You didn’t start your pet sitting business to work for Rover. But that’s what’s happening.
Rover takes 20% of every booking you earn — before a single dollar lands in your account. On top of that, clients pay an 11% service fee just to book you. So the client pays more, you earn less, and Rover keeps the difference.
For a sitter bringing in $2,500 a month, that’s over $6,000 a year going straight to a platform you don’t control, don’t own, and can’t rely on.
And it’s not just the fees. Rover can suspend your account at any time. Change their policies overnight. Raise their cut. Any of those things can take your income to zero — and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That’s why more and more professional pet sitters are going independent.
Going independent means your clients book directly on your website instead of through Rover. You own the booking system, the client list, the reviews, and every dollar that comes in.
You’re not disappearing from the internet. You’re just removing the middleman.
The three things you need to make this work:
The most common mistake sitters make is announcing they’re leaving Rover before they have anywhere to send people.
Before you say a word to clients, you need a professional website with your services, pricing, and a working booking link. It doesn’t need to be fancy — it needs to be functional and trustworthy.
If you don’t want to build it yourself, SitterOps builds and launches pet sitter websites with direct booking fully integrated, typically in 7–14 days.
Your existing Rover clients already trust you. Most of them will happily follow you off the platform if you make it easy.
Here’s a simple message you can send:
“Hi [Name], I wanted to let you know that I’m launching my own pet sitting website! Going forward, you can book directly with me at [yourwebsite.com] — it’s faster, easier, and you’ll save the Rover service fee. I’d love to keep caring for [pet name] and hope to see you over there.”
A few things that help with the transition:
Once your direct bookings are steady, you can deactivate your Rover services. You don’t have to delete your account — you can simply turn off your availability so no new clients come in through Rover while you continue serving your existing base directly.
To deactivate your services on Rover: go to your profile → Services → toggle each service to inactive.
You can keep your Rover account available for pet owner bookings if you have your own pets — the two are separate.
This is the question most sitters ask. Rover does bring in new clients — that’s one real benefit of the platform.
When you go independent, you replace that with:
Most independent sitters find that within 60–90 days of launch, they’re getting enough direct inquiries to replace what Rover was sending — and keeping 100% of the income instead of 80%.
Let’s say you’re currently earning $2,000/month gross on Rover.
| On Rover | Independent | |
|---|---|---|
| Gross bookings | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Platform fee (20%) | -$400 | $0 |
| You keep | $1,600 | $2,000 |
| Annual difference | +$4,800/year |
That’s $4,800 a year — just from removing the platform cut. At $3,000/month, the difference is $7,200 a year.
A note on real costs: Going independent isn’t completely free. Running your own website involves a few ongoing expenses to budget for:
Even after accounting for all of these, most sitters earning $1,500/month or more on Rover come out significantly ahead within the first 60–90 days of going independent. The numbers above reflect gross commission savings only — your actual net benefit will depend on which software you choose and your hosting plan.
SitterOps builds professional pet sitter websites with Time-to-Pet fully integrated, so clients can book and pay directly from your site on day one.
One-time setup. You own everything. We stay available after launch to help with any questions.
No pressure — we’ll tell you exactly what your site needs and whether it makes sense for your business.