The Ultimate Dog Food Comparison Table: Dog Food Nutrition Information

Picking the best dog food can be tough.

You obviously want to give your pup something tasty, but you also want it to be nutritious. You also need it to address any health issues she has, and of course, you need it to fit within your budget.

The problem is that there are literally thousands of dog foods on the market.

Comparing the myriad options available is a daunting task. And to make things even more difficult, manufacturers often provide nutritional information in different ways.

What you need is a comprehensive table that allows you to compare dog foods in apples-to-apples fashion.

And that’s exactly what we’ve put together here: a comprehensive spreadsheet containing the nutritional information of more than 2300 dog food recipes.

Best of all, you can even sort or filter it to view the specific characteristics that are important to you and your dog.

Read on to see the table and learn how we created it.

Several manufacturers asked us to make it clear that the nutritional data provided is often based on average values; small fluctuations may occur from one batch of food to the next.

The K9 of Mine Dog Food Comparison Table

We know you just want to jump in and start checking out the table, so here it is:

The K9 of Mine Dog Food Comparison Table

Go ahead and start playing around with it if you like, but we explain a lot about the table, our process, the information we collected, and some of the best ways to use it below.

Plus, there are pretty charts!

Creating the Dog Food Comparison Table: Our Process

We knew from the outset that this was going to be a Herculean project, but we felt that the value it would provide owners made it a worthwhile undertaking.

Here’s what we did:

1. We set up a spreadsheet containing columns for every bit of dog-food info we wanted to collect. This included everything from the brand to pricing information to nutritional data. The columns go all the way to “BB” in spreadsheet lingo, meaning that there are 54 columns in total.
2. We created a list of all the major dog food manufacturers and brands we wanted to include. This is a bit of a subjective exercise, so we tried to err on the side of inclusivity. In total, we included 57 different manufacturers and brands.
3. We made a list of all the foods these brands and manufacturers offer. This was an interesting and challenging step, given that some brands and manufacturers struggle to keep their websites up to date or organize their recipes in sensible ways. Ultimately, we ended up with more than 2,400 foods.
4. We removed recipes that were discontinued. This shortened the list a bit, and left us with 2,384 different recipes.
5. We started collecting the information for the table. With most of the table set up, we started hunting down information and filling in the cells.
6. We designed formulas to help make the comparisons easier. For example, we inserted formulas for determining the dry-matter nutritional values when not provided by brands or manufacturers (as well as the opposite, when as-fed values weren’t provided). We also added formulas for determining the cost-per-calorie.
7. We reached out to all of the manufacturers and brands included and gave them the chance to make corrections and provide missing data. We did everything possible to ensure the accuracy of the information we collected, but we felt that this served as a good final safeguard. Additionally, this step helped us collect some of the information that wasn’t publicly available elsewhere.
8. We made some pretty charts and helpful filter views. There is a ton of information in this chart; it includes 128,736(!) cells in total. So, we tried to build in some tools that made it easier for dog owners to navigate.

Note that we did all of this manually.

We initially considered trying to leverage some type of AI information-scraping technology but ultimately decided we felt more comfortable having real people who know dogs and dog foods do the heavy lifting.

Sure, that means mistakes certainly occurred — we are only human.

But that’s part of the reason we not only reached out to manufacturers and brands but also performed spot-checks at several steps in the process.

However, this does mean that you should verify any information you find in this dog food comparison table before using it to make a decision. This should serve as a helpful tool and guide, not the final word on anything.

What Kind of Info Does Our Dog Food Comparison Table Include?

We tried to be as exhaustive as possible when collecting information for this table.

But we still had to be realistic and reasonable. For example, we couldn’t reasonably include ingredient lists for all of these recipes.

Dog Food Comparison Columns

As mentioned, this table is a beast. It includes 54 columns in total. However, we’ve hidden some of the columns from view for the sake of simplicity and to provide a better user experience. Hidden columns are in italics below.

The columns in the table include:

Notes About Some of the Data

Many of the columns in the table are self-explanatory, but others require a bit of context for clarity.

• Product Line/Formula: Not all manufacturers embrace the same kind of taxonomy for their recipes, but most offer several different product lines or formulas, which contain several different recipes. For example, a manufacturer may offer a grain-free product line, which contains chicken-, beef-, and pork-based recipes. When manufacturers organized their recipes in unusual ways, we simply classified them as we thought was most helpful for owners.
• Units for Calories: This is just the quantity of food used to provide the calorie information. This column was only necessary because manufacturers share caloric content using different units, such as cups, ounces, entire cans, or patties.
• As-Fed vs Dry Matter: You’ll see that we include things like protein, fat, and carb content (along with a few other characteristics) in two forms: as-fed and dry matter. As-fed values apply to the food as-is, just like when you open the bag and feed it to your pup. By contrast, dry matter values are calculated by removing the water content of the food. This is helpful for comparing foods with different moisture content, such as a kibble and a canned food.
• Ash Content: Many manufacturers avoid sharing the ash content of their foods. We went to great lengths to track down the specific values when possible, but when we couldn’t (and the manufacturers wouldn’t share it), we used average values of 8% for dry foods and 2% for wet, raw, and fresh foods.
• Sodium Content: By far the most challenging info to track down, sodium content isn’t something many manufacturers share. And that’s a shame, as many dogs require low (or at least, monitored) sodium content. So, we scoured the web and reached out to every manufacturer with a food on the list. Some responded and gladly shared the info, others ignored us entirely, and many fell somewhere between the two extremes. Ultimately, we weren’t able to secure sodium content for all the recipes included, which is quite disappointing.
• Dry Matter: This was just a column we needed for math purposes — it helped make some of the formulas we used to compute values tidier. It is basically just the inverse of the moisture column.
• Contains Legumes?: Some owners like to avoid foods containing legumes, so we added this column. Note that we used the broadest definition for legumes possible, so that includes things like guar gum.
• Novel Protein Only?: Doggos with food allergies often require foods made with only novel proteins. These are meats that aren’t included in most dog foods, such as alligator or kangaroo. Basically, if this column is checked for a given food, it doesn’t contain chicken, eggs, beef, pork, or turkey.
• Conventional Protein Included?: This is the inverse of the previous column. We just used it as a way to demonstrate that we’d checked the food — all recipes should feature a check mark in either one of these columns, but not both or neither.
• Overall Cost Per Calorie: This should be one of the most helpful columns for owners. It allows you to compare the value of all of these foods in apples-to-apples fashion. Many of the hidden columns were included to help reach the values in these cells.

Dog Food Nutritional Comparison: Which Recipes Did We Include?

As mentioned earlier, we included 57 different brands in the dog food comparison table.

Below, you can see how many recipes from each brand were included on a percentage basis. Just note that this chart only includes the 44 best-represented brands; it doesn’t include some of the brands who only have a handful of recipes.

We also thought that owners may be interested in seeing a breakdown of the foods included by type. The chart below illustrates the relative proportion of dry, wet, fresh, raw, and dried foods we included.

How Do You Use This Table to Compare Dog Foods?

You’re certainly welcome to jump in and started using the dog food comparison table, but we’ve put together a Loom video explaining how you can make the most of it.

In addition to simply covering the basics, the video explains how to view the collection of associated charts, how to use the built-in filter views, and how to sort the table yourself.

Filtered Views of Interest

As mentioned in the video, we tried to help make it easier for dog owners to manipulate the table in helpful ways by including built-in filter views. This way, you could easily see the foods ranked by, say, protein content (or any of several other characteristics).

We then used this information to create some handy reference charts, outlining the highest- and lowest-ranking recipes for the characteristic in question.

You can check out some of them below.

Ranking Foods by Caloric Content

Manufacturers provide information about the caloric content of their foods in a few different ways, which don’t always make direct comparisons possible. For example, many dry foods provide their caloric content in a calories-per-cup manner, while wet foods generally do so in a per-ounce fashion.

Accordingly, we grouped the foods from the spreadsheet into one of two categories: calories per cup and calories per ounce.

We’ll start with the foods that were bursting with calories, making them great for highly active dogs or those who are in need of putting on a few pounds.

While many owners are interested in high-octane, calorie-rich foods, some need the opposite.

So, we also prepared charts detailing the foods with the fewest calories per cup and ounce. These would be of more interest to owners with older, less-active doggos and four-footers who need to shed a few pounds.

Ranking Foods by Protein Content

For many pet parents, protein content is one of the most important criteria they consider when selecting a dog food.

Some simply feel better feeding their pet a food that’s packed with muscle-building protein, but others have to look for foods with low protein levels to address kidney disease or other health conditions.

In any event, you can see the 10 foods with the highest and lowest protein percentages below. Note that we’re using dry-matter protein content in both charts, as this allowed us to compare different types of foods (fresh, dry, wet, etc.) directly.

Ranking Foods by Fat Content

Fat content isn’t always a super-important consideration for owners of healthy dogs.

Most owners just need to select a food with a fat level that exceeds the minimum recommended fat level per AAFCO guidelines (5.5% for adults and 8.5% for puppies), and that their pupper remains at a healthy body weight.

However, there are cases in which fat content is an important consideration.

For example, dogs who are overweight or suffer from health issues (such as pancreatitis) may need a low-fat recipe. Conversely, working dogs, those exposed to very cold temperatures, and pooches in need of packing on a few pounds may need a food with a relatively high fat content.

As always, you’ll want to consult your vet for guidance. But we’ve rounded up the 10 foods with the highest fat content and the 10 foods with the lowest fat content below.

Ranking Foods by Carbohydrate Content

Though they often get a bad rap, carbohydrates are important macromolecules in dog foods. That said, most owners like foods with relatively modest carb content, preferring that the majority of their dog’s calories come from protein and fat.

However, determining the carbohydrate content of dog foods is more complicated than determining other macromolecule content values (such as protein or fat).

The reason for this is simple: Manufacturers generally provide values for the protein, fat, fiber, and moisture content of a recipe, but only a handful of manufacturers provide carbohydrate content.

Accordingly, carbohydrate content must be calculated.

To do so, you add up all of the major components of dog food (protein, fat, fiber, moisture, and ash). Then, you subtract this sum from 100%; the result is a pretty good estimate of the food’s carbohydrate content.

But there are a few issues with this approach:

• Most manufacturers fail to include the ash content of their foods. However, ash content is reasonably consistent for different types of foods. So, we used industry average values of 8% for kibbles and 2% for every other kind of food when the actual value wasn’t available.
• Different authorities handle fiber in different ways. Some subtract the fiber content from 100%, along with all of the other major food components (protein, fat, and moisture). Others, do not subtract fiber in such analyses. The former approach yields net carbs; the latter yields total carbs. Both approaches have their merits, but we elected to take the former approach and determine the net carbs.
• The values for different dog food components are often listed as minimums or maximums. For example, protein and fat are listed as minimum values, while moisture and crude protein are listed as maximums. This means that it is impossible to determine exact values for the carbohydrate content. Nevertheless, by maintaining a consistent formula across all of the foods (save for the ash content differences and those cases in which manufacturers provide carbohydrate content), the information provided in the spreadsheet and charts should still be valuable to owners.

There’s one additional issue we had to contend with: Our calculations yielded nonsensical calculated carbohydrate content values for 39 of the 2385 recipes (1.64%). For example, several foods appear to have negative carbohydrate content (if only that were possible…), while others appear to have no carbohydrate content.

There are a few possible reasons this could be the case.

• The minimum/maximum values led to incorrect carbohydrate content. Because protein and fat are listed as minimum values, a given food may have more protein or fat than is listed. However, this would mean that the carbohydrate value we arrived at was lower than our calculations produced. On the flip side, moisture and fiber content are listed as maximum values. This means that — conceivably — the carbohydrate content for some of these foods was slightly higher than our calculated values indicate.
• We made mistakes when collecting or organizing the data. We definitely made the odd mistake here or there (we are only human). However, this was probably not a significant factor, given that many of the foods that yielded unusual values were made by a small subset of brands.
• The manufacturer provided incorrect information. This, unfortunately, is what we feel happened in most cases. We have no reason to suspect that these potentially incorrect values were presented deliberately, but rather, we assume they were simple mistakes.

This illustrates yet another reason we reached out to every brand included in the spreadsheet and requested that they correct any mistakes or discrepancies. Unfortunately, that didn’t help with any of the recipes that had nonsensical carbohydrate values.

At the end of the day, we left the values as-is in the spreadsheet. If you select the carbohydrate content filter, you can see them all grouped nicely together at the top (that filter lists foods from lowest to highest carbohydrate content).

However, we excluded all of these problematic foods from our charts below.

With all of that said, here are the 10 foods with the lowest dry-matter carbohydrate content, excluding those which appear to have no carbohydrates or negative carbohydrates.

Few pet parents seek out foods with very high carbohydrate content, but we’ve included the 10 recipes with the most carbohydrate content in the following chart:

Ranking Foods by Sodium Content

As long as your pup is healthy, your vet doesn’t recommend a low-sodium food, and you select a recipe that meets the AAFCO nutritional guidelines, you can likely ignore sodium content when picking a food. Or at least, let it fall toward the bottom of your list of considerations.

But other dogs — especially those with kidney issues — require a low-sodium food. And that is a problem, because many dog food manufacturers or brands (roughly 55%) fail to disclose the sodium content of their recipes.

Nevertheless, we scoured every resource we could think of (including the brands and manufacturers themselves) to track down the sodium content of as many foods as possible.

We then created two charts, detailing the recipes with the highest and lowest sodium content.

Ranking Foods by Cost

It’s great to compare the nutritional profiles of various foods, but there’s one more very important factor to consider: cost.

It doesn’t matter how awesome a food is if you can’t afford it. You have to select a food that fits neatly into your budget.

But the problem is, it can be hard to make direct comparisons. How do you compare the cost of a 12-ounce can of dog food against a 25-pound bag of kibble? It’s even harder to make price comparisons with some of the new fresh food companies; they tend to recommend purchasing meal plans, which often obscure the costs and quantities involved.

This is why we went through the steps necessary to determine the cost-per-calorie for all of the recipes in our dog food comparison table. To find it, scroll all the way to the right, and you’ll see it directly to the left of the “notes” column.

Just note that some of these values are teeny-tiny. The most affordable food in our table costs $0.000186150234741784 per Calorie. That’s a bit more than 1/10,000th of a cent. To make these numbers more palatable, we rounded them to the fourth digit (the figure above becomes $0.0002 per Calorie in our table and the chart below).

Here are the 10 most affordable foods we found:

At the other end of the spectrum, the prices are a bit easier to wrap your head around. The most expensive food (on a cost-per-calorie basis) in the table costs $0.30 per Calorie. That’s a good bit more expensive than the next three options.

Here is the chart for the top 10 most expensive dog foods on a cost-per-calorie basis.

There’s one last caveat about our cost-per-calorie calculations: Retailer prices vary in several different ways. Some changes prices over time, while others charge more for foods in one location than another. So, we’d recommend considering the general part of the spreadsheet in which your chosen food falls, rather than worrying about if it is in 128th or 129th place.

There’s obviously more to consider when choosing a recipe than the data contained in the dog food comparison table above. For one, you want to ensure your dog actually likes the food. You may also want to look for foods that contain helpful supplements, such as glucosamine or chondroitin.

But that’s OK — use the dog food comparison table as a starting point. Whittle down your possible choices to a half-dozen or so, and then look for the other things you may want in a food. Run your choices by your vet to get his or her input, and let your dog try the one that seems best.

If she likes it, you’ve found your new dog food! And if she doesn’t, you can just keep heading down the list.

We hope you found this information helpful, but let us know what kinds of things you’d like us to include when we update the table and article. Did you find anything surprising in the table? Did the table cause you to consider a food you hadn’t previously?

Let us know — we’re all ears!