PetSmart - Lower Your Pet Upkeep
Last Updated: August 30, 2025
There are a few ways to reduce your pet upkeep at PetSmart. As of 8/29/2024, using these strategies, I’ve been able to save $554.05 on $1,910.60 worth of pet products. That is about 29% in savings. My cats are in a strictly wet prescription food diet, so that’s why my pet upkeep is so high.
Here are a few ways, based on effort and time. Some of these strategies are combinable and in the past, I have gotten around 40% off on prescription cat food.
Level One - Promo Code
Level StatsSavings: 20% DiscountUsage Type: Online2025 Personal Savings: $313.77Every few weeks, PetSmart has a 20% off promo code deal. The promo code is usually SAVE20, and it lasts for a few days. Here are the terms and conditions of the promo code.
Save an extra 20% on select sale & online prices for merchandise on petsmart.com or the PetSmart app. Must enter promo code SAVE20 at checkout. Eligible products only. Exclusions apply. See product page to determine eligibility. Offer not valid on veterinary care, services, gift cards, gift certificates, previous purchases & charitable donations. Offer may not be combinable with all existing promotional offers or discounts. Prices & selection may vary. While supplies last. Quantities may be limited & deliveries may be delayed
At first, I thought it only applied to products that were listed when you click on the banner, but that turned out to be not true. There doesn’t seem to be many exclusions other than services and gift cards. I was able to also use this for prescription food.
Level Two - Treats Reward
Level StatsSavings: 2-22.8% Cashback via PetSmart CreditUsage Type: In-Store / Online2025 Personal Savings: $126.62 (63,311 Treat Reward Points)Treats Reward is PetSmart’s perks program that you can sign up for free. By default, you earn about 10 points per $1 and each point is about 0.2 cents (aka 2% cashback that can only be used at PetSmart). If you spend $500 or more in the year (Bestie Tier), you get an additional 2 points per $1 (2.4%) and if you spend $1000 or more in the year (VIPP Tier), you get an additional 4 points total per $1 (2.8%). It’s not much of a discount, but it’s easy to use and free. Just sign in whenever you purchase something online or give your phone number to the PetSmart cashier.
The hard part of the level two strategy is to keep track of the Treats Rewards offers. These offers usually give around 10-20% cashback in points for the following:
- Specific animal categories like cats, dogs, birds, and small pets
- Specific brands of food like Science Diet, Purina, Blue Buffalo, etc.
- Just free bonus points, but they expire after a few days or weeks.
- Bestie Tier gets a 2X points offer on a single transaction. VIPP Tier gets two of these offers.
Unlike other sites, PetSmart logs you out after a while, so it’s not just a single click to check these offers, sadly. These offers are combinable with the Level One strategy as well and are additional points outside the standard 2% you get for just being a Treats Rewards member.
In terms of redemption, you must redeem them in 1,000 point chunks ($2.00), meaning if you have like 4999 points, you can only use 4000 of those points ($8.00) on the order. These points can be used in-store or online, but my recommendation is to save up these points and then purchase your items online using the Level One strategy (aka use in conjunction with the promo code).
Level Three - Gift Card Discounts
Level StatsSavings: 10-15% DiscountUsage Type: In-Store / Online2025 Personal Savings: $35.04Occasionally, PetSmart discounts their gift cards between 10-15%. They usually have it shown in the banner at the top of their home page, or sometimes it shows in the Treats Reward section.
If you have a Sam’s Club Membership, they have a $100 PetSmart gift card for $89.98. It says “Max 2 per membership”, but I’ve already bought 3 this year, so I’m not sure how they are limiting it.
Level Four - Rakuten Cash Back
Level StatsSavings: 2-25% CashbackUsage Type: Online2025 Personal Savings: $58.62Rakuten is a cashback site that requires you to click on a link before making a purchase at an online site. There’s more to this, but I will be writing another article about it later on, so stay tuned. Rakuten is just one of many cashback sites, but this one really shines specifically for PetSmart in terms of the amount of cashback. This is level four because it does require registration and setting up either a PayPal account for them to deposit your cashback to, or you have to deposit a check that they send you every so often. So definitely more work than the previous level strategies.
Normally, it’s only 2% cashback, but I’ve seen up to 25% cashback (very rare), but I would say 10-15% off is more common.
Note the terms and exclusions:
Terms & Exclusions Exclusions: Cash Back is not available on gift cards, Veterinary Care, Adoption services, Pharmacy items, items with a quantity over 100, donations or the portion of the order paid for by redeeming points/Treats Rewards. Cash Back is only available on one order per shopping trip. Cash Back is offered on Grooming (excludes Grooming packages) and Petshotel services after service is completed. Cash Back is only available on orders completed through the PetSmart US site. All orders placed through other countries will void Cash Back.
Special Terms: Using coupon codes that are not listed on Rakuten will void Cash Back.
I’ve never had any trouble using the Level One strategy in conjunction with this, but I’ve only ever used the SAVE20 promo code. I probably could have done a lot better in this strategy, but it’s easy to forget about using Rakuten. This is not combinable with the Level Three strategy, so if I had to choose, I would prefer the gift card discount strategy since you can buy gift cards for future transactions, instead of hoping that the Level One strategy happens on a good day when Rakuten gives a good cashback percentage.
Extra note, PayPal often has a 1% off cashback on their site but you must click the offer to make it active, so for most people, it probably isn’t worth your time checking.
New Bonus Level - Autoship
Level StatsSavings: 35-40% Discount (up to $20)Usage Type: Online2025 Personal Savings: $20.00I just recently found this strategy and could be my main strategy in the future. Autoship is a PetSmart program where you sign up for periodic orders of a specific item, and you get a discount on the first order of that product, usually around 35-40% depending on the product.
What I didn’t realize was that “first order” meant that it’s the first order of that particular subscription. If you cancel it, and then create a new subscription of the same product, you get the first order discount again.
There is a maximum discount of $20 using this method, but it’s possible that you could create two different orders of two different products and save $20 on each. You will also have to remember to cancel the order, or you will be charged full price in the next shipment, so I do recommend that you change the frequency to 9 months prior to creating the subscription.
Another positive of this method is that shipping is free, so you don’t have to go in the store to pick up the food (to save on delivery fees or gas).
Note, this is not combinable with Level One (Promo Code) or Level Three (Gift card) and I’ll have to look into whether it will work with Level Four (Rakuten).
Personal Combos
Level One + Level Four + Level Two
Level One happens often enough that I don’t buy pet-related items until there is a promo code. Plus, it combines with pretty much every strategy. If Level Four (Rakuten) is 10% or higher, then I will use this combo. If not, I use the Level One + Level Three + Level Two combo.
Here is a real world example:
Retail Price: $ 150.64Level One (SAVE20) Discount: $ 30.24Level Four (10% Cashback): $ 12.04Treats Points (2889 Points): $ 5.77* Used 2X Treats Points Offer
Total Savings: $ 48.05Total Percent Savings: 31.89%Level One + Level Three + Level Two
This is just the above combo except instead of using the Level Four (Rakuten), I use/buy a gift card from Sam’s Club or PetSmart.
Here is a real world example:
Retail Price: $ 118.67Level One (SAVE20) Discount: $ 23.82Level Four (Sam's Club): $ 10.02Treats Points (2889 Points): $ 2.65
Total Savings: $ 36.49Total Percent Savings: 30.75%Best Haul
There was a SAVE20 promo code, a 10% Rakuten Cashback, and there was a Treats Reward offer of 5000 Treat points ($10) if you buy $50 worth of cat items. Plus, you were allowed to use the Treats Reward offer once per day for 5 days.
Sadly, the Rakuten Cashback only stayed around for two of those days, but for those two days, my Total Percent Savings was 46.39% (or $57.40). The other three days, I still saved a respectable 38.39%.
Cheat Code
I got tired of having to check sites periodically to find the Level One and Level Four deals, so I created a Pushbullet Channel, petsmart-deal-alert.
Pushbullet is a service that allows users to share content and notifications to people or specific devices. It has something called a channel that you can follow to get up-to-date notification on specific topics.
In this case, the petsmart-deal-alert channel currently sends out notifications whenever the SAVE20 promo code is active or whenever Rakuten changes its cashback percentage for PetSmart. In the future, I will have it detect PetSmart gift card discounts as well.