🚽 Cat Litter Usage & Cost Calculator
Litter is the stealth subscription of cat ownership — the second-biggest recurring cost after food, bought in a panic when it runs out. Work out your real kg per month, bags per month and monthly cost, and see what each litter type truly costs.
Your setup
The usual rule is one per cat plus one spare — check your count against the Multi-Cat Resource Calculator. More boxes = each fill lasts longer, but more total volume.
Defaults change with litter type to typical mid-range prices — overwrite with what you actually pay.
Counter-intuitive but true: prompt scooping makes litter last LONGER (clean litter keeps absorbing; neglected litter saturates and gets dumped wholesale).
Your litter maths
Every type, at YOUR cat & box count
| Litter type | kg / month | Cost / month* |
|---|
*At typical mid-range bag prices for each type. The lesson repeats everywhere: price per bag is not price per month — pellets look boring and win; crystals look premium and sip.
Model notes: usage = daily-scooping losses per cat + full-change volume per box, using each type's typical fill weight and refresh rhythm. Your mileage varies with depth (7–10 cm is the sweet spot), box size and how religious the scooping is — hence the ±15% range.
Why use this calculator?
Never do the Sunday-night litter run again
"A bag lasts about 6 weeks" turns an emergency purchase into a calendar: subscribe, stock two bags ahead, or buy the big format when it's on offer — all impossible until you know your actual burn rate.
Price per month beats price per bag
The cheapest bag on the shelf (non-clumping clay) is often the most expensive month, because you dump and refill constantly. The comparison table reprices every type at your exact household — the ranking surprises almost everyone the first time.
Adding a cat? Price that too
Slide the cat count before you commit and litter stops being a surprise line in the new budget — it pairs with the full picture in our Cost of Owning a Cat Calculator.
Questions people ask
How deep should the litter be?
7–10 cm for clumping types. Too shallow and urine hits the box floor, forming concrete pancakes that waste litter and your evening; at proper depth, clumps form cleanly and the surrounding litter stays usable — deep litter genuinely uses less per month.
How often should the whole box be dumped and refilled?
With daily scooping: clumping clay every 4–6 weeks, crystal when the crystals yellow through (3–4 weeks), pellets when the sawdust layer takes over (weekly sift, full refresh ~monthly), non-clumping about weekly, paper/plant every 1–2 weeks. Smell breaking through despite scooping is the box telling you it's time.
Can I flush it? The bag says flushable.
Our advice: don't, whatever the bag says. Plumbing hates it, and cat waste can carry Toxoplasma, which water treatment doesn't reliably remove — several regions explicitly ban flushing cat litter. Bag it and bin it.
Do covered boxes or liners change usage?
Barely. Liners slightly speed full changes; covered boxes mainly change the human experience (and some cats refuse them — a refused box costs you a carpet, which is worse than litter). Usage is driven by cats, depth and scooping discipline.
Why does my friend use half as much with the same cat count?
Usually three things: they scoop twice a day (saturated litter gets dumped early by the rest of us), their litter is deeper, or their "month" is doing quiet rounding. The ±15% range in this calculator exists because litter maths is honest about being approximate.
Keep exploring
Multi-Cat Resource Calculator — how many boxes you should have · Cost of Owning a Cat — litter in the full budget · Cat Home Safety Audit — where boxes should (and shouldn't) live · All KittyButts tools
Estimates built from typical litter densities, fill weights and refresh rhythms for each type — a planning guide, not a guarantee for your exact brand and box. Prices shown are the ones you enter; the comparison uses typical mid-range prices per type.