Our Platform

PetPals lists sitters and handles booking and payment. The care itself is provided by independent sitters who are not our employees. We do not assign sitters to owners, set their prices, or direct how they work.

This matters when something goes wrong: the stay is an agreement between the owner and the sitter, and we say so plainly rather than implying a guarantee we are not in a position to give.

When you search, we filter to sitters who match what you asked for — location, service, dates, species, and any capability filters such as medication or reactive-dog experience. Sitters who have not opened the dates you need are excluded rather than shown as unavailable.

Within those matches, results are ordered by price, lowest first. We do not accept payment for placement, and no sitter can pay to appear higher. There is no personalised ranking and no profiling: two people searching for the same thing see the same order.

A badge means a specific check was carried out. It is not a general endorsement, and it is not a substitute for meeting a sitter before you leave your animal with them.

ID verified

A staff member has checked a government-issued identity document against the account's name. It confirms identity — nothing about competence.

Experience

Years stated by the sitter. Self-reported and not verified by us.

Can give medication

Self-reported capability, declared by the sitter.

Handles reactive dogs

Self-reported capability, declared by the sitter.

Reviews

Written by owners after a completed booking. We do not remove a review for being negative.

Where something is self-reported, we label it as self-reported. We would rather be dull and accurate than imply a level of vetting we do not perform.

The owner pays when the booking is made. We hold the money until the stay is finished, then release it to the sitter. Holding it protects both sides: the sitter knows the booking is funded before they commit, and the owner is not paying for a stay that has not happened.

Sitter fee

15% of the booking total, deducted from the payout. This is what PetPals runs on.

Owner fee

10% of the booking total, added at checkout. Donated to animal shelters and rescues, less what Stripe charges to process it.

Card handling

Stripe processes payments and holds the payout details. PetPals never sees card or bank numbers.

Only the sitter fee is our revenue. The owner fee is not income we keep — we undertake to donate it to animal shelters and rescues, less what Stripe charges to process the payment, and the Terms say so. Beyond those two there are no listing fees, no subscription, and no charge for messaging or for cancelling within the terms.

We act on reports from users and on our own checks. Depending on what we find we may remove content, restrict features, suspend an account, or close it.

Where it is proportionate we tell the person what was decided and why, and we accept appeals — a moderation decision made without explanation is impossible to correct when it is wrong. Reports made in bad faith to damage a competitor are themselves grounds for action.

We do not use automated decision-making to suspend accounts. A person reviews these cases.

If an animal is in immediate danger, contact emergency services or a vet first — then tell us.

For anything else — a listing that misrepresents itself, a user behaving abusively, a suspected scam, or content that should not be here — contact us using the details in our Privacy Policy. Tell us what you saw and when, and we will look at it.

PetPals operates in Finland and is built in Finland. The service is available in English and Finnish, and both versions of our policies say the same thing — where a translation is unclear, the English text is the one we drafted first.