The State of Pet Adoption Australia Platform Insights 2025

For more than two decades, PetRescue has worked alongside rescue organisations to help create a future where every pet in Australia is safe, respected, and loved. As the nation's most successful pet adoption platform, PetRescue connects thousands of rescue pets with new families each year by empowering the rescue community with free technology, support, and evidence-based insights that strengthen outcomes for pets and people nationwide.

About PetRescue and the State of Pet Adoption Report series

The State of Pet Adoption Report series brings together national data and real-world insights from rescue groups, shelters, councils, vets. The reports highlight what's happening across the sector, helping PetRescue and its partners understand shifting needs and shape support where it has the greatest impact. By sharing these findings, PetRescue aims to uplift the entire rescue community and celebrate the dedication, resilience, and compassion that define this work.

The last State of Pet Adoption report, focusing on the 2023-2024 financial year, reported significant pressure for pets, people, and the organisations that support them. Rising living costs, housing instability, and increasing veterinary expenses placed added strain on pet guardians and rescue groups, while not-for-profit organisations continued to feel the impact of financial pressures despite modest growth in charitable giving.

Despite the economic climate, adoption activity remained strong with early signals that rising living and vet-care costs resulted in increased caution from adopters. This led to slower outcomes for pets with higher ongoing needs, including larger dogs, pets requiring behavioural or medical support, and animals perceived as "higher risk." Similar patterns affected cats, particularly older cats, less social cats, and those with chronic health conditions, which, combined with consistently increased intake of community cats, has created conditions in which live outcomes for cats are becoming harder to achieve.

The key pressures facing the sector in 2023-2024:

💸 Rising vet costs and cost of living

🏠 Housing instability for pet guardians

🐕 Slower outcomes for larger dogs and pets with higher needs

🐈 Increased intake of community cats

Despite continuing challenging conditions in the post-pandemic world of adoption, the sector showed remarkable resilience. Many organisations operated at or beyond capacity throughout the year, and the sector workforce experienced significant stress. Yet a strong sense of purpose and compassion remained, reflecting the dedication and community spirit that continues to drive the rescue sector forward.

Jump to specific insights from the report:

PetRescue.com.au visitor behaviour and adopter characteristics

Who's adopting pets in Australia?

Understanding who visits PetRescue.com.au is critical to understanding the pool of potential adopters engaging with rescue pets across Australia. In 2025, there were 72 million total pageview visits to the PetRescue.com.au pet adoption platform, maintaining the position of Australia's most visited charity website. By building a clearer picture of these audiences, members and stakeholders can make more informed decisions about how they present pets, tailor their messaging, and improve adoption outcomes. This insight also enables organisations to consider whether and how they might expand their reach to connect with new or underserved adopter groups.

New adopter accounts

In 2025, of 5.1 million individuals, 76,293 potential adopters created new accounts on PetRescue.com.au, together submitting 66,808 enquiries about available pets.

Use of PetRescue.com.au remains skewed towards the eastern states, as expected given that 80% of the population resides in these areas. General website usage, which includes the PetRescue resource library, Home2Home program, and crisis care services in addition to the adoption platform, indicates comparable use by people in NSW, QLD and WA. However, the breakdown of adoption enquiries by state in 2025 shows a more defined gradient, with slightly under 50% of enquiries from Victoria (the second most populous state in Australia), followed by NSW at 23%, QLD at 17%, then WA at 6%.

Despite NSW being the state with the greatest human population, pet listings, enquiries and adoptions on PetRescue.com.au are notably lower in NSW compared to Victoria, indicating that NSW guardians are less engaged with the rescue community than Victorians. The gap between general website visitors and pet enquiries submitted in Western Australia and South Australia points to unfulfilled adopter interest due to the comparatively low membership by adoption organisations in these states.

176,008 people created new accounts on PetRescue.com.au between July 1st 2019 and December 31st 2025, submitting 589,257 enquiries and adopting 404,646 pets.

New adopter accounts: July 2019-December 2025

Approximately 40% of these enquirers were repeat platform users, with at least two periods of website activity — such as creating their account, submitting enquiries, or updating their profile — separated by an absence of at least 12 months. This indicates a high degree of user satisfaction expressed through repeat engagement. 4,827 users who were active between July 2019 and December 2025 created their accounts in or before the year 2015. Some return enquirers re-engaged with PetRescue members after extended periods of time away, with 1,179 enquiries submitted by users who had first engaged on the platform more than 10 years prior.

Approximately 40% of enquirers were repeat platform users, indicating a high degree of user satisfaction expressed through repeat engagement.

Some advanced features on PetRescue are only accessible to logged-in users, including pet alerts, favouriting pets, creating adopter profiles and making enquiries on listed pets. These login requirements were introduced during the 2023/24 financial year.

Pet alert usage in particular spiked in 2025: 7.8% of cat enquirers and 10.7% of dog enquirers now have PetRescue pet alerts, up from less than 1% in prior years.

This coincides with the implementation of an instant pet alerts premium feature and could be an indicator that more enquirers are willing to engage with platform tooling to help them find their desired pet. This could provide an advantage to groups using all available pet profile features for their available pets, leading to increased engagement with these highly committed adopters.

Jump to specific insights from the report:

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