at a retail chain. Loudoun County, Virginia publishes $10 per DHPP dose and $10 for rabies; Fairfax County, Virginia publishes $20 for each. Three doses plus rabies is the arithmetic.

Haven Humane in Redding, California sits in between at $30 for DA2PP and $25 for rabies, or $115 for the course.

What you give up is the same thing you give up on a single low-cost rabies shot: no examination, no continuity of record, and clinic dates rather than appointments. For a puppy specifically, that second one costs more than it does for an adult dog, because the visits are also where a developing heart murmur or an undescended testicle gets found.

A middle path exists. Our low-cost vet directory lists reduced-fee practices that do examine the animal.

Are the non-core vaccines charged twice?

Yes, in the first year, and it is the most common surprise on a puppy bill. Leptospirosis, canine influenza and Lyme each require two doses 2 to 4 weeks apart in a puppy that has never had them, so each one added to the schedule is charged twice inside the series at $36 to $60 a dose.

Bordetella is the exception that proves it: the intranasal and oral routes need one dose, the injectable needs two.

None of these are core under AAHA. They are recommended by exposure risk — boarding, tick country, a lot of dog-park time — and a puppy that does none of those things does not need them.

Ask which of the doses on the estimate are core and which are exposure-based. The answer changes the series total by $70 to $240.

The bill nobody quotes: the one-year booster

The series does not end the spending. AAHA requires a single combination dose within one year of the last puppy dose, then boosters every three years after that.

Budget one more visit twelve months out — $39 to $53 at a private practice, $10 to $20 at a county clinic — and then nothing on the core vaccines for three years.

No bundle price on this page includes it. Vetco's $269 and PetVet's $254 to $340 all stop at the third puppy visit.

The other first-year bill worth planning against is the spay or neuter, which lands in the same twelve months and costs several times the vaccine series.

How these series totals were built

No aggregator publishes a puppy-series total, so we built each one by adding a single provider's own published fees for the AAHA schedule — never by mixing providers. Where a provider publishes a bundle price, that price is used as published.

The $40 Loudoun County figure is three published $10 DHPP doses plus a published $10 rabies dose. The $474 Love City and $475 Tequesta figures are those practices' own published exam and vaccine fees across three visits. Every underlying number is published; the addition is ours, and is stated so it can be checked.

Two limits. Schedules vary with the age at first visit, so no total here is a quote. And a 2026 peer-reviewed survey in Frontiers in Veterinary Science found only 1.91% of US small-animal clinics publish any price online, so the private-practice end of this range rests on two clinics rather than a sample. The rest of the routine bills are priced the same way on our vet cost index.

Puppy Vaccination Series cost by region

These are the prices behind the range at the top of the page, one row per geography we could source. The basis column says how each row was arrived at.

What changes the price

Two invoices for the same procedure diverge for a small number of reasons. These are the ones that move the total most.

How many doses the puppy actually needs

The 2022 AAHA guidelines require at least three combination doses between 6 and 16 weeks, 2-4 weeks apart, and say 18-20 weeks is preferred in high-parvovirus areas - a fourth visit adds $41-$110 depending on where you go. A puppy first seen at 10 weeks needs fewer doses than one started at 6 weeks

Where the series is done

$40 at a county clinic (Loudoun County VA), $254-$340 at a retail vaccination clinic, $474-$475 at a private practice - for the same schedule and the same core antigens. The choice of venue moves this price more than geography does

Whether an exam fee is charged per visit

Retail clinics fold a vitals check into the visit price; private practices bill it separately at $48-$78 each time, so three exams add $144-$234 before a single vaccine

Non-core add-ons

Leptospirosis, Bordetella, canine influenza and Lyme are all noncore under AAHA and cost $36-$60 a dose. Lepto, influenza and Lyme each need two doses 2-4 weeks apart in a naive puppy, so each one added is charged twice inside the series

Bundle versus a la carte at a retail clinic

Petco Vetco prices its Chicago Puppy Bundle at $269 and states the a la carte equivalent at $431 - a $162 gap the chain publishes itself

The series price does not include the one-year booster

AAHA requires a single combination dose within one year of the last puppy dose, then boosters every three years - so budget one more $39-$53 visit twelve months after the series ends, and then nothing for three years

What the itemized invoice looks like

Clinics quote a bundled number and itemize afterwards. This is the decomposition, so you can read a real estimate line by line before you sign it.

Does pet insurance cover puppy vaccination series?

Puppy Vaccination Series is normally not covered by a standard accident-and-illness policy. The puppy series is preventive care and is excluded from every standard accident-and-illness policy, so a base plan pays nothing towards it. This is one of the few cases where a preventive-care or wellness add-on can plausibly pay for itself, because the series is front-loaded into a single policy year: a $254-$475 spend in the first twelve months is the largest routine-care bill most dogs ever generate. Compare the add-on premium and its fixed annual routine-care allowance against the series price at the venue you actually intend to use - at $40 in a county clinic no rider is worth buying.

What you would get back: Nothing under a base plan. Preventive-care add-ons reimburse actual cost against a fixed annual routine-care allowance, which is usually smaller than a private-practice puppy series.

Coverage rules differ enough between carriers that the only useful answer is a side-by-side: our pet insurance comparison for puppy vaccination series shows which policies pay for it, what the waiting period is, and what counts as pre-existing.

Common questions

Why a pet needs puppy vaccination series

The pages below are the reasons this bill happens. Each one carries the same price data you are reading, in the context of the problem that produces it.

Conditions treated with puppy vaccination series

• parvo in dogs Can be an emergency — A virus that destroys the lining of a puppy's intestine and the bone marrow that makes its white blood cells, producing vomiting and bloody diarrhoea that can kill in days.
• worms in dogs Can be an emergency — Four different worms with four different stories, grouped together only because they all live in a dog's gut.

More vaccines & shots costs

• cheap rabies shot for dogs — A cheap rabies shot for a dog costs $2 to $43.
• low cost rabies shots for cats — A low cost rabies shot for a cat runs $2 to $109.
• how much are cat shots — Cat shots cost $40 to $502 for the full kitten series, and the indoor-or-outdoor decision swings it 117% at one clinic.
• bordetella shot cost — A bordetella shot costs $15 to $56 per dose, and the injectable needs two doses in a naive dog: an $8 sticker premium that is really $56 to $72 in year one..
• dhpp vaccine cost — A DHPP vaccine costs $10 to $60 per dose, and a puppy needs at least three of them.

Every procedure we have priced is listed on the vet cost index.

Sources

1. 2022 AAHA Canine Vaccination Guidelines (JAAHA 2022;58:1-19) — American Animal Hospital Association, PDF hosted by Merck Animal Health, 2022.
2. Vaccination Packages and Prices, Chicago, Illinois — Vetco Vaccination Clinics (Petco), 2026.
3. Vaccination Packages and Prices, Garey, California — Vetco Vaccination Clinics (Petco), 2026.
4. PetVet Vaccination Clinic Pricing, York, Pennsylvania — PetVet by VIP Petcare at Tractor Supply, 2026.
5. PetVet Vaccination Clinic Pricing, East Ellijay, Georgia — PetVet by VIP Petcare at Tractor Supply, 2026.
6. PetVet Vaccination Clinic Pricing, Fort Wayne, Indiana — PetVet by VIP Petcare at Tractor Supply, 2026.
7. PetVet Vaccination Clinic Pricing, Oak Ridge, Tennessee — PetVet by VIP Petcare at Tractor Supply, 2026.
8. Puppy Vaccine Protocol and Price List — Midvalley Animal Clinic, Taylorsville, Utah, 2026.
9. Veterinary Clinic Price List — Tequesta Veterinary Clinic, Florida, 2026.
10. Philadelphia Pricing — Love City Vet, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2026.
11. Low-Cost Resources — Loudoun County, Virginia, 2026.
12. Vaccine and Microchip Clinics — Fairfax County, Virginia Animal Services, 2026.
13. Vaccine Clinics — Haven Humane Society, Redding, California, 2026.
14. How Much Do Dog and Puppy Vaccinations Cost? — CareCredit (Synchrony), 2026.