Dog Food Ratings

Every food gets a score out of 10, built from the seven metrics shown below.

• Named meat, quantity & quality (30%) - how much identifiable meat or fish there is. Derivatives and by-products are marked down.
• Ingredient transparency (15%) - are ingredients named with percentages, or hidden behind vague terms.
• Filler / carb load (15%) - less reliance on cereals, maize and cheap bulkers scores higher.
• Additives (15%) - artificial colours, flavours and preservatives score low.
• Nutritional balance (15%) - protein level, meat (80/20) content and nutrient adequacy checked against the FEDIAF nutritional guidelines (protein, fat and calcium:phosphorus minimums, with higher minimums applied to puppy foods).
• Processing (10%) - gentler methods (raw/fresh) score higher than high temperatures and heavy processing.
• Ethics & sustainability (free-range, human-grade, sustainable, organic) is shown as a badge, not scored.
• Every food is labelled Complete or Complementary - a legal classification (Reg (EC) 767/2009 / FEDIAF). A Complete food gives your dog everything it needs; a Complementary food (e.g. many 80/10/10 raw mixes) is not balanced on its own and must be fed with other foods or supplements.
• A Suitable for puppy badge is shown when a food is both labelled for puppies (or all life stages) and meets the FEDIAF puppy/growth minimums (protein ≥25% DM, fat ≥8.5% DM, calcium:phosphorus 1:1-1.6:1).
• "80/20" is an 80:20 meat:veg ratio; "80/10/10" is a muscle:offal:bone ratio for raw meals that aims to mimic an ancestral diet, but is not nutritionally complete on its own and must be supplemented.
• Insect protein (e.g. black soldier fly) counts as a legitimate, sustainable protein.
• "Made in the UK" and our ethics/sustainability tags are shown as badges but aren't scored.

Scores are formulated by Fawnly from each food's published ingredients, and our category weightings are shown openly above. The Fawnly rating methodology, category weightings and scoring algorithm are our own original work, © Fawnly 2026 - please don't reproduce, republish or adapt our methodology or scores without written permission.